Working in museum archives sometimes has an ethereal quality to it.
As one strolls through the pathways in between endless shelves of museum objects, one can sense that the air is dense with centuries of human labor. Each and every item was conjured up at some point. Its raw materials gathered, transported and skillfully molded into their current form. Within the context of a museum archive or an exhibition, these objects take on a fetish-like status.
Alongside these objects, however, exists a shadow fleet of logistical tools and materials, whose sole purpose is to serve the museum objects; these items, too, were designed by someone, often rather anonymously. And like the museum objects, their materials were also carefully gathered and shaped into something we can currently witness. However, contrary to their museological counterparts, rather than being (re)stored and maintained, these items are actively used, living a kind of inverted life alongside the museum objects.
Throughout their decades of use, these items collect a quiet, brooding history of their own. They are scratched, bumped and dropped; used. Employees who have come and gone have repaired them, improvised with them and adorned them with wood carvings and paint, permanently bonding themselves to these items.
The items in this series were salvaged during a renovation project at the Architecture & Design Museum’s archives. Old and obsolete workspaces and loading docks that had been in service since at least the early 1980s were cleared out to make space for newer, updated gear.
What sort of narratives are contained within these liminal objects of (industrial) design?