experiments in cataloging

While I have always been interested in language, it wasn't until graduate school that I really began investigating the ways in which language can function beyond explicit communication. language, in a more abstract sense, functions to organize our perceptions and our understanding of the world. This project was an exploration of the place of overlap between physical space, categorization, and language.

(above: exhibition poster featuring color-coded indexing stickers)

In the spring of 2009, I began a project in which I tried to catalogue all of my possessions. I devised an indexing system in which each of my objects received a color-coded sticker based on its general location - my studio, my apartment, in storage at my mother's house, or in one of my "transient spaces" (car, purse, book bag, etc.). The colored stickers were sequentially numbered utilizing a dewey-decimal-like system which also referred each object back to its specific location within a corresponding inventory log. After cataloging nearly 2200 individual objects, I created a taxonomy. The taxonomic system was somewhat nonsensical and, through ridiculous categories like "non-squishable clothing," sought to disrupt the natural order consequent of my subconscious, entropic design.

The project culminated in an exhibition of the inventory catalogue, taxonomic flow-chart, and taxonomic diagrams for a selection of individual items. (In future iterations of this or similar work, I would present the labeled objects, or photographs of the objects, to provide further visual interest.)