Fictionalizing Our Collections:

Archival Truth and Fictional Narrative
in the Marcus Kelli Collection

Words by Chloe Noland

Installation of Danielle Schlunegger-Warner, Marcus Kelli Collection: A Life Abroad - Vignettes, Peephole Gallery, Alter Space, 2013. Image copyright of the artist.

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."

This has always been one of my favorite quotes by Joan Didion, one that as a writer, artist, and information professional, I have intentionally woven into my approach to my work and my life. Fiction, as both a story to share and entertain, and as an inner narrative to believe in, has emerged as my dominant interpretation of this idea.

Installation of Danielle Schlunegger-Warner, Marcus Kelli Collection: Stories Of An Outsider In Nature. Shown at Basement Gallery 2012, Bedford Gallery 2012, Faultline Studios 2013, Aggregate Space 2014,   Worth Ryder Gallery at UC Berkeley 2015, Boy's Fort PDX 2016. Image copyright of the artist.

One such story I told myself was shared, quite by random, and ended up blossoming into an archival collection and a broader narrative than I ever could have anticipated, which endures today, an identity all of its own making. This story began in 2006 when I met Danielle Schlunegger, a fellow freshman at my alma mater, a small fine arts college in the Bay Area. Danielle was a Sculpture major, while I was in the newly minted Creative Writing program, so you would think that we wouldn't have much in common, based purely on the form of our respective crafts. We became fast friends though, often staying up all night in our dorm, me clacking on the used typewriter I had bought at a vintage shop, and she turning metal cans of cling peaches into jars for her "creatures"--sometimes requiring us to eat all the cling peaches, ten cans of them, between the two of us before the night ended.

Danielle Schlunegger-Warner, Freshwater Pygmy Whale, Specimen From The Marcus Kelli Collection. Copyright of the artist.

Danielle Schlunegger-Warner, Eastern Mountain Bird, Specimen From The Marcus Kelli Collection. Copyright of the artist.

Although I never had Danielle's talent for visual and tactile manipulation of objects, we both modeled our work on the stories we told ourselves. Her work was as much fiction as mine was, and we enjoyed sharing these personal, hidden narratives, and then discussing how they could be best hinted at in the final product. We were also both enraptured with the past--a trait I would much later recognize again in library and archival work. Danielle's creatures often stood as symbols for what was real in nature, but they themselves weren't real. I referred to it often as "fake taxidermy:" surprisingly realistic crustaceans, small land mammals, and insects whose fur, feet, and wings were often made from cut-up pages of books, type-written words in lieu of bone structure, musical notes or feathers in lieu of hair. Her work was literally made of fiction. It also lent itself to a beautifully framed collection of unified materials, in essence an archive.

The Marcus Kelli Collection & Museum, A Life Abroad - Vignettes, Peephole Gallery, Alter Space 2013. Images copyright the artist.

In between semesters, while staying with our families for the summer break, we continued this exercise through letter-writing. And from this, a specific narrative began to emerge. I don't remember what started it or why, but at a certain point our letters took on fictionalized identities. I was Zooey, living as an outcast in the desert (or suburban Los Angeles), while she was Marcus, living in isolation by the sea (or Ventura County). These two friends, separated by space and speaking through the past, took on more and more characteristics, until it was a complex story we wove together. Every time I went home for break, I wrote letters to Marcus and received strange, ephemeral responses, sometimes with diagrams attached to the type-written pages, all explaining his "discoveries." You see, Marcus was an explorer. His explorations took him up and down the California coast, then

The Marcus Kelli Collection, Wild And Free, Interface Gallery 2012

down to South America in a merchant ship. All of his discoveries, labeled "evolutionary oddities," were reproduced by Danielle as museum-quality replicas.

Although eventually the flow of our letter-writing slowed to a trickle and stopped, the germ of Marcus Kelli's vast (and fictionalized) legacy continued to grow. Over the years, I watched Danielle expand her collection of specimens to include scouting materials used by Kelli himself, including a 19th-century field cot, personal notebooks, pinhole camera, field backpack, and interactive desk. Combining both Kelli's living quarters and collection of specimens gathered from his travels, one of her most ambitious exhibits was an interactive tent, which visitors were able to enter and walk through, handling the objects themselves as they took in the life of this scientist and explorer, reminiscent of Darwin, Edison, and Melville.

Installation of Marcus Kelli Collection: Stories Of An Outsider In Nature. Shown at Basement Gallery 2012, Bedford Gallery 2012, Faultline Studios 2013, Aggregate Space 2014,   Worth Ryder Gallery at UC Berkeley 2015, Boy's Fort PDX 2016

It was thrilling to see this all come to life, but an even more enjoyable aspect was getting to see the reactions of the people who witnessed it. Danielle's commitment to historical accuracy and mimicry of real animals and tools made people pause and reflect strangely--was this a real person? Even if they could guess the specimens weren't real, was that really his field desk? Did he really sleep here? Visitors often were baffled, struggling to decide how to react to the exhibit, as art or as archive. This is where the blend of fiction and archival truth come together in the mind to create abject responses and questions.

The Marcus Kelli Collection Senior Thesis Show At California College Of The Arts 2010

Danielle's ability to mimic an entire individual life's work, and present it convincingly, has come back to me over and over again in my exposure to archival collections and practices. What makes something true, and what makes it false? How does authentication change our view of something, and how does the lack of it change that view? Does something that is not real make it any less valuable, in terms of preservation and access? What does it mean to tell a story to live by, versus tell the story of a life lived? I don't have the answers to these questions, but I feel humbled to have been a part of the exploration of them, in whatever small capacity. 

Chloe Noland is a librarian currently living and working in Los Angeles, CA. She earned her B.A from California College of the Arts in Literature & Creative Writing, and then received her MLIS from San Jose State University, where she discovered a love for taxonomies and metadata enhancement. Her fascination with art, preservation, and descriptive access has led her into working with groups such as the LAAC, of which she currently serves as Secretary. When she is not working or writing, she enjoys running, playing pool, and watching horror movies.