An evening of shar­ing prac­tice meth­ods and method­olo­gies of the Heavy Water Col­lec­tive at the Graves Gallery. Explor­ing Heavy Water Col­lec­tive items dis­played with­in the vit­rine, embed­ded with POst­Na­tures, curat­ed by Vic­to­ria Lucas: 

“With­in the vit­rine, Maud Haya-Baviera, Vic­to­ria Lucas and Joan­na Whit­tle’s artis­tic respons­es to items found in Cardiff Uni­ver­si­ty Spe­cial Col­lec­tions are posi­tioned along­side objects relat­ing to the his­to­ries found in Sheffield Gen­er­al Ceme­tery. The web­site devised with Stu­dio AW_AR builds on this process of reassem­bling and con­nect­ing, cre­at­ing an order­ing sys­tem based on the geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion of the objects dis­cov­ered rather than rely­ing on the clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tems in which they are indi­vid­u­al­ly embed­ded. Through these geo­graph­i­cal mark­ers, we are able to read the his­to­ries of the land through the com­ing togeth­er of objects and texts, grave­stones and sym­bols. The his­to­ry of a site in this sense is read as an archive of that place, and vice ver­sa. Through locat­ing mate­r­i­al his­to­ries, the Heavy Water Col­lec­tive embed them­selves con­cep­tu­al­ly in the British land­scape.” (Vic­to­ria Lucas) 

“Our col­lec­tive is dis­rupt­ing tra­di­tion­al archival mod­els and cre­ates new trans­ferrable method­ol­o­gy for curat­ing exhi­bi­tions and ways of engag­ing with both archives and col­lec­tions. The out­comes of our research are locat­ed on our web­site, which works as an online archive for our research projects. This mate­r­i­al is open to pub­lic access, and is an edu­ca­tion­al and dis­sem­i­na­tion tool we have used dur­ing pub­lic engage­ment events and work­shops. Our web­site is also a tool enabling us, archives and col­lec­tions to reimag­ine and re-think what archives’ data­bas­es and search engines might look like.” (Maud Haya- Baviera) 

” This dig­i­tal archive is pop­u­lat­ed by details of research sites; research meth­ods and method­olo­gies and the arte­facts and art­works them­selves. These are cat­e­gorised with Acces­sion Num­bers relat­ing to sites, cre­ators and the col­lec­tions with­in which they reside. This cat­e­gori­sa­tion allows the arte­facts to exist phys­i­cal­ly, dig­i­tal­ly and con­cep­tu­al­ly. The archive also posits each site and arte­fact geo­graph­i­cal­ly through active map­ping show­ing the inter­re­la­tions between site, research and object. This map, along­side archival items, will con­tin­ue to be pop­u­lat­ed, grow­ing con­nec­tions between future and cur­rent active sites of research. The dig­i­tal archive is live and acces­si­ble as an active resource rather than as a pre­sen­ta­tion of accom­plish­ments which only serve to mark an end point.” (Joan­na Whittle)