HISTORY/REALITY: SMILE (with a) SCONE. A participatory "re-visit" of a historic photo action by Pete Horobin.

This work was made through a participatory event conceptualised, curated and produced by Bodor (with support from photographer Sarah Smart and in consultation with the artist haha) to re-visit and re-activate a historic photo-action (Smile Scone, 1984) to engage contemporary audiences and preserve the legacy of the Attic Archive through embodied experience.

The event happened as part of the public engagement programme accompanying 'HISTORY/.REALITY: An Attic Archive Installation' curated by Bodor and realised at Matthew Gallery North, 3-6 October 2024.

The event and installation coincided with the first international research network meeting hosted by partners in Scotland as part of the RSE-funded Curating The Digital Attic Archive: A Case Study For Open Source Approaches to Artists' Archives project led by Bodor.

HISTORY/REALITY aimed to explore, through curatorial practice, historical works’ relevance to contemporary cultural and social experience. The archival installation and public engagement event attracted a mixed gathering of people (over 150) who participated & acted with special skill & humour especially as participants of the re-performance of Pete Horobin's 1984 Smile Scone photo portraits .

The original 23 photo-portraits were created by Horobin in 1984 of friends of the Attic Archive (family members, DJCAD staff and students as well as artists he corresponded internationally at the time) as part of Horobin's daily documentation process of his life and as such were not considered particularly singular or special. However the scone was preserved by the artist as an art object in a specially made 'DATA Cell' Box, which is now held in the University of Dundee Archives’ Attic Archive alongside the photo portraits where they attract some attention as the carefully preserved smile scone typifies an eclectic archival policy mixing absurdity with social & cultural consciousness.

Bodor exhibited the portraits from 1984 alongside the original scone in a locked vitrine and used the event to create a new series of portraits to record the current friends of the Attic Archive in Dundee. Visitors to the exhibition were invited to study the archival display on the wall then smile with a scone just like the people on the historic portraits. They could choose to smile with either a 3D model (created by a MFA Curatorial Practice student) of the original scone now in the archive; or a fresh scone baked on the day. The new portraits (32) created with the help of photographer Sarah Smart repeat the analogue b&w character of the 1984 documentation with careful consideration.

The copy of the new series of portraits have been given to the artist Ha who created a PDF with all portraits to be archived at the University of Dundee Archives as an extension of the Attic collection.