Index600
by Ruth Aitken
Knowledge
Lots of information, logged and categorised. Not always well. Generally arbitrarily. It's easier to then grab. If we need it. We rarely need it. lots of knowledge. Information. Data locked away. Without context. No use. Without reason, thought, practicality. No use. Sits in ruled, lined, nervous storage.
Collection and categorisation for judgement by an unknown body is key. burnt in from youth. Large vocabulary. Numbers. clothes. books. songs. art. international borders. species. friends.
Examined and assessed on mass. In primary school. We had spelling and maths tests. The ultimate show of intellectual dominance. The most important thing. watered down knowledge without context, practicality, consideration.
10 questions in 1/30th of an hour. two minutes. one hundred and twenty seconds. 10 answers. pencils. ruled paper. 10 words or numbers. without knowledge, just shapes.
sound as questions bend on the air. pencil can be smudged and erased. lost and forgotten.
600 stacks of ten pieces of paper. 10 HB pencils. Water (for hydration, nothing else). No erasers. Over six hundred minutes (ten hours, 12000 seconds) I will write down pieces of information (information as a loose term. 'information' being my own memory or lack of, knowledge and experience) which fit into self contained categories, for each stack of ten, known only to myself.
Across the ten hours people will be able to come into the room, look through the stacks, rearrange them into new categories, write down their own categories, correct or alter previous pieces of knowledge.
As an end product, there should exist the 600 stacks of 10, each with different categories written on them in HB pencil. The writing may exist in differing states of legibility, as it may have been erased, altered and smudged. The paper potentially dirty and crumpled. Some of these stacks of ten may remain blank.
These will be made into books at the end, and provided, along with photographs, as documentation.
