DECAY THEORY REPOSITORY
Decay Theory Repository
The Day I Got My New Teeth
2020
00:04:15 (looped), two-channel video, projection, 2 x 3m (approx.)
Decay Theory Repository
2020
00:07:14 (looped), single-channel video, 4:3 ratio
The Day I Got My New Teeth is a two-channel video collaboration with a dental technician during which Littlewood had a pre-orthodontic mould made of her jaw. The work was exhibited as part of the Decay Theory Repository exhibition in Gothenburg (2020).
Decay Theory Repository is a visual database of personal items that have been donated and loaned, culminating in an online museum of teeth and the mouth. Each item has been catalogued and temporarily accessioned, allowing public access to the database. The online museum and database will outlive the physical objects, which will be deaccessioned at the end of their loan period.
For this exhibition Littlewood created an animated film using a 1990s computer visual language. The film shows both the digital archive, that is Decay Theory Repository, and a "back-end" cataloguing system. The cataloguing system is based on an archiving software that was popular in the 1990s called Frostbow Home Inventory. These first endeavours into the implementation of home-use software are strongly linked with the artist's own memories of the first computer in her family home. Most of all, the idea that anyone could create an archive from their own collection of belongings within the comfort of their own homes raised questions of who would ever see this digital archive, aside from the collection owner? And what happens to that information once the software becomes obsolete?
Installation images: Galleri Rotor2, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2020