BITTERSWEET

Cubitt Curatorial Placement

A curatorial exploration of the Cubitt Archive.

This placement aimed to make the archive more accessible, reimagining it as a platform and catalyst for inter-subjective processes in which artists, curators and the public join to co-create meanings and knowledge. Stemming from an interest in queer ecologies and how networks form through gossip, our approach to the archive took the format of a zine, to intertwine subjective histories in a playful composition.

We dived into the archive, dredging out film negatives, postcards, playlists, recipes, menus, emails, memos, maps, that illuminated the anecdotes, emotions, dynamics, and perseverance that had been side-lined, and would otherwise be obliviated. We were irresistibly drawn to speculate, to imagine, to fantasize what might, and could, have happened. So we invited people to create, echoing the way we felt invited by the archive to act; using it as a tool for reinvention, extrapolation, interpretation, and forging new networks of meaning. Bringing together the responses, curating them into a playful, whimsical and oh-so-engaging zine!

Using gossip as a methodology, we wove a tapestry of subjective histories to subvert hegemonic constructs, de-sanctify the archive, and liberate imaginative narratives. By blending archival traces with fictional narratives, the seemingly verifiable truths, as Gavin Butt suggests, are “displaced from their more positivistic frames of reference” and rendered, like gossip’s narratives, “as projections of interpretive desire and curiosity”. Juicy stories and eye-catching images might constitute the end-product of this project. But they are also just part of the spiralling, accumulating repository of narratives open for anyone to add on to and further interpret. 

Curated by Evie Banks, Margherita Ghella & Stephanie Chung