“The basic idea is very simple – just put collective stuff in one place, categorize it in some basic fashion to make it searchable, and then be able to collectively make things out of it that we could both print and link to.” –CAMP
Why archive? Why print?
- People working on the Edgware Road Project generate a lot of material, not only artworks. For example photos, texts, videos, sounds, research notes and other unclassifiable things.
- When collected and shared, these materials leap out of their pasts and enter new relationships, becoming part of new things. Relays, passes, borrowings and other rich encounters across people, time and projects and take place.
- So to archive is not only to (safe-)keep, but to throw forth – prociere. Printing is a special way of throwing forth, of multiplying the archive, and taking impressions from it. It is special also because it throws or casts one medium into another, producing something which can then have another life.
- In other words, when digital or digitised things become pamphlets, books, posters and then vice versa, this is not a mechanical but a creative act. It suggests and provokes a practice: a way of working that can be repeated, creatively, over and over again.
Why Archive? Why Print? was produced using the online archive and publishing tool edgwareroad.org, created by Bombay-based media collective CAMP while in residence on the Edgware Road. It is part of the series, Studies on a Road, in which groups who took part in the Edgware Road Project from 2008–2016, have shared their studies of the area and reflections on the stakes of the project.
The Possible Studies imprint was developed through the Edgware Road Project. Initiated by Serpentine Galleries in 2008, the Edgware Road Project links local groups and international artists with people living and working in this area. The itinerant project base is the Centre for Possible Studies, home to screenings, events, a publishing imprint and an ongoing project archive. From 2016, the Possible Studies imprint will be housed at Church Street Library on a specially commissioned shelf dedicated to the local area.
