THE POWER OF LOSING CONTROL: DECONSTRUCTING ELFRETH’S ALLEY DOCUMENTARY ARCHIVE-BASED AESTHETICS USING IMAGE-MAKING EXPERIMENTATIONS

Abstract

The power of losing control: Deconstructing Elfreth’s Alley documentary archive-based aesthetics using image-making experimentation is an interdisciplinary and multimodal media dissertation based on the experience of collecting, transforming, and validating archival information that is the foundation of history: its creation, interpretation, and recording. This research includes a manuscript or monograph, a series of lectures about the investigation, a physical multimedia exhibit of modified archival material from the Alley, and the publication of a creative journal that involves the processes and results of the exhibit in Elfreth’s Alley Museum. Observers have built most public records based on what is present and absent in the assemblage of documents, images, and found objects in particular settings. An example of these processes is the record of traditional and historical sites like Elfreth's Alley in Philadelphia, PA. This Alley is a traditional historical residential street considered a National Historic Landmark for its structures built between 1720 and 1830. This street has been home to everyday Philadelphians for three centuries, and its museum celebrates the working class of America who helped build the country through sweat and commerce. The Alley is still a thriving residential community that is home to artists and artisans, educators, entrepreneurs, and everything in between. While this research starts in this neighborhood, it explores connections that can take us across the city, the nation, and around the globe. In this dissertation, the record of the Alley life has been deconstructed to expose the understanding and perception of personal narratives that offer alternative views of collective memory and public history. The processes and results that deconstruct Elfreth’s Alley archival documentation have been used to analyze and question ideas of presence and absence of ethnic groups, the exercise of power and control, patterns of privilege assigned to race, gender and ethnicity, as well as concerns of domestic and child labor, environment, gentrification, and social networks, offering a rich description of the Alley. The methodology of this work, through its five chapters, is based on the study of analog experimental photographic processes and digital Artificial Intelligence (AI) new media creations with uncontrolled and unpredictable results, their relationship with archival studies from the Alley, and the impact of new contemporary archival creations in the construction of public history and collective memory. These mechanisms were applied to documents, archival and found materials (taken from different sources around the city and the nation) in various experimental artworks. The objects created for the exhibit and the analysis of these archives use pinhole cameras, expired paper, lumen prints and cyanolumens, panoramas with polaroids and chemigrams, stereoscopes and anaglyphs, augmented reality, and AI-algorithmic editions, as well as the existent sources and interdisciplinary collaborative work of the historians and museum professionals of the Alley. The multiple intellectual, theoretical, and creative layers involved in this work build a different record of the Alley. The artworks prepared in this study are a contemporary archival record of the interaction with the community and scholars of this historical place. This interaction, collaborative work, open access to the public, and reflections —consequences from this experimental artistic-creative process— constitute an academic record that expands the studies of historians, ethnographers, and academics, and contribute to an exhaustive analysis in the construction of public history and the collective memory of the city.