Being an archeologist, I should be a collector of stuff. I study objects that belonged to people thousands of years ago– things loved, disliked, broken, fixed again, thrown away, gifted, wanted, bought, exchanged for, lost, found, or hidden.

But when I moved across the ocean for a job, I only took my books, my clothes, some papers. No useless stuff, no memorabilia, no mawkishness. And somewhere, in a purse, a small glass shard.

This is its story:

A few years ago, a friend showed me the rivers and lands of his ancestors in upstate New York. We went fishing, standing totally still in deep green water. Birds of prey circled the forested hilltops. Age old trees swayed behind us, creaking.

The silence of a landscape pierced by colonial wounds.

B-E-R-L.

The shard that washed right at my feet is probably a piece of an old bottle. (I think, Made in BERLin.) Battered, useless, timeless. But its presence recalls to me, in very profound ways, my entanglement in the colonial intrusions that make up the history of this stolen land.

- mailed from Germany

At the end of 2011, I bought a second-hand book about President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When I first opened the book I was surprised and excited to discover a small collection of papers hidden inside. One of the documents was a certificate awarded to a Kathryn Terenyi by the US Treasury in 1944. Kathryn had been given the certificate because, like many Americans, she had bought US Government war bonds during the Sixth War Loan Drive. Sale of these bonds helped to finance the US war effort during the Second World War. Along with the certificate were three newspaper clippings from the mid-1950s.

I’m a history PhD student and spend a lot of time reading and writing about the past. When writing history, historians explain events by constructing narratives. People from the past become agents, actors and characters within the historian’s story. Sometimes when I write history I find it difficult to think of the past as having truly taken place. Events and people can become unreal and fictitious.

But uncovering these papers gave me a physical, tangible link to the past and connected me to a specific individual. They made me think about what it must have been like to live in the 1940s and 1950s – with no knowledge of what the future held and how much the world would change. Stumbling across these papers was a useful reminder that the past was inhabited by real people, living real lives.

At one time, these papers meant something to someone. Over fifty-five years later, I found them in a book and they meant something to me. Maybe they can mean something to you, too.

– mailed from the UK

This is a used film. The camera I used it with was borrowed from my neighbour. It was a very old camera and I couldn’t work out how to even put the film in at first. I showed it to my art teacher. He said the camera was ‘Russian and crap.” It said Soviet Union on it so it must have been old.

I don’t know if the film is worth developing because the camera hadn’t been used in about 20 years before I used it. The camera is still in my house. I think my neighbour has forgotten about it. I had forgotten about the film until now. Can’t quite remember what I took photos of.

If you find anything of interest on it, feel free to mail me back.

[Contact information will be forwarded to person who exchanges for the film]

– mailed from the UK

In high school I used to have a fairly serious drug problem. Like most kids in the suburbs I was stifled by the anxiety of Ivy League schools, overloaded by extra curricular activities and a family in the middle of divorce trying to keep face. After loads of anxiety attacks, the most obvious answer was to join the ranks of the overmedicated suburban youth, so I began taking Klonopin. For those who don’t know, it is a pretty heavy duty sedative that knocks you out when you are panicking. For those who do it recreationally they call it “clowning” because it make you feel like you have big clown feet. While I was not doing it recreationally it is an incredibly addictive drug and without really realizing it I had become dependent on it.

With more therapy and time I weaned myself off of it but I kept about 4 or 5 pills in this box for at least 8 years. Never with the intent of using, but always with the intent of soothing a craving I knew I couldn’t sate. A few years ago I finally flushed the pills on a whim, it felt good, but I have not been able to let go of the box. It is a token of a morbid time with a cautionary story inscribed in it. But it is time to let go…I have kept this pillbox trapped in a sick memory for some years now and it is time for it to be liberated!

– hand delivered in New York City

Who uses CD’s anymore anyway? ME!

I still collect CD’s. I figure I will get a jump on people—give it 10 years and CD’s will be the new LP of the day. Unfortunately, like many, I live in a shoebox apartment with little breathing room, even less room for my books, leaving virtually no room for my CD’s. Because I can’t bear to sell what feels like an archive of my youth, I’ve been giving them away one by one, telling stories, gifting memories—mostly because it makes me feel good to know that they will have a home.

This CD is a particularly elusive memory:

It has never been opened and I don’t know what is on it; but I’ve kept it mostly because I don’t know how I got it. I hold onto it hoping that I will remember how I got it. Perhaps it was at a concert and I really liked the band, or maybe it was a gift?

I really do not know what is on this CD but I think the cover is beautiful and in a way it has come to symbolize something for me: I accumulate so much and in doing so, certain things loose their specialness and at the same time, gain new uniqueness. There is something exciting about the fact that I have no idea what this music is, but what I imagine based on the cover. I hope someone who loves CD’s as much as I do will be able to connect with this.

