The Rat Archive, 1999

The Rat Archive was made in collaboration with the Design Council Archive’s Curatorial Director Catherine Moriarty and is a series of photographs of materials and ephemera, which were found in a rat’s nest under the stairs of a 1920s-built San Francisco house. The history of the house, cultural changes in America and interior design are charted through generations of rats collecting images of 1930s starlets to pieces of 1970s linoleum. The Rat Archive places the rat in the position of curatorial decision-maker and, as a result, throws up questions about who decides what is of historical importance and archival value. The Rat Archive, for us, is a reminder that history is partial – preserved by a few and defined in our absence.