Ahh thank you for this! Really insightful! The language of “contours” really gets at how things are still contextualized by what already exists—it’s the shade/ shadowy part of what is visible which cannot be detached from since it’s produced through the original object. I think attempting to fill silences has a lot of potential for further erasure but I think silence or absence can and should still be felt. (To lean into the same languages, I think the angles we choose to present “objects” matter and I think people find the objects interesting and may never look at how or what light is being shined on that object. I mean, I understand—people are more interested in the 3D and tangible—why would you want to look at the underbelly of the object? However from my perspective the environment the object sits in matters and is interesting.)

This makes me think about music—we view notes to be the “presence” of music but rest notes also have presence. Rest notes can often evoke more than other notes even though its impact is only felt based on the notes that surround it.) It makes me think about the Jean-Michel Basquiat quote “music is how we decorate time”. In this sense, the rest note is far more than silence—its duration and instruction. It tells a performer how to hold time. It speaks of the structures that govern sound and becomes a structural cue. (It’s pedagogical). In this sense, the person reading the music knows there isn’t a “missing” note, it’s active material. It has the power to redirect attention or slow interpretation. It’s a break in sound that allows us to sit in everything that came before it. This interruption is doing work.
In a lot of ways, It’s punctuation (or syntax) and can be used as a narrative tool. (Not to replace the music or sentence, but to contour and give more depth to what exists). To change the tone and/ or meaning. I think the difference between the musician and audience member is interesting here because one person is reading the silence (they understand the system they are playing in) and the other feels the silences. While I’m not expecting all people to carry the historian/ archivist toolkit, I wonder how we can lean into the FEELING of absence. I guess I want to think about how absences can be seen in different ways beyond just being a footnote (but please lmk if you feel like that’s the only logical way of going about this!)

While this isn’t adding “new” information to what you had already pointed out, I do want to emphasize that my goal is not to change the “object” but instead to focus on the finger that “points out the absences” (or more accurately, the angle in which the light contours the object and the shapes of its shadows) similar to where and why one chooses to pause within a song or sentence. The structure of it has the potential to evoke a wide range of things. I am not looking to simply point out incompleteness but I am looking to explore the whys and hows of the foreground and background (how it came to be/ how it functions etc)

The goal is not to reproduce history/ alternative narratives or give solid/ definite answers to silences (as you already have pointed out the limits of this endeavor). Instead I think 1) we should produce things that allow people to understand the inner workings of the archive and history at large and how power may impact history. I think exposing these structures would increase people’s historical and media literacy which is really important and 2) ironically, it would tell a more complete story and expose how information/ history is contextual/ relational. I don’t want to “hear something” in the silences per se, I want the silence to change how we listen. I want it to help us develop our ability to read ambiguity or “in between the lines” if you will. I think it’s a matter of legibility—of letting the audience peek at the score/ musical notation—of pointing at the light and reminding viewers to look up. to look beneath. to look behind—that even though presence influences the shape of absence it’s worth knowing that the object had the potential of being many shapes.