### Shared Ritual

“Traced Work” is a museum established in 2023. This museum invites you into experiences, stories and rituals through proximity (both digital and physical) to the objects that collectively tell our histories. These include my histories, belonging to the person writing this text, and your histories, the person reading it – as well as those of everyone else who participates in making the museum what it is. The objects in the museum include art works and everyday items, as well as books, sounds and spaces. Objects in the broadest sense. 

You are invited to co-write histories told through “Traced Work” by contributing your own object to the collection without it ever leaving your side. 
	
The “Traced Work” digital archive acts as a platform for the stories of our objects to be held and shared – and to be recorded in history. In addition to the online archive, an ongoing series of itinerant physical exhibitions, tours and events encourage bodily closeness outside our heavily digitalised lives.

### Prioritising Context

“Traced Work” prioritises the contexts in which objects exist and the stories that connect one object to another. Every object in our world has a physical and cultural context – these contexts help us to learn from and about these objects. 

In the “Traced Work” archive, records of each object include a context photograph (measuring approx. 1m2 space).

This image is intended to not simply show the object, but to trace an outline of the object in its context. For non-visual objects in the archive, accompanying images can show alternate representations of form and position, for example sound waves of an mp3 file, some sense of space-time positioning, and photos of spaces in which the objects were made. 

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### Decolonising the 
### Museum

As a museum, we embrace modes of display and encounter that allow people to experience realities distant from, but connected to, the present realities we are living in. Expanding our individual horizons and stretching across a sphere of experience and knowledge; learning from each other’s stories and objects.

“Traced Work” will consistently strive to avoid replicating the devastating methods of colonising and hierarchical institutions that ripped objects from their cultural and environmental contexts – and owners – in the name of linear knowledge building and progress, only for the objects to be controlled by elite managers, held in cold storerooms and accessed largely by hyper-privileged audiences. 
	
We can’t continue in this way. We need to think of new ways of experiencing historic objects that keep extractivist and colonial methods in check – and celebrate the care and knowledge of the objects’ owners. This is an intention of “Traced Work”.
	
### New Ways 
### of Classifying

Traced Work does not view material forms in our world as existing in a hierarchy of one object being more precious than another. Monetary association of cultural prestige – the dollar signs accompanying an object – holds no sway in this museum. 

The classification system used to allow navigation through the “Traced Work” digital archive is co-written by everyone who adds a work to the collection. The contributor (you) chooses themes that describe the story of their object, and these themes in turn allow another object to be connected to the collection. The themes also determine what can be searched for in the archive.
	
All you need to do is find an existing point of connection in the archive when adding your own object. A pre-existing theme to start the connection. Through this, we can all trace a bigger story that connects one object to another, and, through this, grow a community of stories.

### History isn’t Fact

In every instance of history writing, it is impossible to draw a clear and reliable distinction between what is fact and what is fiction, since every history is written from one of innumerable perspectives. Our realities are, at the most foundational level, subjective. For centuries, histories taught to new generations of the human species, particularly in the industrialised West, have been histories written by colonisers and elites pertaining to those who are colonised or disenfranchised.

The stories welcomed through “Traced Work” – fact, fiction and everything in-between – try to reveal broad and fluid truths that connect us as individuals, communities and species. Diaphanous strands of historical truth. These stories privilege humble ways of knowing. While a lot of research and intellectual energy goes into tracing the stories of the objects in the “Traced Work” archive, we also promote playfulness and parable in telling these histories. 
	
Importantly, we embrace open dialogue and disagreement, and the learning that comes from connecting our many stories together.

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### Crediting the 
### Maker

Alongside every object, we include a ‘notes’ section to ensure all makers, artists and knowledge-holders are clearly credited in the archive and for any facts or research notes to be included.

