The Mobile Research Lab
In order to make neighbors contribution to the collective archive more accessible to all community members, it is important that the epicenter of the collection and be mobile. The Mobile Research Lab takes on the recognizable paletero cart that is familiar within the neighborhood.
The Institute of Urban Archive’s Mobile Research Lab plays with the idea of reclaiming public urban space by engaging neighbors through moments of interactions, education, and knowledge sharing exchanges that are documented as snapshots into the neighborhood and residents of the neighborhood. Single face-to-face interviews with residents or people with ties to the neighborhood along with free coffee nicknamed Una copa de archivo (A Cup of Archive), in exchange for sharing.
Collaborators will able to take home with them a keepsake of sorts as a token of their participation and reminder about the Archive and more importantly, the neighborhood to which they are contributing during activities on the Mobile Research Lab.
As a portable learning lab/workshop studio, the mobile lab is integral to the Institute of Urban Archiving. Locations where the cart will activate space for exchange can be discussed, types of activities that can occur on the Lab will include mapping out residents perception of their neighborhood, and pointed conversations to find out how the neighborhood views gentrification occurring in the area.
