A Taste of the Archive

A Taste of the Archive is a practice-led research output developed as part of my doctoral project, Queering the Home Movie. Created during an RMIT/ACMI X residency and presented to ACMI staff as an introduction to the project, the short, silent compilation offers a visual encounter with the blended family archive at its core. A collection spanning five generations, multiple locations, and media formats, from analogue film and video to born-digital GoPro and mobile phone footage.Structured in loose chronology, the sequence foregrounds everyday moments of domestic life, highlighting the repetitions, emotional textures, and evolving dynamics of amateur filmmaking. It traces shifts in authorship, technology, and social context, while distinctly Australian signifiers—such as the Sydney Opera House under construction, a 1970s tram, and summer beach holidays—situate the footage within national and historical frameworks.The absence of a soundtrack enabled me to narrate the work live, guiding audiences through the material while reflecting on the creative, ethical, and methodological decisions involved in its construction. More than a compilation, the work is a meditation on the labour of building a domestic archive and my dual role as filmmaker and archivist—actively shaping meaning while attuned to the archive’s silences and omissions.By assembling and cataloguing this material outside formal institutional systems, A Taste of the Archive draws attention to the familial processes of preservation, inheritance, and loss that have governed the survival of home movies throughout the twentieth century. As such, the work contributes to broader conversations in archival studies on the interpretive agency of the archivist, the affective labour of personal memory work, and the potential of creative practice to surface marginal or overlooked cultural histories.