### What we
### Mean by “Traced Work”

“Traced Work” takes its name from a patchwork of ideas in our world, starting with how we trace something by following a line of enquiry. To 'trace' is to track the progress of something from one point to another, and perhaps back again. We also trace things by copying them, usually by putting a piece of transparent paper over an existing image and drawing it into its new location. In these two definitions, you can trace something through investigation and through replication. Both of these associations are relevant to the activities of “Traced Work”.

The concept of 'work' sometimes refers to a thing that has been made. We might then refer to works that are held in museums, which have been made by artists or craftspeople, as examples of ‘their best work’. "Traced Work" tries to disrupt this idea by signifying that the works platformed through the digital museum are, in some form, replicas – they are digital copies of objects existing out in the world somewhere. The objects in the collection are not unique works, they are traced works – replicas of unique objects that emphasise the stories held in the objects rather than the rarity of the objects themselves.
	
'Work' also relates to the process undertaken to achieve an outcome, and, quite often, we use this term to mean the effort we carry out to gain the sorts of financial income needed to exist in contemporary society. Work is then tied to capitalist profit – it is effort undertaken which makes profit minus the small fee for my labour in alignment with the priciples of growth economics. 
	
But beyond this income association, could we think of the idea of work as something more expansive and ever-present? Not just the effort we put in to make money – but also the effort we consciously put in when trying to live fulfilling lives and build communities. Could we see work more like it is described by the Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke in a letter to the sculptor Auguste Rodin in 1902: ‘to work is to live without dying’. 

Our work is our lives – the constant effort we put in that deserves to be noticed.


And, just as Kimmerer describes how the gift is multiplied with every giving — with the gift of energy passing from berry to bird, to berry again, so that each may live — so is a story.

Always escaping (animalism)

Ancestral time, relying on memory, establishes continuity between human generations of ancestors and offspring. Mythic time, transmitted in narratives of origin and destiny, establishes continuity through underlying moral, legal, or forensic relations between actions and consequences.

A drop in Ancestral Time

The main function of amulets was to ward off misfortune, "evil eye", and the jinn. They were meant to promote health, longevity, fertility, and potency. Despite regional variations, what unites these objects is that they are characterized by the use of particular and distinctive vocabulary of writings and symbols.

Amulet of Necessity

In ancient Greek mythology, Hercules fought the multi-headed, snake-like hydra. Although Hercules ultimately prevailed, the battle seemed hopeless at first. Each time one of the beasts’ heads was severed, two heads would replace the lost one. Recently, reality become eerily similar to the myth of the hydra when a regenerating planarian flatworm (D. japonica) sent to space returned to Earth with two heads.

Two-headed flatworm from outer space

In 1772 the Transverse Mercator was revealed. While mathematically still a Cylindrical projection the positions on the earth are projected onto a cylinder tangent to a meridian. Refer Figure 2. Now distances are true only along the central meridian selected by the mapmaker or else along two lines parallel to it, but all distances, directions, shapes, and areas are reasonably accurate within 15° of the central meridian. Distortion of distances, directions, and size of areas increases rapidly outside the 15° band. Because the map is conformal, however, shapes and angles within any small area are essentially true. The Equator is straight line with other parallels complex curves concave toward nearest pole. The Central meridian and each meridian 90° from it are straight. Other meridians are complex curves concave toward central meridian. By selecting central meridians at suitable intervals and keeping well within the ±15° limitation each side of the selected central meridians, large areas can be mapped with minimal distortion.

Mercator is/n’t Transversal

It is unclear when the Doagh Holestone began its role as the regional connubial helper. Unlike two other perforated stones in Co. Antrim, this monument, likely from the Bronze Age, has not been “Christianized” by the addition of an inscribed cross.

Deep time is Circular

In 2012, politician and buisnessman, Peter Costello - a true patriot - took a part-time job as a state enforcer for the celebrated food company, Arnott's Biscuit Holdings PTY Limited. 

In this role, Costello was charged with visiting small corner shops in Victoria (including metropolitan Melbourne and regional town centres) and ensuring, with some use of initimation tactics, that shop owners continued to stock the majority range of Arnott's biscuits, for the good of the nation.

