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Please join us on Monday, February 21, 2005 from 5:00-6:30pm for a public screening of "in which the thinking man finds himself in a gigantic orphanage (where people are continually proving to him that he has no parents" (DV, 2004) with remarks to follow by Aaron Levy on the making of the film and curating the associated exhibition. Please note that this event will take place in the Class of '55 room on the 2nd floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library (Locust Walk between 34th and 36th Streets), and not at Slought Foundation or with the exhibit on the 6th floor. This special screening has been organized in conjunction with "The Revolt of the Bees, Wherein the Future of the Paper Hive is declared," a concurrent exhibition at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library that proposes a new culture of memory and archiving in the true spirit of the beehive. More information on the exhibition, which includes a version of the film in miniature, as well as information on hours and access to the exhibit, is available here: http://slought.org/content/11258/
“in which the thinking man finds himself in a gigantic orphanage” [24 min, 2004] is a Slought Foundation production in video format that explores the archive in disarray from the perspective of a man lamenting his orphan status, material accumulation, and senility (shot on location in historic Founder's Hall at Girard College, with a monologue read by Gary Indiana).
The video documents a romantically degraded library and the monumental staircases that surround it, and explores the idea of a collection in demise at a vulnerable and destructive moment in its history. Monumental staircases in a magnificent Greek Revival structure of the 19th century (Founder's Hall) lead to a room that houses unconventional archival material such as nineteenth century laundry and food receipts for the construction of the building, heating repairs, utility invoices, bank ledgers, and visitation logs. This material culture exists in a state of haphazard accumulation and romantic degradation that is startling in juxtaposition with the building’s architectural splendor. The video invites its audience to imaginatively recreate and reconfigure the history of this archival site and its everyday documents through contemporary practice. The voiceover by artist and critic Gary Indiana has been adapted from Thomas Bernhard’s Gargoyles (English trans. 1970). The monologue has been made available above as a free online download (PDF). (More information on the video is available here)
Aaron Levy is the Executive Director of and a Senior Curator at Slought Foundation. In 2004 he edited, with Eduardo Cadava, Cities Without Citizens, with contributions by Gayatri Spivak, Arakawa+Gins, and Giorgio Agamben (co-published with the Rosenbach Museum and Library, on the occasion of his 2003 exhibition at the Rosenbach Museum engaging the Early American city in the archive). Forthcoming in 2005 is "William Anastasi's Pataphysical Society: Jarry, Joyce, Duchamp, and Cage," with contributions by Thomas McEvilley and Joseph Masheck, among others, co-edited with Jean-Michel Rabate.
MLA Style:
Aaron Levy. "in which the thinking man finds himself in a gigantic orphanage...." Slought Foundation Online Content. [21 February 2005;
Accessed 4 July 2009]. <http://slought.org/content/11283/>.
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