Introducing the Archive of Nothingness (AON) – a co-curated digital archive and live research project

The Archive of Nothingness (AON) addresses the connections between art and graphic design; their present-day functions and manifestations and their simultaneously disparate yet interlinked histories, as well as discussions around the role, influence and ‘authority’ of archives, archivists, exhibitions and curators. Designed to resemble the adjacent pages of an open book and to act as a ‘mirror’ which presents images and ideas in (questionable, uncertain) parallel(s), it is based around a Tumblr weblog site. With the dual function of contributing to a mass of online visual information; participating in an existing world-wide dialogue, while also functioning self-reflexively and critically, it provides a vehicle for data collection which simultaneously acts as an ongoing and potentially infinite piece of ‘living’ research. Encompassing a set of binaries, the site is at once regulated and organic, static and kinetic, planned and spontaneous, concrete and indeterminate – and intentionally open to interpretation