Building the Barbican Archive
Forget Me Not

As part of the ongoing project to share the Barbican Guildhall Archive, our Young Curators were part of an eight-month programme to unpack and explore the potential of our archive materials. Working with archivists, curators and mentors from across the Barbican and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, the project culminated in FORGET ME NOT, a weekend exhibition at the Barbican in June 2019.

Young Curator Anahi Saravia Herrera shares her experience and documents their process of creating the exhibition and its importance in the early stages of the development of the Barbican Archive.

While stacks of papers and piles of photos may seem inoffensive, in the archive it is these documents that determine what we remember, and it is the archivist's job to determine how. This is to say that archives are not neutral places; something is often forgotten by people who are not directly engaging with them. And why would anyone engage with them? Whilst more and more archival collections are becoming accessible, and technically all national archives are publicly available, we know so little of why they matter. As young people, it is not common to encounter archives at school or even at university and definitely not if you are not in contact with some kind of institution. This can estrange us from this material, particularly people who are economically or socially barred from accessing it. Despite this, it is important to realise that we all have a stake in archiving because ultimately it is our collective history being forged in the archive.

The Barbican Archive collection is currently at this critical stage, between being untouched and interpreted and so it was crucial for us to respond to the implications of this process. FORGET ME, NOT was the Young Curators’ response in the form of an exhibition which interrogated the process of archiving. It was a show that aimed to reactivate the Barbican’s archival collection and find new ways of reinterpreting and connecting to archival material which can otherwise seem deceptively inconsequential.

The Young Curators are a group of thirteen young creatives (in the widest sense of the word) who come from different backgrounds. We were tasked with curating a project through which we could respond to the archives. The diversity in our personal and professional backgrounds was key in determining the purpose of our curatorial practice: to be as inclusive as possible in our approach to history and the interpretation of the archives. We were able to do this between November 2018 and June 2019, through sessions with the Barbican’s Archive team, Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning, and other mentors who helped along the way.

The history of the Barbican archives is a serendipitous one. It is not a story of careful collection but of a happy accident and a particularly watchful staff member: Libby Rice. Up until the archival team was founded in 2016, Libby Rice, Archivist for the London Symphony Orchestra, had been acting as the Barbican’s unofficial archivist, working on the collection when and if she could. She rescued boxes of documents, photos and binders which would otherwise have been consigned to skips.

The way the archives were found is very telling of the weird temporal space they occupy, not quite old enough to be seen as valuable but not quite new enough to be seen as disposable either. For the most part, there are no digital copies of any of the documents. The collection is still growing and holds material from before the Barbican Estate’s opening in 1969, tracking the entire trajectory of its life from blueprint to what it is today. Currently, the archives live in rooms dotted around the Barbican and are at an early stage in terms of cataloguing, storage and accessibility for researchers. Throughout this project we’ve been able to work directly with archival material in away that is rare in the archive world.

Our themes were developed through our unique interaction with the archival material, as we were only able to access it intermittently and even then it always seemed impenetrable. We began to talk about the implications of having an archive and wondered what would be lost in the process of formalising it. Who was being remembered and why? Ultimately this led us to discuss the implications of archiving as opposed to individual archival pieces and this became the conceptual drive for the exhibition. It was only much later that we were able to identify and value archival material for its narrative potential.

Through this process FORGET ME, NOT became an exhibition about things we could not see and about the narratives that slip through the cracks. It came as no surprise that these missing narratives usually belonged to minorities and the communities which have been historically oppressed. The fact that we were required to imagine these alternative histories and seek them out in the archive inspired us to translate this to an exhibition where we could use archival material to reframe how these histories could be remembered. Our exhibition then became about the different ways in which we could explore this theme both by using and responding to archival material.

To deconstruct and reassess history, it was necessary to expand what we considered archival material. A good example of this are the worker’s shoes we displayed with a can of lemonade, a packet of Rizla papers and an empty bag of crisps. These were found by a member of the Archive team under Cinema 1. Items like this could easily be mistaken for trash but they tell a rich history of people who are an integral part of the Barbican’s history. Elevating this material to archival status makes their history official and adds to the diversity of stories represented in the archive. While the workers themselves were not able to contribute documents, their shoes are proof that their presence is woven in the very concrete of the building.

It was important for us to undermine the authoritative corporate presence in the archive, one that is present in any institution and which usually dictates the narrative frame of the archives. Photos of past directors are obvious choices of documents to be preserved and to be able to diversify the voices of an archive it is important to think outside of these kinds of documents and subvert their authority. To drive this point, we wanted to manipulate these ‘official' documents and create alternative ways of viewing them. To do this we curated a selection of portraits of the Barbican’s first administrative team.

Typically, corporate portraits are a way for people to be remembered in their position of authority. They can choose how they are remembered, something which is not a luxury afforded to many, especially not the builders represented in our exhibition. Archives are an opportunity to meddle with the authority these men had at the time, and why shouldn’t we? By framing alternative portraits of powerful men in the unexpected moments between the official photoshoot, these archival photos invite us to question institutional authority and how we might be able to question and tamper with it retrospectively.

Alternative narratives are hidden even in the most technical documents, it’s just a matter of interpretation. An example of this was one of the more popular pieces in the exhibition, the ‘Lost Property’ report from the Barbican’s first year. This document shows two lists, one of the lost items and one of the casualties and injuries incurred. The first list gives us insight into the Barbican’s clientele, who lose mink coats, diamonds and a wallet holding £542. The other list, shows a high number of injuries, probably incurred by the workers who continued to work in the Centre after the opening. These people shared parallel histories, living two different experiences at the Barbican. Both histories need to be considered to remember a more complete version of the Barbican’s history, even if one story may not be as easily told as the other.

The culmination of our process of reinterpretation was the creative responses that we commissioned from artists from within group and outside it. Through this, we were able to form relationships to the material and reactivate the way it was meaningful to us.

These responses punctuated the exhibition, giving archival material a second life through a contemporary perspective. Photos of the original signs were reframed as beautiful artefacts of photography when displayed next to William Jones’ photographs, newspaper clippings came to life in Stephanie Francis-Shanahan’s dolls and our relationship to the Barbican’s architecture and location were explored through film (Alex Cole, Cosima Cobley Carr, Catarina Rodrigues and George Lyddiatt) and fashion (Cleopatra Thompson).

Alex Cole - 'Locked'

Cosima Cobley Carr - 'Machines for Living In'

Catarina Rodrigues - 'In Between the Lines'

This exhibition and this process of rediscovery only scratched the surface of the narrative potential of the archival collection, as only a few threads of stories were picked to display as examples. This is why our exhibition was not about ‘the workers of the Barbican’ or about ‘the history of the Barbican’ as we have neither the qualifications nor the research to back those topics. Rather, the heart of FORGET ME, NOT was about the implications of remembering the Barbican.

As the archives are processed more stories will emerge and it will not be up to us to decide whether they are forgotten or not, but through this exhibition we have written ourselves into the narrative and demanded to diversify archives and institutional histories. We hope that this is a process that can be continued by archivists and visitors alike. It is crucial that people engage with their past because as an individual, and as a community, there is no guarantee that someone else will choose to remember us in the future.