Synopsis
Featuring crystallized magic markers and the kidney stone of a horse, the generously-curated mineral collection of Mary Johnson comes to life in a manual labor of love for the process of archival procedure.
Directed by Jodie Mack
Featuring crystallized magic markers and the kidney stone of a horse, the generously-curated mineral collection of Mary Johnson comes to life in a manual labor of love for the process of archival procedure.
[7]
From my TIFF Wavelengths coverage for MUBI:
-“They’re rocks, Hank.”
-“Jesus, Marie…they’re minerals!”
As we know, the purpose of an archive is to organize things, to set boundaries between what counts and what doesn’t count within a specific taxonomy. Within the archive, a category of items can be clarified into smaller, closer subcategories, so as to allow us to bring greater knowledge to bear on the object at hand. Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. King Philip came over for good supper. This is the Enlightenment at work.
Of course, sometimes these categories break down, and then human knowledge is presumably in trouble. In The Order of Things, Michel Foucault cited a passage from Borges that showed us…
The central segment (the whirlwind blur of hands pictured in the poster art) was so utterly electrifying that I struggle to understand why the rest of the film was included at all.
"The physical as a symbol of the spiritual world. The people who keep old rags, old useless objects, who hoard, accumulate: are they also keepers and hoarders of old ideas, useless information, lovers of the past only, even in its form of detritus?…I have the opposite obsession. In order to change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally, one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one’s mind and psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use. I keep nothing to remind me of the passage of time, deterioration, loss, shriveling."
— Anaïs Nin
Cataloging at hyper-speed, one entry bleeding into the next, the pieces and the whole simultaneously tangible. Hurt my eyes, but it hurts so good.
Archive porn! Thousands of rocks!! Who the hell doesn't love it
can't help but notice i'm having a fling with this thing called archival processing <3
Microdosing Jodie Mack films as I cope with being unable to attend her gallery in New York