– hand delivered in New York City

One of my best friends went to Africa the year after we graduated college. She brought back these bracelets as both a souvenir, as well as, fun jewelry that fit my “Afrikana” style. What I never had the heart to tell her was that these bracelets are not only NOT my style, I find them incredibly essentializing, not to mention they are just cheap plastic.

A few years later my younger brother found them in my apartment (my brother at the time was 10) and fell in love with them. I was happy to give them away to someone who wanted them. He wore them everyday for a year, sporting them with his burgeoning style. Now at 16, and less interested in bracelets, he has given them back to me. I hope this acts as a forum for someone to receive these bracelets with the same kind of excitement my brother once had, or they find new meaning and new life!

– hand delivered in New York City

When I found this lighter I was at the Montreal jazz festival. I had just seen Brad Mehldau, my favorite jazz pianist. I was so excited that I began to run around outside of the venue and tripped on what turned out to be a lighter with a ship painted on it. Because I often speak in metaphors and at the time and I was graduating college, “the open sea” was an image I continuously referenced. I felt the need to keep it. I am also a smoker so it had function beyond the metaphor. I have held onto it for almost 6 years now because it brings me back to a place where my love of music and pursuit of academia did not yet feel like an unbridgeable divide. It has stayed in my bag for years as a good luck charm even though it no longer has lighter fluid. I am now pursuing my PhD and trying to cut back on my smoking (and yes, music continues to recede farther into the background). It feels offensive to keep this lighter at this point; it is time to give this good luck charm a new home.

– hand delivered in New York City

This is one of the pieces I made for Salt-winning: Equal To or Greater Than, an art exhibit that served as a forerunner to projects like The Object Ethnography Project.

Salt-winning was a trash-based social art economy. Over one hundred miniature globes, including this one, were created from discarded glass, trash, and winter road salt. Each globe could be taken away by gallery visitors at any time as long as they left something behind of equal or greater value. Visitors were asked to fill out a survey after their exchanges that detailed what they took, what they left behind, and how they determined the equivalent value of the two objects. I used the surveys to find trends in how people adjudicated value. Salt-winning, as well as other projects I’ve done, have lead me to believe that people are inherently generous, creative, and daring in their relationships to objects and value. The Object Ethnography Project is the most recent project in a long line of economy experiments.

When I say that each globe could be taken away in Salt-winning, it didn’t include the two I glued down, including this one. I wanted to keep it. It was so pretty! But as a result it was never “valued” by an exchange, so now it is time to put it out to pasture and see what happens. My art is always supposed to be finished by other people, so this piece is technically unfinished until someone trades for it and establishes its value.

More information about Salt-winning and the trends in value, as well as the creation of the piece, are detailed here and here.

Materials: melted jam jars, road salt, faux fur from hat factory, resin.

– from Canada

“A wooden trunk. Sixteen sweatsuits. A bulletin board. A shovel. Old photos.

Years of confinement. Unpaid work. Anger. Organizing. Pride.

All part of Canadian disability history.

All of these objects and themes have been interwoven into an exhibit unlike any other Canada has ever known, thanks to the expertise of faculty and students at the School of Disability Studies, Ryerson University. This exhibit eloquently brings “out from under”, various objects that have much to tell us. Just as a shovel delves into the earth to bring up fresh soil, so too this exhibit delves into our past and brings to light fresh renderings of whose history gets told and why. In so doing, this exhibit liberates a history that few Canadians know, while providing a superb example of why it is important to make disability history, public history.”

– from the first page.

– mailed from Canada

This is a talisman for a long memory. It is a package of stickers from a protest launched by New York University’s Native American and Indigenous Student’s Group about the politically motivated dismissal of a Native administrator for his unwavering advocacy on behalf of students and staff of color, even when the best interests of students went against the plans of higher administration.

While students were granted an audience with NYU’s higher admin, the core issues of the protest were not taken up by the university leadership. The university has overlooked domestic diversity in favor of global diversity, despite the fact that the two are not mutually exclusive.

Of the 42,189 students enrolled at NYU, 81 are Native American or Alaskan Native. That’s 0.19%. New York City has 0.6% and the USA has 1%.

Of the 42,189 students enrolled at NYU, 1,948 are Black. That’s 4.6%. New York City is 17.2% and the USA is 12.9%.

Of the 42,189 students enrolled at NYU, 2,616 are Hispanic. That’s 6.2%. New York City has 16.8% and the USA has 15.8%.

Of the 16,475 employees at NYU, 14 are Native American or Alaskan Native. Only one is full time faculty.

Of the 16,475 employees at NYU, 2,2062 are Black. Only 96 are full time faculty.

Of the 16,475 employees at NYU,1,593 are Hispanic. Only 92 are full time faculty.

(this data is from NYU’s Factbook for 2008-2009, the most recent years NYU has made public)

In short, NYU still says No to Natives. Yet the university’s higher administration has moved on. They have forgotten about the issues we brought before them, even as they continue to placate our student leaders. We would like to bequeath these stickers as a talisman so that the student body, faculty, and the wider NYC community does not suffer from such a short memory.

– hand delivered in New York City