One of the two “domains” I led was called “alternative archeology”. It was a public art workshop, where we examined the use of photography and archive in historical storytelling. After a talk orienting them to the project’s concepts and intentions, I presented the group of campers with a selection of objects that I had purchased at Goodwill. Using their imagined re-uses of these objects, the campers created the narrative of a cult that would have used them. They made adjustments to the objects, and created additional pieces of evidence, such as instructions on how to use them. Next they dressed up as members of the cult, and photographed themselves “using” the objects. The photographs were printed, aged with tea, and installed in fake archeological digs around the camp property, along with the objects. Then they dressed up like archeologists and anthropologists (world-building was done here too, they created roles for themselves, created a name for their firm, and designed a logo), and posed for photographs uncovering the dig sites and examining the objects and images. At the end of the domain session, they gave a slide show presentation to the camp as if the discoveries were real.

This project was based on one of my own projects that I did while I was at RISD, where I similarly constructed a fake society (of occult spiritualists), installed “archeological digs” around a park near my home in Providence, and built a website archiving everything—but I didn’t tell the campers about it because I didn’t want it to influence their own narrative.