Flow Field 

#02——What do we keep？

About the Gathering

A finished artwork, an early sketch, a digital file, a photograph, or a conversation—each may hold something worth keeping.

Flow Field #02 brings the question “What do we keep?” into an informal exchange about living artist archives and the care of digital and physical art. Building on CAPL’s first Flow Field gathering, this session creates a shared space for practical experiences, unfinished thoughts, and questions that do not yet have clear answers.

Over lunch and tea, we will explore how artists and those working with their materials decide what to preserve, how to organize it, and how to keep it accessible as practices and technologies change.

Questions We Might Explore

• What do we keep beyond the finished artwork—drafts, photographs, correspondence, or traces of the creative process?

• How do we care for physical artworks when space, time, and resources are limited?

• What happens to digital artworks when software changes, equipment becomes unavailable, or files no longer open?

• Who makes decisions about an artist’s archive, and who takes on the work of maintaining it?

Around the Table

The gathering welcomes perspectives from artistic practice, museums, artist foundations, libraries, archives, and digital art. Participants are encouraged to share an image, a story, or an unresolved question about something they are trying to keep. No prepared presentation is required.

Moderated by Weiyi Xu, an MA student in Arts Administration at Teachers College, Columbia University, the conversation connects with her ongoing independent research on living artist archives.

As with every Flow Field, the conversation may continue beyond the gathering through a new connection, a different approach to documentation, or the beginning of a collaboration.

Registration

Five spots will be available for public registration. A Google Form is expected to open in November for those interested in joining the gathering.

Please check back here for the registration link.