The Ripple Archives

Throughout my undergraduate education, my writing has turned towards subjects that most people willfully ignore. I’ve been fascinated with the machine of capitalism, and how it often leads to death or unfulfilled life. We pack infinity into a small box we carry around, endless information that leaves us feeling a multitude of ways. With this endless information, progress, and consumption, comes death. Death on the personal level, a human experience for all of our sentient existence, but also death within our surroundings, and deaths worldwide, broadcasted and mediated through our technology and news sources. With the help of my honors thesis mentor, Alessandra Lynch, I developed the concept of a literary archive, titled The Ripple Archives, in which the speaker attempts to give voices to neglected and abandoned figures, objects, and emotions. This archive contains not only a multiplicity of subjects, but structures, containing packing lists, elegies, conversations, and even calendars. The archive finds commonalities between the internet, political events, and Death, both a mysterious place and figure. Through the practice of archiving, the speaker hopes to find some form of deliverance from the inevitability of death and progress, whether it is in the physical world or in their imagination.