document & archive: what the heck?

so collaboration can take many different forms and its most obvious benefit is that you can play to your strengths, do what you're most enthusiastic about. to me i think my favourite thing in a collaborative situation can often be the compiling of inspiration, ideas and research. i like to ask philosophical questions. one of my favourite things in the world to do is to write lists - i organise my enthusiasm and inspiration, i catalogue excitement. because that's you want, or what i want, most of all, when making work - to be excited about it.

so that's what collaboration means - or what it can mean.

what does document and archive mean?

i immediately think of my blog archives, again a catalogue, but this time of my own thoughts, feelings, experiences, and creations. some of my past work has dealt heavily with this idea of an online persona, and online hub of yourself and your identity

the group talked about making a documentary film to document how people feel about the place they live

so in a similar way to my blog archive, the core of the idea is to catalogue feelings, human reactions and thoughts on surroundings

i want to explore the theme of "document & archive" in several ways on my own

here are some ideas:

• a zine of selfies (I post a lot of them every so often on my blog lilashton.blogspot.com and it's a great way to see how i looked or felt on various days throughout a longer period of time - it's a very true illustration of who i am, visually, emotionally, etc)
• photos from my phone (i take photos a lot just of pretty much anything, and while I have also done lots of very calculated photo-taking, spontaneous phone camera shots of my life have a special place in my heart because they are just genuine memories and illustrations of my life and surroundings)
• diary entries & blog posts (documenting of my thoughts over a period of time, general changes, thought patterns, etc)
• live blogging (people live blog or live tweet events and it's always really interesting to look back on stuff like live tweets of the brits awards 4 years ago - i saw someone who had live tweeted an acid trip and it was so interesting - i could live tweet just life activities for a day or something)
• altering realities (painting on photos, altering sound? tempo changing existing songs infinitely, to show the endless potential for variance present in everything - drawing on webcam pics in paint, or of course physically)

Here are some recent pages from my journal (diary!):

Also v. interested in using stuff from my childhood/cultural artefacts from my glorious youth, e.g. BILLIE PIPER (I just love this single cover, god bless).

So in conclusion, the focus here is on documenting experiences in particular time frameworks. This is very flexible as a focus, and can be used to explore many different kinds of work.