Reflect on your personal collections and establish a creative archiving practice in this two day workshop.

Designers, artists, and researchers alike are invited to bring their to-do lists, diary entries, scraps, fragments and in-process work to analyze, discover common threads, and find focus

Spread the artifacts of your creative practice out in front of you, and out in front of the community. Can we use this space to reflect, discuss, reformat, curate, and question the things we make, supported by and in conversation with one another? What themes may emerge that were previously buried? What possibilities can we reveal by seeing our own works from different vantage points?

Part group critique, part writing workshop, part reflective residency, this workshop invites you to develop a creative archiving practice for your artist practice, diary entries, collection of writings, and more. Outputs will vary, but may look like:

• website of archived writing entries
• photography series of your collection of artifacts you have crafted yourself
• drawings that are inspired by a collection of diary entries made into gifs
• a monthly newsletter to your friends of your weekly grocery lists

Please come to class having read the supplied pre-reading (available after registration) about indexing, catalog theory, and artist archives. We will discuss together during Introductions and Part One of the workshop.

Jessie McCarty's Indexing Are.na page

Pen & journal; a personal collection, draft, or diary of some sort; supplied reading materials; laptop or computer for streaming.

DAY 1 – Understanding Indexes + the Artist Collection

• Group introductions
• Presentation: Indexing the Diary and the Purpose of an Artist Archive
• Writing Exercises: Catalog Drafting, Group Brainstorming
• Homework — Run through your lists from the first day. How do they reflect the notes from the lecture? Consider notes offered by your peers.

DAY 2 – Practical Methods

• Group Introductions: Check Ins, Project Share
• Presentation: Tips on Organizing Your Art by Subject, Material, and Date.
• Writing Exercises: Indexing Methodology, Freewrite + Artist Proposals, End-of-Session Feedback.

BERLANT, Lauren. Thinking About Feeling . Chicago: University of Chicago, 2008. Abstract: how to write the history of the present under conditions of crisis within the ordinary: in the first instance, AIDS/IRAQ are the goads, in the second, a more generalized but not apolitical atmosphere where the contemporary is encountered not as trauma but flatness.

BRIDGES, Kent. Automatic Indexes as Personal Bibliographies. BioScience, Volume 20. Abstract: An indexing program is described which uses standard bibliographic entries to produce printed author, source, and keyword indexes, a year-frequency table and potential error indicators.

DAVEY, Moyra . London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2020. With excerpts of her book, I Confess.

DRABINSKI, Emily. Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction . New York: CUNY Graduate Center, 2013. Abstract: Critiques of hegemonic library classification structures and controlled vocabularies have a rich history in information studies.

HOWE, Susan. Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives . New York: New Directions, 2014.

MCCARTY, JESSIE. INDEXING: creating indexes is a diary, actually . Are.na. Online.

ORTON, Joe. Ed. LAHR, John. Pick Up Your Ears. The Annotated Biography of Joe Orton New York: Random House, 1978.

PEREC, Georges. An Attempt at an Exhausting Place in Paris. Cambridge: Wakefield Press, 2010.

SALAZAR, Kim. Diary Studies: Understanding Long-Term User Behavior and Experiences . Nielsen Norman Group: Articles, 2016.

SNOW, Karen. Cataloging Ethics Bibliography . Illinois: Dominican University. 2020-Ongoing.

Lou Sullivan Diaries (1970-1980) and Theories of Sexual Embodiment Making Sense of Sensing Pittsburgh: Duquesne University, 2018. Springer International Press. Abstract: I “met” Lou through his diaries during my early archival work. In fact, I think I fell in love. If one can fall in love with someone she can never meet. Not to mention the fact that, since Sullivan was a gay man, he never really would have been interested in me anyway…. In any case, the project morphed—more than once—and now Lou Sullivan’s writings are a major contributor to this project. His life story is too compelling to be used simply as an occasional reference for theory, too provocative to be set aside.

Jessie McCarty is a writer and cataloger in Chicago, originally from Louisiana. They explore modes of folklore, diary, index, and citation. Their second chapbook, Louisiana Folk Songs is a collaboration with multi-media artist Sarah Haines, available through I Read Stuff Books in 2023. They have facilitated cataloging and poetry lectures with Chicago Public Library, 826 Chicago, the Center for Fiction, Minicine Cinema, and more. They function as Co-Artistic Director of the Runaways Lab Theater, where they facilitate the Dramaturgy fellowship with Dana Pepowski.

Jessie works full-time as the General Cataloger at Potter and Potter Auctions. They have a background in video documentation and tape digitization, with video works premiering at EXTV, Mincine Cinema, Illinois Wesleyan University, CineYouth Film Festival, and Facility Theater. Recent awards include the Digital Leaders Program (Henry Stewart New York) - Best New Poet (Chicago Reader 2022) - Best New Poetry Book (Chicago Reader 2022) - and Best Art Film (DigiFest, Bossier Arts Council). They love to interrogate the Diary.