Digitizing Sentiment

About a year ago, for my BA practicum show, I presented a work titled “The Twelfth Episode of the Fifth Season”. The work was an attempt to archive, categorize, and protect all the paper and object materials I have collected (and hoarded) since grade school. To name a few, categories include personal notes, card envelopes, pamphlets, exhibition catalogues, valentines, tickets, postcards, paper memorabilia, catholic memorabilia, etc. When displayed, the work looked like this:

Audiences were encouraged to flip through the documents at their leisure. In critique, it was the first time I leaned into sentimentality and was praised for it – despite the pitfalls of it all. By the time the show came around, I barely put a dent in what I had collected, but nearly filled four boxes. One critique that has stuck with me, was the fact that the display method was not entirely convincing. I had chosen to use comic boxes and comic bags to preserve the artifacts, but it just didn’t seem like enough. I felt the same way, but have been pondering other affordable methods since.

In my attempt to continue this project, and try to further understand what it means, I have begun to digitize the collection. I am unsure if this is the correct direction moving forward, but I am going to play with it for a bit, and see what the possible options are in terms of a public catalogue online. I will continue to explore how the physical archiving can improve, but as of yet, I have not tried any other options.

(Olivia Mossuto)