Keaton Fox is a multidisciplinary artist who uses art and technology to reflect the digital disarray of the modern world.Fueled by child-like fascination and frustrations, Fox combines the natural with the virtual to create visual experiments that playfully explore the varied realities of our time. She has exhibited nationally, internationally, physically, and digitally.
The Duotang Series
These photos were created in an attempt to understand the archival techniques of humans from the past, present, and future.
I Googled the word “archive” and downloaded all of the images that were in the section titled “Labeled for Reuse”.
It was an odd collection with a strange amount of images of Vladimir Putin, mixed with lots of images of library hallways (which always end up looking like vaginas to me), and a fair amount of medical and architectural imagery from seemingly ancient eras.
The idea that some of this significant imagery was available for “reuse” was eerie. It made me think about all the ways in which I have documented my existence and whether my archives would end up being labeled for reuse. Where do our images go when we die? Will they be recycled for reuse on the Internet? Or will they never be seen by anyone else ever again? Which is worse? I’m always fretting about my archives, thinking about how many hard drives I would be able to run with if my apartment were to catch on fire.
There were barely any images of happy times in this collection, but that isn’t surprising.
Humans have a peculiar tendency to document more tragedy than happiness.
This new archive I had created out of recyclable images was interesting but everything felt disconnected.
The pictures of houses and boats and presidents and plants didn’t speak to one another in the way I had hoped they would, so I layered them.
It was mostly random, throwing one batch on top of the other to see if anything would happen. Surprisingly, something did happen.
A photograph would land on top of a drawing and suddenly there was a story. Timelines started to form out of the absurdities.
I could see pen turn to type turn to pixels. I could see protests and wars and fights that led to freedom. Our advancements and our mistakes and our history became clearer the more the images were muddled together. The images I present to you now are visual representations of this experiment.
These are collages of happenstance, made relatable by randomness.
These archives are not historically accurate, but neither is history.
Archives should be interesting, not factual.
This is an ode to that.
To view more of Keaton Fox’s work please visit her website.