"A Place to Remember" is a Goodenough College archival activation initiative that aims to showcase the communal living, academic endeavours, archival resources, cultural encounters, and revolutionary ideas of Goodenough College members. The project's goal is to foster global connections and address transnational agendas by exploring the interconnections between various events, individuals, issues, and artefacts. Through this, it seeks to examine contemporary challenges from diverse perspectives, leveraging the history within the archive to support responses to current events. The initiative also strives to address members' queries, broaden perspectives, ignite imagination, and uncover political
possibilities inherent in the college's archive.
possibilities inherent in the college's archive.
Commensality inaugurates A Place to Remember by Goodenough College and GCA members, focusing on the practice of communal dining as a framework for sharing cultural and social experiences beneficial to members and the wider college community. This exploration of community living delves into past and present interactions, addressing local and global struggles. The exhibition emphasises the significance of communal living while acknowledging its concerns, reference points, and principles. It reveals a concealed educational program within Goodenough, emphasising the strength derived from mutual support in community events. Additionally, it broadens the perspective on education beyond seminars, highlighting the robust support within the community.
The exhibition features a juxtaposition of in-house and external publications from the Library's collection alongside diverse archival material from GCA, offering a translation of various moments in time. Each moment intentionally forges subtle connections between ideas, food, people, celebration, commemoration, and, most importantly, communal living. Through photographs, books, texts, and excerpts from publications, a shared history unfolds, transcending time, place, and rigid educational notions. The presentation echoes the philosophy that collecting is connecting, as items from the archive explore how ideas, relationships, flavours, commitments, and histories converge to craft a narrative on communal living.
Engaging in acts of seeing, reading, thinking, eating, sharing, caring, and creating, we tap into epistemological traditions that shape our understanding and perception of the world. These traditions, derived from Goodenough College's communities, influence our interactions with history, our engagement with politics, and our connection to the diverse contexts in our respective countries. Commensality extends an open invitation to dine together and share knowledge, embodying our unique tradition of communal living.
