I especially like the word Susan Howe used in the title- “telepathy”, which makes me think of the intimate bond between the archives and people. According to Susan Howe, “this visionary spirit, a deposit from a future yet to come, is gathered and guarded in the domain of research libraries and special collections”. Though we have to admit the fact that some items are destined to be forgotten in this age, the archives that present a vision into the future make themselves come to life. Beyond the words, it seems like a romantic idea that the archives have already corresponded with each other before people get to them. I think to some extent Susan Howe’s experience of being a poetic helps building up this sense of romance in the domain of archive and collection. She also points out that “in research libraries and collections, we may capture the portrait of history in so-called insignificant visual and verbal textualities and texiles”. In this sense, I think the archival items and documents with small pieces, like some fragments presented in Spontaneous Particulars The Telepathy of Archives, are associated by complex human emotions and thoughts, which is another method to scrutinize the past history in a detailed way. Some of the fragments can’t even provide a complete context for viewers to read through. But once they are put together within a certain logic by the author, a relation of affinity is formed and the “historical-existential trace” is to be tracked by the sense of romance among the archives. Rather than considering the archives as objects lying in the archive or library, waiting to be explored, readers are able to get a glimpse of the link between the past and future the archives and let the archives take charge of leading the way into a more profound research. For me, this idea is way more intriguing than the serious and professional archival approaches I’ve seen before.

In the chapter The Disappearance Approach, Susan talks about “relations between sounds and objects, feelings and thoughts, develop by association; language attaches to and envelopes its referent without destroying or changing it”. It makes me think about the disorder and distortion generated by the fragments. When I was making my audio appropriation I also came across the similar problem that though the original sources remain the untouched, but once I make intervention and appropriate the clips by my idea, the audio fragments became totally different. I can’t help thinking that how does the disorder affect the intimate relation and our thoughts in terms of understanding and analyzing the fragments? How does it change the way we view the “historical-existential trace”?