The Archive

The Archive is an ongoing collection of photographs of empty chairs, benches and other seating accommodations in public, semi-public and private spaces around the world. The work emerged from an experience of absence caused by ME/CFS: places that had once been part of everyday life became inaccessible, giving rise to loneliness and longing.

Rather than describing this absence directly, the work subjects each empty seat to the logic of an archive. It is photographed, classified and entered into a fictional administrative record.

Each record follows a defined procedure. The seating accommodation is assigned an archive number and documented according to categories such as object type, location, material, capacity and occupancy status. Computer-printed and typewritten entries are supplemented by handwritten annotations and rubber stamps as the record moves through different stages of processing and is finally archived.

Through this systematic classification and documentation, something as intangible as absence is treated as information that can be registered, processed and preserved. The tension between administrative precision and quiet absurdity gives form to something otherwise difficult to grasp: the presence of absence.

What begins as an individual experience thereby opens onto a broader condition: people are absent from places for many different reasons. The archive does not explain those absences. It records the places in which they become visible.