How does an archive work, as compared to human memory? Are there meaningful distinctions between "memory" and "storage (archive)," and how do these ideas frequently get confused in our overwhelmed technological times? What can an artist learn from the practice of preparing archival materials for preservation and what traps do we need to watch out for?

Some possible clues will be suggested by KIM NURRI's talk "The Space Between: Archive, Memory, Repository."

The first part of Kim's talk explores the multiple procedures involved in bringing an archive into being: collecting and dividing items, binding and sorting, packing and unpacking. She explains how the proliferation of articles to be archived gives rise first to categories and then subcategories, as well as an irreducible "miscellaneous" category - the process, by its very nature, generates ambiguities. Further confounding the ability to neatly cleave items into categories is the existence of "Boundary Objects," things which live on the margins between groupings, and appear to have divergent essences depending on how they are seen. Kim calls this "the fate of archives - the presence of things that escape categorization and wander around the schema."

The second part of the talk uses Kim's own artistic output - part of which, the "Tokyo Blues" series (2002-2005) will be on view at Insa Art Space from May 25rd- to explore how the act of collecting images in an archive can serve to make the invisible visible; how seemingly neutral, even clinical, representations of experience can acquire new meaning when placed in a different context; and how every one of these operations encodes a value judgment and a statement of belief.

About the artist
Nurri Kim was born in Seoul and worked on digital preservation and archiving efforts for both the New York Public Library's Digital Library Project and the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), and also maintains her own artistic practice in New York City.