Own De Beauvoir! by Jonathan Hoskins

Own De Beauvoir! was a two year collaborative research project and major publication; a semi-fictional narrative of text and images, incorporating donated photographs and documents, archival material and personal accounts accumulated throughout the project.

The project began in late 2014 after I had completed a year as an associate artist of Open School East. OSE invited me to undertake a further project with them, and I proposed to explore how archival processes may be mobilised artistically to have practical effects for the political identity of a neighbourhood, through an investigation into how that neighbourhood has become collectively narrativised.