incertae sedis
“Inspired by Ole Worm’s cabinet of curiosities, I headed up to my attic to retrieve a heavy wooden box – not opened in years – from beneath a collection of other heavy boxes. I rummaged inside it for a parceled-up collection of ephemera from my past I knew I’d squirreled away in there for one reason or another. When I found the small paper parcel, tipping out its contents for closer inspection, I quickly found I couldn’t remember the import, value or significance of many of the objects I’d otherwise deigned important enough to save for posterity.
Incertae sedis is Latin for ‘of uncertain placement’, and is used taxonomically to classify things that otherwise do not fit existing schemas or cannot be categorised straightforwardly or curated into bodies of knowledge more accurately. I present the contents of my own mini-museum, with some artefacts contextualised where possible, but most speaking to the fallibility of memory and the destiny of most of our sentimental keepsakes to fall into meaninglessness, and if not for ourselves, then inevitably for others.” March, 2021
