Reading Environment | Ann Harezlak, “An Archive-in-Residence”

“An Archive-in-Residence” explores how individual mythologies of privately amassed collections can register as historic, and how a socially reflexive culture of archiving may destabilize traditional methods for assigning value to collected objects.

The curator and art historian Ann Harezlak has re-homed her personal collection of exhibition-related ephemera within the reading room at 3307 W Washington Blvd, which she has transformed into an institution-esque archival setting. Her collection consists of printed matter such as press releases, private view cards, artists’ statements, CVs, invitations, and posters gathered from exhibitions and public art programs she has either produced or physically attended over the past fifteen years. These “secondary materials,” which describe, disseminate, and provide historical evidence of the conditions of exhibition-making, are here positioned as primary documents for interpretive study. Visitors are invited to engage these art-adjacent materials by reimagining their means of categorization, creating new taxonomies and vocabularies to delineate Harezlak’s archive-in-flux while discovering the projects and propositions it contains.

Each re-organization is recorded and displayed for the next visitor to encounter and, potentially, to re-order. At the close of her residency, the social record of these re-categorizations will be entered into the archive itself, reflecting the values, urgencies, and predilections of the micro-communities that participated in this temporary happening. In asking visitors to consider the creative process of collecting, storing, and organizing as a curatorial or artistic act, Harezlak’s reading environment provides an opportunity to question the role our personal interests and biases play in the forming of public historical narratives.

The archival reading room environment was designed and built collaboratively by Harezlak and 3307 director Amanda Martin Katz. The linen book weights were hand-sewn by the textile artist Kerry Smith and designed upon consultation with Getty Research Institute conservator Melissa Huddleston. Katz’s plant collection flanks the librarian desk, providing the sense of a “living archive” while not affecting the sterility of Harezlak’s collection. A hallmark of Harezlak’s exhibition-making is the composition of a “catalytic moment” upon arriving at the site. Here, each of the materials that separately constitute the reading room (wood, white paint, linen, ceramic planter, and hoya obovata plant) appear layered in the 3307 storefront window. The plinth and display table continuously appear in Harezlak’s exhibiton projects, kindly shifting their use-values accordingly.

photos by Bridget Batch