The installation was assembled from Karsten Bott’s ‘Archive of Contemporary Life’ - a vast collection of everyday objects that the artist has collected and catalogued for the past 20 years.
Bott was in part motivated to start his archive because he felt museums failed to represent the lives of ordinary people. His installation created a ‘museum within a museum’ – a weird and exaggerated social history museum embedded within the historic collections of Norwich Castle.
Bott loves collecting, storing, exhibiting, and scientifically classifying objects.
How he determines the placement of objects with companion pieces is an intricate process.
Bott creates huge computer databases with categorical headings such as: Occupations, Death, Festival/Customs, and Household Pets.
A knife could end up in the Death or in the Kitchen category.
Bott spends a great amount of time inputting data on each object with links and cross-references.
Even though he assigns storage and placement categories, his exhibited items have no labels so that the viewer may freely associate with the objects.
He tries to create a link with people's personal histories through his collection.
“I put a structure on the collection of my archive that defines things other than alphabetically, ... I am humanizing these things. It's like a giant polka.”Karsten Bott quoted.
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