'Solastalgic Archive'

Conceived by artist Nina Elder, the Solastalgic Archive holds materials that contextualize and give breadth to the experience of living and making in this time of accelerated change. The evolving archive of objects, images, and conceptual actions collects ephemera of memory, creation, forgetting, destruction, preciousness and transience offered by contributors. It is an evolving, changing, temporal entity that will continue to grow as it is enriched by additions connected to each host venue.

Beginning in 2019 with more than 40 artists, and continuing to grow throughout it’s many showings, Elder invites fellow climate conscious artists, scholars and public intellectuals, as well as farmers, spiritual practitioners, indigenous leaders, and activists to contribute something that represents the “solastalgic”. Much like the practicalities of a traditional time capsule, each submission has had only one physical requirement: it must fit in a medium flat rate USPS postal box; boxes in which the exhibition’s objects continue to be carefully stored and moved from venue to venue.

The Solastalgic Archive holds contributions from a vast array of people, each asked to consider what connects them to the passage time. Unlike other museum collections, the Solastalgic Archive holds deeply personal items as well as things that change or disappear over time. Harnessing solastalgia as the archives’ organizing principle, the collections exemplify transformation rather than permanence, fleeting relationships rather than immutable. By allowing emotions and ephemerality to displace institutional indifference and contrived eternities, this space enlivens the passage of time. Installed in GOCA’s Project Space, the Solastalgic Archive will evolve over the course of the exhibition and will continue to grow through classroom activities and public workshops.

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