"The richest possibilities for research-based installation emerge when preexisting information is not simply cut and pasted, aggregated, and dropped in a vitrine but metabolized by an idiosyncratic thinker who feels their way through the world. Such artists show that interpretative syntheses need not be incompatible with a decentered subject and that an unforgettable story-image can also be a subversive counterhistory, packing all the more punch because imaginatively and artfully delivered."

"What results is a conflation: Search becomes research. The difference is subtle but important. Searching is the preliminary stage of looking for something via a search engine, “Googling.” Research proper involves analysis, evaluation, and a new way of approaching a problem. Search involves the adaptation of one’s ideas to the language of “search terms”—preexisting concepts most likely to throw up results—whereas research (both online and offline) involves asking fresh questions and elaborating new terminologies yet to be recognized by the algorithm."

An archive is a collection of records, documents, photographs or objects that are kept for future use, often to pass on important historical information to future generations. Archives exist in different size, scale and formations; from the domestic family album, to volunteer-run community archives, to large state-funded national archives. Community-run archives can be particularly important to groups of people who are marginalised in a society, as their stories and records are often not represented in state-run archives and collections. The body can also be considered an archive, which holds historical as well as personal memory. In oral cultures, the body is an archive which holds and shares history and culture through story, ceremony and song.