Archive City

If you get a chance, you should really pop into the Archive City Show at the Richmond Art Gallery. Details are on the Rag's website and Loiszing's blog.

17 July – 31 August, 2008

"Richmond Art Gallery is pleased to host a project by Archive City, “a memory collection agency” composed of three Vancouver based artists, Lois Klassen, Cindy Mochizuki and Jaimie Robson."

I saw the show on Saturday when the trio of artist archivists were giving memory seminars with members of the audience. The artists have interviewed a number of people in Richmond and collected their stories and memories. Instead of documenting the interviews on film or DAT, the artists created intuitive responses to the stories. The first part of the show is a series of nummbered boxes containing miniature dioramas. Each box coincides with a file card and a folder where you can get a glimpse into the process by reading notes by the interviewers and quotes from the people they interviewed.

The show also presents ephemera collected from the process, including this lovely Victory Gardens poster reminiscent of the time Richmond truly was a Garden City.



For the first workshop, Lois Klassen invited me to complete a sentence about Richmond. I wrote the text down using an old fashioned nibbed pen.

Next, I was to paint the image projected above with ink and tea, allowing myself to interpret it according to my memory.

Then Lois showed me how to layer the text onto the image. Some of the other audience member's results were beautiful.


Jaimie Robson led an exercise on triggering memories with fragrance.


Blindfolded, I was asked to smell a series of three different scents. The first two were very subtle and I kept getting a whiff of something floral. The third fragrance was very spicy.

Next, I was asked to choose the scent I liked best, make a blind contour drawing on a transparency, then write one sentence about a memory triggered by the scent. I chose the spicy scent, redolent of cardamom and cloves. It reminded me of making chai spice gingerbread at Christmas.

Okay folks, now we head to the material that should appear in every archival wunderkammer IMO. Chocolate! Here we were invited to taste homemade truffles by Cindy Mochizuki inspired by the stories of Lulu Island.

We were invited to draw a memory inspired by the chocolate. My truffle was flavored with orange peel, and once again it reminded me of Christmas. We were given the number which corresponded with the original story that had inspired the making of the truffle.




For the rest of the day I was aware of how sensory experiences enrich memory. I stopped often to savor the day and drink in the beauty of what I saw, tasted, and touched. I hope to stop by the show again so I can delve into the whimsical archives a second time and enjoy the layered experience it provides to the viewer.

Congratulations on a great show, Archive City!