Plot-twists

It started with the intentional – a walk, a recce, some reading but mostly a beeline to the archives in Worcester1The Hive, SO 846 550. The plan involved digging a historical record or two as it would add a dash of salt into the mix of posthumous secondary sources that have substantiated the ‘myth’ of Radclyffe Hall’s time in Malvern: memoirs, histories and scholarship by fanfolx and critics, and fictional references in literature2my contribution is very much under the auspices of ‘fanfolx and critics’ however the cross-examination-by-material archive and public record has, apparently, been less frequent that I assumed, a point explored here.

I hoped and planned for surprises and plot twists – what quickly emerged was that the ‘material evidence’ did not clearly corroborate with memoirs and biographies – a point I'll be exploring throughout this process. Some of which is documented here and here.

The bog of the archives merited careful attention as one document after the next exposed conflict and concern. It turned out this demand for the methodical and calculated was rather well timed: there was a rail strike, there was a heat wave, and then the clincher, a paralysed foot3which it turns out to be related to nerve damage caused by a spinal injury. I was not quite immobile, but I moving far and quickly was taken off the agenda.

That said, irrespective of being stuck in Worcester, the curiosity of what-has-yet-to-be-seen in the archives certainly made it feel like a choice rather than a sentance. Compelled to unstick the situation for the sake of a meeting with my team in late September or early October, I tried to edit what I gathered (written and recorded) and put it on a blog which only unfurled more complications. 

ANOTHER PLOT TWIST: I lost access to the software and much of the hardware needed to post-as-planned4I did send postcards, videos, and messages in the low stakes intimacy ‘between friends’ but this does not a thesis make. Which wasn’t the end of the world as the old and low-performing computer this research is developed on was now lagging on its intended utility: editing video and generating interactive storytelling maps in a chrome environment. I was in a technology deathloop where I could do little but handwrite in my notebook. As such, I returned to the university to use one of the many shared ‘on-site’ devices that might work as a stop-gap. In August. Which was also incredibly poorly timed as a university-wide restructuring instigated an mobius of let-me-direct-you-here of well intentioned assistance that dragged un through most of October. In fact, it dragged on until last Monday, 17 October5if you wiggle backwards in time to my first queries about what is available that drew attention to these items even existing, you would find yourself seven months earlier, sometime in Mid-March when the same email and phone tree paths were circled. 

A PIVOT AND REROUTE - To unstick the ‘proof(-of-concept)’ from technology challenges lodged in a mire of institutional procedure, an analogue solution presented itself: reviving the immersive and participatory set design skills grown over two decades in performance and nightlife - devise an offline, three-dimensional wireframe in one of the studio spaces left mostly dormant in the wake of an apocalyptic theatre department restructuring? 

Cardstock printouts, post-its, cut-up maps, red-string6Later, this concept of a red string is read-with Donna Haraway’s Cats Cradle Metaphor. See Donna Jeanne Haraway, “A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies,” Configurations 2, no. 1 (1994): 59–71..

It wouldn’t be the first time.

This time, however, a string could lead to a video or recording here or there on one of the many disused computers, phones, or iPods lying around amongst friends, family, and in the same building with the ‘black’ studios.

Whether analogue, digital, or any combination thereof, the conflicts in the archives remain.

And whether analouge, digital, or any combination thereof, the conflicts regarding which bits to keep and which bits to let go of will still remain.