An online/onsite exhibition curated by artist/research Elly Clarke, of materials from the early cyber years of Franklin Furnace, 1996-2002. Installed in heavy museum-like vitrines across all levels of the Pratt Institute’s Brooklyn Campus Library, the exhibition is designed to be encountered in any order. It is also an invitation: to reflect, respond, and feed back; interactions facilitated by QR codes and the exhibition website.
On view: January 19 - April 6, 2023
Opening reception: Thursday, January 19, 2023, 5-7 pm
Dragging the Workshop
An in-person interactive workshop led by Pratt Institute Archivist Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez on finding meaning in the archive. Working with and around objects highlighted through the current Live at the Library exhibition Dragging the Archive, participants are invited to look beyond the content of an archive in order to focus on its structure, context, and significance. Collectively and collaboratively, participants and facilitator will reflect on how meaning is constructed through a contextualization and critique of the archive and its processes. Instead of asking: What is this?, we will ask: Who created it? Who kept it? Why? What does this mean to me?
Participants will leave with an understanding of how to gather and interpret information in a variety of formats – including photographs, correspondence, and ephemera, and an appreciation of how seemingly static records can influence our (very alive!) interpretations of events, people, histories, and relationships.
Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez is the Institute Archivist at Pratt, where she also teaches a course on archival theory and practice. This event is open to the public and free to attend, with a maximum of 20 places.
This event is presented as part of Dragging the Archive: A personal (re)encounter with Franklin Furnace’s Cyber Beginnings by Elly Clarke – the 8th Live at the Library collaboration between Franklin Furnace and Pratt Institute.
January 25, 2023, 6:00 pm-8:00 pm ET
RSVP