Eszter Nagy Back

The Best Selected

The Best Selected is a collaborative archival project that explores working-class narratives by collecting and preserving highly decorated wrapping paper used and created by workers in the citrus industry. The project forms an interactive archive of the material cultures of working-class communities involved in fruit production, creating a counter-archive that challenges dominant narratives of collecting and preservation.

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Citrus wrapping papers, characteristic attributes of the citrus trade.
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Photos taken of the wrapping papers at the market in the Hague, the Netherlands.
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The database and visualisation are developed in collaboration with Archival Consciousness. nagy.biblio-graph.org/public/
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A visual cloud representing the initial collection of wrapping papers gathered in 2022.
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Part of my current archive, consisting of papers that are already included in the database.
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A network visualization of the database showing the origins of some citrus wrapping papers from my collection.
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A network of information that shows what data could be collected based on the citrus wrapping papers.
Animated exploration of wrapping paper motifs — part 1.
Animated exploration of wrapping paper motifs — part 2.
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The initial 2022 research was published in ‘How Would You Like To Get Lampooned, My Lord’, a collaboration between the National Library of the Netherlands and the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.
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Archival publication detail — collaboration between the National Library of the Netherlands and the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.

Project details

  • Year: 2023–
  • Medium: Archive / Research
  • Visualisation developed with Archival Consciousness

Dimensions

  • Variable dimensions

Presented

  • ACTIVATE Alternative Media Archives, Hybrid Seminar: Online & University of Lausanne
  • Archiving the Present Archival workshop series with Archival Consciousness, NL
  • How Would You Like to Get Lampooned, My Lord?, Publication, National Library of the Netherlands and Royal Academy of Art of the Hague, NL