The Attic Archive in 2005 with part of the DATA (Daily Action Time Archive) collection
photo: Judit Bodor
Curating The Digital Attic Archive: A Case Study for Open-Source Approaches to Artists' Archives
“Developed from a series of oral history interviews and a 2021 workshop, the Royal Society of Edinburgh funded two-year Research Network Award project Curating The Digital Attic Archive: A Case Study for Open-Source Approaches to Artists' Archives will explore the work and legacy of the Attic Archive.
Founded in Dundee, Scotland, by artist Pete Horobin in 1975, the Attic Archive grew out of a self-historicisation project produced by four different identities, each lasting ten years, and reflecting the changing social and cultural conditions of the 1970s-2020s within which the artist operated.
As the archive is now dispersed across Scotland, Hungary and Ireland, the project seeks to bring together archivists and curators from key collections to test the possibility of establishing a shared online, open-source platform as an archival/curatorial space where threads of the Attic Archive can be drawn back to enable future research and dissemination of this continually relevant body of work.
DATA Attic Alphabetic Script Map, June 2020
Produced by Judit Bodor and Ha before and during a series of oral history conversations
The project has two research questions:
- What contemporary curatorial strategies can we develop to assess and establish the international significance of The Attic Archive as a unique but underexplored body of work?
- How can open-source technologies support collaboration to address institutional barriers to accessing and securing the legacy of precarious artists' archives?
Led by Dr Judit Bodor, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee and Dr Roddy Hunter, School of Fine Art, The Glasgow School of Art, this collaborative project will be developed over two years with the artist (Pete Horobin) as consultant and archivists and curators caring for parts of the archive at University of Dundee Archives; National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; Artpool Art Research Center, Budapest, and National Irish Visual Arts Library, Dublin.
Initial network meeting, December 2023. Screenshot: Roddy Hunter.
On 01.01.1980 Pete Horobin commenced a ten-year project called DATA – Daily Action Time Archive.
A significant part of this ten-year archive (eight large cardboard boxes containing all the international mail art / correspondence art of the 1980s along with associated collaborative projects and publications including the original documentation of the 8th and 9th Neoist Apartment Festivals held in London and Ponte Nossa respectively plus DATA sheets, bookworks, audio cassettes, VHS cassettes, photographs and postcards by Pete Horobin) was transferred from the Attic Archive to Artpool in 2010.
The story of the DATA collection's move from Dundee to Budapest, "From A to A - New Directions", can be found here. Pete Horobin was actively involved in arranging the documents and works donated to Artpool and in refining the lists during his visits to Budapest in 2010, 2012 and 2019.
Group photo during the sorting of the DATA collection at Artpool in 2019
(in the picture: György Galántai, Viktor Kotun, Júlia Klaniczay and Peter Haining aka Pete Horobin)
photo by Dóra Halasi