Dear Diary: A celebration of diaries and their digital descendants
A major exhibition in the Inigo Rooms, Somerset House East Wing during May to July 2017
Curated by Professor Clare Brant and Dr Polly North
‘Diaries are among our most precious items of heritage. ... No other kind of document offers such a wealth of information about daily life and the ups and downs of human existence.’ Irving Finkel, founder, The Great Diary Project
Dear Diary was an exhibition that celebrated diaries and the many ways in which diarists capture human experience. Revealing the extraordinary and the everyday in individual lives, diaries often provide a safe space for people to confide their successes and disappointments, pleasures and pressures, loves and losses. The exhibition explored what motivates diarists and charts the ways in which paper diaries have been joined by phones and tablets as our means of keeping track of daily life. Bringing together manuscript and online diaries, from pre-modern almanacs to the latest trend of lifelogging, the exhibition considered how digital forms can be seen as descendants of traditional diaries rather than their destroyers.
Appointment diaries and apps help us manage time. But what do we do with it? Diaries show how work, health, love, family and friends occupy us in different ways. Diaries from different periods provide comparative material on topics like food, marriage and money, inviting reflections on how people change – or stay the same. Digital forms of recording like fitness apps, have turned personal data into a form of self-expression. But is it all really new?
The emergence of blogs and vlogs make digital forms of diary open to scrutiny and change privacy into community. Dear Diary highlights how diaries stage important issues for the individual and society, including those of identity, intimacy, privacy, secrecy, therapy, self-expression, self-improvement, memory and witnessing. For refugees, written and video diaries help restore voiced and visible subjectivity: can we stand in their shoes for a day?
Celebrating a wide range of diaries past and present, Dear Diary showed the diary form is alive and well in the digital age. Specially-commissioned film interviews with living diarists, by artist Derek Eland, revealed how diaries are meaningful to people now.
Profound, prosaic and surprising, diaries give unique accounts of individual lives, offer interpretations of the world and add new and thought-provoking dimensions to social history.
Find out more about the exhibition on the Dear Diary Expo website, as well as Twitter and Instagram.
The Centre for Life-Writing Research presented Diaryfest on 30 May 2017, a day of talks about diaries. Eminent biographers, critics, writers and film-makers talked about different aspects of diaries, on subjects ranging from Pepys to refugees.
Photos of Dear Diary exhibition by Fung-Wah Man
Press coverage
- BBC Radio 2 Arts Show with Jonathan Ross – interview with Professor Clare Brant (starts at 44:00)
- BBC Radio 4 – Saturday Live interview with Professor Clare Brant (starts at 27:00)
- BBC Radio Oxford – Professor Clare Brant’s interview on the Sunday morning programme (starts at 1:07:40)
- BBC London – Radio coverage of the exhibition, including an interview with Dr Polly North (starts at 1:10)
- London Live – TV coverage of the exhibition, including an interview with Professor Clare Brant
- The Big Issue – 'How to find happiness in a diary', Professor Clare Brant
- Run Riot – 'Why keep a diary?', Professor Clare Brant
- The Times on Saturday – 'Diaries, chosen by Clare Brant', Professor Clare Brant
- Evening Standard – article on Dear Diary by Tim Cooper
- Time Out online – Dear Diary was included in ‘things to do in London this Sunday’
- Londonist – Dear Diary was included in 'things to do today in London'
- Information Society – Dear Diary was included in 'inclusion in ‘things to do in London’
- Visit London – Dear Diary was included in 'inclusion in ‘things to do’
Events
Curator tour with Professor Clare Brant, 22 June 2017
Inigo Rooms, Somerset House East Wing
A unique opportunity to hear curator Professor Clare Brant talk about the themes behind and works displayed at Dear Diary. Professor Clare Brant is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature & Culture in the Department of English and co-director of the Centre for Life-Writing Research at King's. She was the co-curator of Dear Diary alongisde Dr Polly North, Director of The Great Diary Project.
The tour group was kept small to allow for conversations and questions. These conversations created a space for dialogue between scholars, practitioners, artists and interested parties around the subject of the exhibition, namely the many ways in which diarists capture human experience.
Diaryfest, 30 May 2017
Council Room, King's Building, Strand Campus
The Centre for Life-Writing Research presented Diaryfest on 30 May 2017, a day of talks about diaries. Eminent biographers, critics, writers and film-makers talked about different aspects of diaries, on subjects ranging from Pepys to refugees.
The exhibition was a collaboration between King’s College London’s Centre for Life-Writing Research and The Great Diary Project, supported by the Department of English and the university's Culture team. It also drew on the expertise of the European Research Council-funded Ego Media research group at King’s, which investigates life writing in the digital age.
CLWR: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/ahri/centres/lifewriting
Ego Media: http://www.ego-media.org
GDP: http://www.thegreatdiaryproject.co.uk