In September 2012, Helen Scalway and Gail Davies took work from their micespace collaboration to join presentations and conversations around the role of “Information, databases and archives” in remaking relations between knowledge and value in the contemporary biosciences.  The meeting was the third conference of the Knowledge/Value network, organised by Kaushik Sunder Rajan. The event was hosted at the University of Chicago Center in Beijing. There is more information and some images from the event here.

Helen presented her portfolio of work on this project as an archive in its own right. Her visualisations of the structures of thinking, spaces of working and ways of ‘being mice’ in the biosciences offered different ways of apprehending what is bought together in an archive.  In contrast to the ordered archives of animals elsewhere, such as the rapidly proliferating international mutant mouse resources, this is a provocative, messy and speculative archive; one that invites reflection on what might be missed out in the conventional curation of scientific information and archives.

Helen and Gail would like to thank Kaushik Sunder Rajan and Judith Farquhar their kind invitation to participant in this event, the University of Chicago Beijing Center for their generous hospitality and all participants for their generative engagement with this project.