“At the same time, once written down [as in an autobiography] memory becomes fixed and unchangeable. Mikhail Bahktin rightly observed that memory consists not only of itself but of each subsequent recollection of it. The memoir freezes the memory and cuts it off from those subsequent accretions. In addition, it does not so much represent the past as substitute it with an edited version of itself. It is both the representation of a life and an interpretation of it. As a text, the memoir is not mimetic but symbolic. Like a photograph, it replaces memory, a dynamic process of signification, with a fixed metonymical procession of signs, more or less carefully selected by the author for the specific purpose of revelation as a performance art.” (176)

Goldworthy, Vesna. "The Private Self: Interior and the Presenting of Memory." In Biography, Identity and the Modern Interior. Routledge, 2017.

Dispatches from the Library is a diary in words and images from my artist residency at the Bard Graduate Center Library in New York City. Bard Graduate Center is a graduate research institute which explores new ways of thinking about decorative arts, design history, and material culture.