Revised project idea: The dispersal of the fonds

OK, scratch my convoluted homage to Chris Marker. I have a rather different idea now — it is not yet formed, but I feel I should write it down before it evaporates. It originally began as a mail art concept, but evolved after I did some mental postage calculations and realized it wouldn’t be feasible to spend $300 on a project, especially since I am saving all my money for rolls of Ektachrome 64 (see below). Anyway, I was thinking about Vid’s discussion of library interventions, and it occurred to me that it would be interesting to take this consolidated, but only questionably coherent “Ingelevics fonds” of 100 images and disperse it among books in the university library system. I would assign each photograph a keyword and number, then print them in colour, with keyword and number on the reverse. A brief note on the back of each photograph would note that the photograph in question belongs to the Ingelevics fonds located at such-and-such an address (I have a few ideas for which address, but be reassured, I want to take pains to avoid making any trouble for anybody). I would search the library catalogue for books with identical keywords, and place the photos in like-tagged books. I would probably copy the book cover also as record, thereby compiling a parallel archive that records systematically the physical dispersion of the fonds (thereby, in a sense, preserving the fonds while dispersing it). It would interesting to see if the fonds gradually crept back home through inter-departmental postage as librarians identified the photos and sent them back to their “rightful” owner. Of course, this could take years, and would never be fully realized, but it could be expedited in various ways (for instance, by enclosing them in envelopes identifying their archival provenance). This is the germ or the kernel of an idea, but I think it might have legs. Essentially, this would play with a notion that fonds are organic units and might possess a magnetic, unconscious force within them that seeks to return home — to stay identified with the personality that collected them and gave them collective meaning. I could get extra mischievous and disperse these through several public and university libraries, but I will first weigh the consequences carefully. The magnetic fonds…