‘a so called archive’ was an audiovisual piece that I experienced at the exhibition at LUX (Waterlow Park). It was based around two Commonwealth museums that stored archive footage, documents and stolen artefacts from different countries that had been colonised by Britain. One caption from the piece that descried of a part the score was “uneasy contemplation”. Which I felt was very accurate to the feeling that the score gave over the shots of these remains of archival footage of Britains colonial history. The fact that these objects and remains have been left there to decay is significantly highlighted in this piece, which I saw as to make it very prominent that there’s a feeling of the state attempting to forget about it as not to be guilty of it, as rather than either returning the stolen goods and attempting to give reparations, or educating on the real history of Britain and the damage that has been done.
There was also reference to some pieces from the archive being unlawfully sold when they closed, which highlighted the tone of profiting from a colonial past.
I was impressed by the score of the piece throughout, the use of different audio media forms such as radio clips and sampling different news clips and voices to place prominence on certain words, was also effective in giving a certain tone and subtle idea to the piece while also leaving quite a lot open to just look at as it is, clearly without too much other information or input apart from seeing what is there.