JEAN PHILIP DE TENDER

Will my archives be relevant for the future ?

I don’t pretend to be Winston Churchill or Simone de Beauvoir. So my archives are of not great value.

However they might become the day I pass away and my partner would want to recollect some common memories, checking through my stuff. Or my surviving family would want to learn who that sugar uncle, living in Brussels and abroad, really was.

I has been some time since I got rid of most of my paper archives. I even threw a lot of love letters away if I didn’t think they were worth a digital copy. I guess that lover must have been of few interest to me in the end. Checking one’s archives is somehow checking upon one’s live.

I still have floppy disks which I consider lost archives because I no longer have the tools to “read” them.

Today I gather all my notes in Evernote and/or Dropbox which I expect to be sustainable containers. They serve me well. Wherever I go, whatever device I use, I have them at hand. They follow me and they sync.

Notebooks, tags, labels, sharing, … Never has keeping an archive (or running one’s life) been so easy. And all of that at a combined premium price of 150 dollar.

But what will happen when I will die ? Someone will inherit my material belongings. Valuable things like the properties I own and that may be resold. Or just things that might be thrown away with the garbage. But what with these archives, which while alive consumed so much of my time ? Only I have access to them and the moment I will stop paying, access will be cut off.

For sure I could arrange for someone to get the codes, but what is the use if these writings are not from Churchill or de Beauvoir ?

I love to go at flea markets and discover writings from people unknown. Everytime I discover people who have had interesting, somethimes very tragic lives.

It would be good for all of you to give this some thoughts : how to preserve my archives, my memories, my life, … ? And for wonderfull services like Evernote and Dropbox, amongst others, to come up with a clear policy and strategy. It would be great if that would come at no price, because one can never value once life.

First writen in a simply Clairefontaine notebook, bought in Geneva’s Brachard & Cie for 2.60 CHF. It was heavily raining that August 2015 day at the Remor terrace and I loved that paper and pencil getting wet.