While this part-time job wasn't heavily resourced or well paid, fans of Costello and his work used the Situationist International (SI) technique of *détournement* to reimagine existing political prints and posters of Costello to honour his Great Biscuit Effort for Australia.

This photo shows one such hijacked poster, which was prominently displayed in a shared PhD office at the University of Melbourne from 2012 to 2014.



Peter Costello Enforcer

A momento to fallen leaves that dropped into wet concrete. A concave mould that might last, as part of the pavement, for 100 years.

Death mask for fallen leaves

Times of Lore is a 1988 action role-playing game that was developed and published by Origin Systems for several platforms, including PC, Commodore 64/128, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Apple II, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Amiga.

They call it “Lore”

As I am hoping will become clear, Capitalism has a unique relation to the Desert, the Animist, and the Virus insofar as Capitalism sees all things as having the potential to create profit; that is, nothing is inherently inert, everything is vital from the point of view of capitalization, and anything can become something more with the right innovative angle (a form of alchemy). Indeed, capitalists can be said to be the purest of the Animists. This said, industrial capital depends on and, along with states, vigorously polices the separations between forms of existence so that certain kinds of existents can be subjected to different kinds of extractions.

In Left or Right I Cannot Trust

Balancing Dietaries is Tough

Our instinct to represent ourselves in the world ensures a record remains that we were here after we're gone. 

It is uncertain if this face in the wall is a portrait of someone in particular, a smile to make people smile, or a dormant portal that might allow someone to move through spacetime. It is perhaps a combination of all three.

The phrase 'deep time' first started to emerge in the 1980s, popularised by the writer John McPhee author of the book *Basin and Range* (1982). McPhee writes 'The human consciosness ... has retained the essence of its animal sense of time. People think in five generations -- two ahead, two behind -- with heavy concentration on the one in the middle. Possibly this is tragic, and possibly there is no choice. The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time.' (1982, p. 93).

Without doubt, this is a cynical estimation of human consciousness. And seems to neglect spiritual practices of being in the world, particularly those kept alive for 65,000 years and counting on the continent known today as Australia.

But we can sympathise with McPhee's statement when we think of the smallness of our own human lives compared to the age of planet Earth, which we tend to study through the concept of deep time. 4.54 billion years is a lot more than 80 years. How might we more commonly connect the two sets of numbers to help us to smile more?

Deep Time Smiles Back

Cuneiform is one of the oldest forms of writing known. It means "wedge-shaped," because people wrote it using a reed stylus cut to make a wedge-shaped mark on a clay tablet. Letters enclosed in clay envelopes, as well as works of literature, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh have been found.

Colophonic Spree

Despite her being in the ongoing care of extraordinary hospice workers and of my brother (who lives an EasyJet ride away from her London flat), my mother was accompanied by no familiar presence at the time of her death other than her ex-husband’s—my estranged father, the Englishman—who happened to be visiting that day. She was, however, listening while she died to a video recording of my brother and me, singing in harmony: “Don’t you dare look out your window / Darling, everything is on fire / The war outside your door keeps raging on.” A toy lobster I had brought for her earlier in the year lay on the pillow next to her head.

Time to Return to the Source

a space plunged in darkness in which lengths of elastic string covered in a phosphorescent paint were illuminated with ultraviolet light. These strings formed a grid pattern whose right-angled shapes were regularly distorted by two motors. For anyone experiencing Spazio elastico, the geometric regularity of the grid became a kind of spiderweb. Like a trap, it imprisoned viewers’ bodies and minds in a network of light whose lines were endlessly rearticulated and elastically reshaped.

