Abstract:
Punks collecting things other than safety pins and STDs? Jon Bywater looks at the tendency among Punk enthusiasts to compile catalogues and measure their contents in this month's Mute Music Column ...the most distinguished trait of a collection will always be its transmissibility. You should know that in saying this I fully realize that my discussion of the mental climate of collecting will confirm many of you in your conviction that this passion is behind the times, in your distrust of the collector type. Nothing is further from my mind than to shake either your conviction or your distrust. - Walter Benjamin: ‘Unpacking my Library: A Talk about Book Collecting,' 1931 Effective democratization can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation. - Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz, 1995