Meta-archive

Welcome to the meta-archive conversations, which includes audio files and transcripts from five dialogues that were initiated by ‘Gift Science Archive’collaborator—and project “meta-archivist”—Radna Rumping between October 2019 and August 2020 as a site to register some of the foundational stories from within the project, as well as a space for Murray-Wassink’s storytelling practice to unfold in its own words. Both Rumping and Murray-Wassink took part in all five of the conversations, opening the last two sessions up to the voices of Robin Wassink-Murray (Murray-Wassink’s life partner) and Amalia Calderón (Murray-Wassink’s archiving assistant over the course of 2020). For these meta-archive conversations, Rumping draws from her own writing practice and experiences in radio hosting, as well as her deep knowledge of Murray-Wassink’s art/life practice, to draw out dialogue on the artist’s long-standing auto-archiving practice, as well as on topics ranging from “acceptance art” and the meaning of “taking stock” of a practice, to the importance of personal and art historical intergenerational exchange. Through the dialogical form of the interview, Rumping offers listeners, as well as readers, the opportunity to go deep—not just an artistic practice, but into the cognitive and affective workings of Murray-Wassink’s aesthetic ways of being in the world.

Part of a broader self-reflexive substrate of the ‘Gift Science Archive’ project, the conversations form a significant dimension of the meta-archive, which was conceived by Rumping in conversation with Megan Hoetger in December 2019. In addition to the conversations accessible here, the meta-archive also features in the database through an expansive catalogue of process images and reflection notes by Rumping that chronicle the development of the ‘Gift Science Archive’ team’s relationships and working methods.