Spazio Elastico

Installation View

Nan Madol is an archaeological site adjacent to the eastern shore of the island of Pohnpei, now part of the Madolenihmw district of Pohnpei state in the Federated States of Micronesia in the western Pacific Ocean. Nan Madol was the capital of the Saudeleur dynasty until about 1628. The city, constructed in a lagoon, consists of a series of small artificial islands linked by a network of canals. The site core with its stone walls encloses an area approximately 1.5 by 0.5 kilometres (0.93 mi × 0.31 mi) and it contains 92 artificial islets—stone and coral fill platforms—bordered by tidal canals.

The name Nan Madol means "within the intervals" and is a reference to the canals that crisscross the ruins. The original name was Soun Nan-leng, "Reef of Heaven," according to Gene Ashby in his book Pohnpei, An Island Argosy. It is often called the "eighth wonder of the world," or the "Venice of the Pacific".

Unknown Basalt

Is this object home? It is not a picture of Earth, let's start with that.

This is an image of an enormous object in the asteroid belt that was represented, as seen here, in visual form in 2010 using data from the Hubble Space Telescope. The object is about the size of the state of Arizona (making it the second largest asteroid) and moves at a speed of around 19 km per second. It is thought to be one of the first objects to form after the creation of our solar system around 4.6 billion years ago, and it seems to have remained largely unaged since that time, although battered slightly from collisions (detritus from which has been found on earth and is available to purchase on Etsy).

Using the same data that made this image, a sound representation of the asteroid shows that its sonic qualities are remarkably similar to the repeating sound discovered in Room 1 of the St Georges Motor Inn in 2022. Is it possible that the print on the wall in Room 1 was briefly triggered as a portal in spacetime, through which a sound travelled along with the grief objects, before becoming stuck in the room?

Many years ago, this massive space object was given a name by a human, the first human to identify the object using scientific methods and technologies. The human named this object Vesta, after the Roman goddess of the home. Can you think of anything less cosy and domestic than this hulking piece of cosmic rock hurtling through space, banging into other objects with fury and force? Or, if not fury, simply heaps and heaps of force. 

But then, maybe this object is our home – since it shows the matter we have all come from, the matter from which Earth was also born.

When trying to understand what home even means (and what our relationship to the asteroid Vesta is from our position on Earth), we might draw a little, even passing, inspiration from this description by John Berger: 

> Home was the center of the world because it was the place where a vertical line crossed with a horizontal one. The vertical line was a path leading upwards to the sky and downwards to the underworld. The horizontal line represented the traffic of the world, all the possible roads leading across the earth to other places. Thus, at home, one was nearest to the gods in the sky and to the dead of the underworld. This nearness promised access to both. And at the same time, one was at the starting point and, hopefully, the returning point of all terrestrial journeys.

Vesta/Home

On 12 February 2023, a sound appeared in Room 1 of the St Georges Motor Inn in Naarm – no one has been able to find the source of the sound or remove it from the space. Apart from occasional and brief pauses, the sound has played continuously since it appeared. Is the sound a memory of something? Or could it be a connecting thread to somewhere and sometime else? While no consensus has been reached around its origin or meaning, Traced Work has noted that exposure to this repeated rhythm has been shown to affect the mood and attention of people who encounter it.

Sound in the room

Talking with staff at the St Georges Motor Inn, it seems that this print has hung in Room 1 since around 2005. The muted tones of the scene and the flow of forms, representing energy, in the landscape signal that this work may be the initial space-time position around which the other grief works now in the room were collected. The precise area of the portal, perhaps.

Print in the room

This is perhaps the most incomprehensible of the objects discovered in Room 1, although some meaning has been extrapolated in relation to the artefacts around it. 

It is proposed that this human-like form mimics cyclical life and/or a continuation of conscious particles after death. A flow of energy can be traced in the object beginning with the wooden sculpture of a hand containing soil, from which gold thread emerges, followed by cotton thread, followed by draped cotton which appears to move away from the soil and into the bathroom. The mannequin under the cotton sheet dates from the early 20th century and comes from England, but is stuffed with straw which has been traced to a particular field outside Tournai in Belgium and thought to have been harvested in the early 15th century. 

