Deep History, Deepening Collaborations

48 The Virtual Record Treasury offers up treasures like this everywhere I look. I find the physical body to be much more present than I thought. I find it easy to pinpoint its exact location within a historical timeline. It’s as if the hierarchy has shifted and the archive has become more democratic in its digitized form. Finding the fragment of a fine among the salvaged records made me think of how seemingly insignificant things hold meaning and value, and how small our lives are in this vast cosmos. Think about how, when someone leaves this world, they take their past with them and how meanings associated with particular objects change when viewed through other lenses: Whose fine? For what? Customs and Tolls is a reference book from 1830 which lists all goods being sold at fairs throughout Ireland and the dutiable payments owed by sellers at each market. The lines in this book are like poetry to me, I speak the lists aloud and in my ears picture after picture of lives lived are conjured up. Every search, each word, becomes a feeling, sense or emotion. Like ‘snow’ or ‘damp’. They help me build a series of moving images and sounds, segments that tell a different kind of story from the archival material present in the Virtual Record Treasury. In the spirit of this newfound non-hierarchical approach to digging around through slices of time, material flows through my film timeline to create a meditation on lost things now found. What may have seemed unimportant now holds a significance that can give me access to another time. As I continue to collect material for my forthcoming film, I hope I will also inspire others to look closely at these and other riches and treasures. As I search through time I find that people’s stories within the digital archive help me redefine our past and understand more clearly how I can evaluate what is valuable, just in the nick of time. Above: Fragment of a fine from the PROI fire of 1922 © National Archives, Ireland.