Editors Note
Welcome to the eleventh issue of Acid Free, a biannual online publication of the Los Angeles Archivists Collective. 

Somewhere during the work on this issue, our regular assurances about the immediate future revealed themselves to be fictions.

Los Angeles County issued a shelter in place order, moving work into our homes, closing all but the essentials, and ushering in fear and scarcity. News was overtaken by the Coronavirus and closings began stretching across the calendar. Far from focusing on disconnected unrealities, this issue considers fictions in archives as the process of pulling and pushing fact, research, and experience to enhance meaning, disrupt misconceptions, and arrive at new understandings. So, while our current reality feels increasingly like science fiction,  this issue of Acid Free charts how inventions edged with the fantastic inform archives work: an artist builds discoveries left behind by an explorer who never existed; elsewhere, fanworks that reinterpret and personalize popular culture find their way into the archives.

Defining the boundaries of fact and fiction is a practice in world building, an act that archives both play a part in and are a result of. It is from this juncture that many creators draw their concerns, whether it be the responsibilities of a novelist to the truth, the shape of memory as it is carried and reconstructed across time, or the nature of archives as they are used to inform historical fiction. Considering these boundaries also helps us recontextualize our responsibilities, not only to ourselves and our colleagues but also to those who may have been omitted, for better or for worse, from scrutiny and discourse: a fraudulent conservator never questioned in his lifetime, wandering statues flanking a museum, or a woman whose mistreatment spanned a hundred years beyond her death after her body became an object in a collection.  These stories are poignant case studies of  some of the many delicate alternate-realities that are accepted prior to an unmasking.

We hope you enjoy this issue, and as always we would love to hear from you! Email Acid Free at acidfree@laacollective.org, or give us a shout out @laacollective.

On Display and yet Unseen: The Life of Julia Pastrana

Artist Laura Anderson Barbata discusses the life and repatriation of Julia Pastrana and how fiction was used to commodify her physical attributes and create side-show ticket sales even after her death.

Fictionalizing Our Collections

Chloe Noland charts the fictional explorations and archives of Marcus Kelli, as constructed by artist Danielle Schlunegger-Warner.

The Rest is Memory

Digital Archivist Erin Fletcher explores musician Tom Waits’ hometown of Whittier, CA as told through his song “Kentucky Avenue.”

Archiving Universes

Jeremy Brett explores media fanworks and the efforts to archive them at Cushing Memorial Libraries.

Architecture vs. Mythology

Marie Penny traces the movement of two mythological statues across the facade of the Norton Museum of Art.

Janderized! The Collateral Damage of a Fake Conservator

Digital Archivist Daniel Alonzo follows a trail of conservation fraud in the Texas General Land Offices.

Lost Children Archive

Melissa Haley explores the archival concepts in Valeria Luiselli’s novel Lost Children Archive.

Let Go of Clean Corners, Break Open the Clouds

Novelist Heather Rounds meditates on truth in fiction, research, and the nature of archives.

The Stories We Tell

Megan Riley discusses vocational awe, unpaid labor, and the enduring myths of archives work.

Archives Beyond the Box

Tatiyana Bastet considers the place of archives in the work of historical fiction writers.

Issue 10 · Roots

Issue 9 · Movement

Issue 8 · Sex

Issue 7 · Space

Issue 6 · Design

Issue 5 · Organize

Issue 4 · Occult

Issue 3 · Awards

Issue 2 · Disasters

Issue 1 · Labor