Wet Archives

Wet Archives is a film that explores the representation and lived experience of  early assisted reproductive technologies through shifting positions of subjective knowledge. Drawing on dream logic and fluid modes of address, the work brings together a recorded conversation with the artist's mother, archival material, the recollection of a recurring dream, and a series of (mis)recognitions. Composed by a hybrid testimony, the film holds reproductive hospitality and generative refusal in tension.

Shot on 16mm film and incorporating digital screen recordings, Wet Archives renders memory and image as deliberately unstable.

Grounded in a personal politics of "orificing", a method developed through Gibbs' doctoral research project Mouth-making an Orifice, the film seeks to reframe historical representations of assisted reproductive treatment and open space for experimental donor-conceived, or "AI(d)," subjectivities.

Presented in conjunction with the INTELLIGENCE: Interdisciplinary Forum, held on 9 May at The Potter.

About the artist

Allison Gibbs works with moving image to make films installations as well as texts and events that expand as fragments of overheard conversation spilling from her films. Her work assembles instances of alternative bodies of knowledge production—from extra sensory perception and film curses to post-genomic gut feelings and biopolitical healing, reframing images, sound and language into slow, unfixed encounters. Allison holds a PhD from Monash University and a Master of Fine Art from The Glasgow School of Art. She currently works on Dja Dja Warrung Country.

About the Project Gallery

The Project Gallery is a new space on Level 1 of the Potter Museum of Art, located in close proximity to our teaching and learning studios. It was established as a responsive and collaborative space to showcase interdisciplinary research, art-led student projects, and outcomes from creative residencies and academic fellowships.