Collecting Otherwise
The role of the secretary is one of (often gendered) care work. In keeping minutes, they describe events that become part of our collective memory. At the same time, they write away their own presence in favour of the chairman. In the time of the_ Nationale Tentoonstelling Vrouwenarbeid_ (1898) case study, secretarial work was considered one of the socially acceptable occupations a woman could have - tied to the ever-evolving technologies of (type)writing. In the Stichting Goed Wonen case study, the working environment of typists was also a consideration.
In *Collecting Otherwise we employ the Lysergic Secretary: an embodied practice of documenting the research process in a thorough and detailed manner by a multivocal entity in a public document. This aims not only to extend research findings into all its pores, to keep the project's memory and to become the project's archive, but also to emphasise hidden roles in institutions and the labour they represen - such as the secretary. The Lysergic Secretary is a collective body, present in this public and open Etherpad for keeping notes, writing down ideas and communicating.