Hoardings in Order

• In Event: Critical Karaoke

Abstract

As a media scholar of both archives and the environment, I catch myself increasingly interchanging ideas of preservation and disposal. Not so much in the form of concepts or words, but as hesitant and inchoate impulses to organise the world. In response to this ongoing push/pull, I present my until-now secret trove of digital artifacts, which, together–in the form of a critical karaoke set–tell a story of immaterial hoardings in order. The story is of neither personal nor narrative importance. Rather, the acts of digital collecting, compiling and categorizing reveal the inner-workings of our intermeshed lives, the spaces between storing anew and deleting forever, and the truths our files and folders dare to tell about the messes we work to conceal. Using video screen capturing software, I take viewers on a diegetic desktop tour, an intimate journey of digital preservation and disposal.

Mél Hogan lives and works in Chicago, and is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Illinois Institute of Technology. Her current research is at the intersection of the environment, archives and media studies. As a practitioner, she addresses digital culture through media arts interventions and research design projects. She is the art director of nomorepotlucks.org, a consultant for mat3rial.com, and is interested in DIY publishing tools for print and web.

Author

• M Hogan, Illinois Institute of Technology