Is there perhaps a connection with Rogier van der Weyden, the artist who painted Descent from the Cross, who was born in Tournai around 1400? Whether there is a possible link is the work of ongoing research, but it can be assumed that – drawing on its relational positioning alongside other grief objects in the room – this composite form exists to query a sense of the strict finality in death. Perhaps it is leading us to think about what emerges from the soil?


What death/life might look like

This object was found in Room 1 on the pine table, precariously balanced. A sturdy plinth was made so visitor wouldn’t knock it over while admiring it. 

In 15th-century France, Antoine le Moiturier (1425-95) was tasked with completing the tomb of the *prince du sang* (‘prince of the blood’) John the Fealess, who commissioned his own tomb nine years before he was assassinated by companions of the Dauphin of France in 1419. In his design for the tomb, le Moiturier drew on earlier designs by Spanish sculptor Juan de la Huerta but made some adjustments. Included in the slightly odd additions le Moiturier contributed is thought to be this sculpture showing several mourners imaged in one form, each one draped and folded into one, universal, sad figure. The crown on the head of the figure and the decoration on the top part of the plinth set this sculpture apart from other mourning figures made for John the Fearless’ tomb; the patterned holes in the copper resemble circuit board materials and are suggestive of twenty-first century technology.

A journal entry by the sculptor reveals the source inspiration for this future mourning figure:

> “I saw these people in a dream, they live 600 years from now. They are sad that their friend’s amulet is now cold. It used to light up and generate heat, and their friend used it to contact them – but the hot energy couldn’t work in the afterlife and that’s where their friend went. So, they are mourning the fact that the amulet is dead, and that time has passed.”

Later in the journal, the sculptor writes, “When I woke up, I realised that the amulet is like the marble tomb I am sculpting for John the Fearless. Possessing a mundane function, but also a talisman against fear and mortality, a distraction from fear. And, after all the exertion is spent, just another object left on the earth.”

Mourners in one

This object was found on the coffee table in Room 1. A plinth was subsequently made for it so it would seem less discarded because plinths have that effect on objects. In September 2008, HTC released the first Android operating system smartphone. They called it Dream. Was this the moment when homo sapiens became irrevocably part-digital? 

When the owner of this phone died in 2008, the messages they received were left unread and not cared about, and their community sealed the charging point of the phone forever. The community then, it is reported, cried a river of tears.

HTC Dream with ritually sealed charging point

This is a torn-out extract of the first instance of grief tears depicted in art by Flemish artist Rogier Van Der Weyden (1399 or 1400–1464) in his painting *Descent From The Cross* (c. 1435).

This detail of the painting was cut out of the canvas in an act of reverential vandalism in July 1822. It was subsequently replaced with a new piece of painted canvas and this stolen section has remained in the possession of the vandal's family ever since, although the family noted that it went missing some years ago. After conducting biographical research, Traced Work has been able to ascertain that one of the vandal's descendants owned an HTC Deam smartphone; however, said descendant died in 2008 and their Dream was thrown in the bin, unlike the Dream found in Room 1 which was ritually sealed to prevent future battery charging. 


First Tears (a painted piece of canvas c. 1435)

Mineral traces on the surface of this object indicate that these fossilised remains of human emotional tears were dug up in northern Scotland sometime prior to 1945. Through mention in certain historic records, it is thought they were left in that location in the Middle Ages by a group of pilgrims and alchemists who were trying to produce the elixir of life by mixing grief tears with peat. The human-geological object was thought to be pure myth until this rediscovery in Naarm in 2023.

Homo Sapiens are currently thought to be the only animals to cry for emotional reasons, a perplexing fact that actually turns out to be fact. The composition of emotional tears is different from that of the other two categories of tears, basal tears and reflex tears. Emotional or psychic tears contain additional protein-based hormones, which is why fossilisation or ‘vitrification’, under certain conditions, is able to occur.


Traced Work

“An Object”