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Sex'n'database: A Corporeal Taxonomy

Paula Roush

During a residency at the Arab Image Foundation I looked at several photographic collections that, in different ways, reflect the city of Beirut and its links to both the Arab and international photo-visual culture.

During a residency at the Arab Image Foundation I looked at several photographic collections that, in different ways, reflect the city of Beirut and its links to both the Arab and international photo-visual culture. This initial artistic research resulted in several photobooks that were published by Beirut-based PlanBey publisher, and an accompanying exhibition at their Makan Gallery (September 2015). This installation, titled Torn Folded Curled, reflected the impact of the civil war in some of the collections that came to the Foundation already damaged - photographic materials rescued from heavily bombed sites around Beirut and Lebanon.

In contrast to this kind of dusty paper-based materiality, I also became interested in the Foundation’s online database, both the textual taxonomy and its digitised photographs. Opening myself to chance, I let myself be guided by the intention to find something sleazy or sexy - photographic material with a twist… that might be troubling the archive. I typed in the database search fields the word ‘sexuality’ and found no sexuality in the archive, but found ‘sex’, as well as ‘body’, ‘nudity’, ‘breast’, ‘leg’, ‘bedroom’… Overwhelmed by the joy of corporeal indexicality, they are already digital archaeology. They are a testimony to an out-dated bureaucratic classification system of French colonial legacy, soon to disappear under the auspices of a new open access database to be implemented at the Arab Image Foundation.

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© Paula Roush
© Paula Roush
© Paula Roush
© Paula Roush
© Paula Roush
© Paula Roush
© Paula Roush
© Paula Roush
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Paula Roush

Paula Roush

Portugal

Born in Lisbon, paula roush lives in London where she is an artist and lecturer at the London South Bank University. Her photography and photobookworks investigate memory through an-archival practices of gleaning and autofiction. Long-term projects include 'The past persists in the present in the form of a dream (participatory architectures, archive and revolution)' an installation and publication excavating traces of the Portuguese movement of people’s architecture, presented the Paradigm Store exhibition, commissioned by HS Projects for 5 Howick Place, London. Another long-term project is the Found Photo Foundation, a collection of orphan photography, presented in the exhibition 'Dear Aby Warburg, What can be done with images?' at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Germany. Her chapter 'Chaos of memories- Surviving archives and the ruins of history according to the found photo foundation' from this project was published in Knape, G., Östlind, N. and Wolthers, L. (eds.) 'Order and Collapse: The lives of archives' (Art&Theory).

Paula is the founder of msdm, an artist-run micro- publishing studio that utilises DYI printing and manufacturing methods to produce photography exhibitions, photobookworks and limited editions. The studio-gallery is now based at UN8 in a 1982 warehouse and former print workshop by the Bow Locks/ River Lea (East London).

http://www.msdm.org.uk/

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      Rohan Thapa
    • The Lost Chapter: Nampula 1963
      Délio Jasse
    • The Fist Photos: On the Polysemy of the Fist
      Francesca Seravalle
    • The Cage: Visualising the Housing Dysfunction
      IC Visual Lab
    • Archivo Muerto
      Andres Orjuela
    • Lange Liste 79-97
      Christian Lange
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    Jerry Spagnoli
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    Amak Mahmoodian
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    Thomas Sauvin with Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt
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    Rohan Thapa
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    Délio Jasse
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    Francesca Seravalle
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    IC Visual Lab
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    Andres Orjuela
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    Christian Lange
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