Noteworthy: a collection of ordinary lives

This practice-based research examines traces of everyday life and questions why some objects are considered worthy of permanence whilst others remain ephemeral through a consideration of both sentimental and impermanent objects. The manuscript is explored as autobiography, in relation to the study of graphology, and with focus on the work of Jules Crépieux-Jamin and H. J. Jacoby. The contrast in attitudes toward preservation and erasure of traces within public and personal experiences is examined through a discussion of Jean Baudrillard’s and Walter Benjamin’s writings on collecting, in addition to the work of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Michael Landy, who employ methods of erasure in their artmaking. My work, Library of Throwaway Memoirs, which is a collection of discarded, handwritten manuscripts, provides evidence of unknown lives and experiences and is explored throughout this research. Concurrently, the methods and motivations of commencing, maintaining or discontinuing a connection with others or ourselves are addressed through a review of writing and artworks that are founded in these concepts. An examination of the collection demonstrates the connections between unknown people and the circumstances in which we decide to keep or discard. This is further demonstrated through a larger body of studio work that employs these manuscripts as subject matter. Created within an art practice that focuses on collecting, drawing, sculpture, painting, video performance and photographs to explore notions of trace and narrative embodied by everyday objects as methods of preservation or erasure, this study demonstrates the significance of trace within everyday experience. In particular, sentimental objects or relics, the role of our handwriting as a physical trace of our passage or existence, and the autobiographical nature of manuscripts as records of existence are of key importance in this research.