MUSEUM'S ABSENCES
A digital archiving project documenting the 'economic afterlife' of mass-produced toys with a blend of drawing and 3d-scanning.
Collaboration participants:

Kimberly Ellen Hall, artist, illustrator, illustration educator; University of Gloucestershire

Ksenia Kopalova, illustrator, illustration educator, researcher; Arts University Bournemouth

How can objects be a documentation of an economic environment? And what happens to them when they are excluded from it?


Pat and Ksenia are exploring the afterlife of mass-produced collectibles - Snoopy toys from 1999 McDonald's Happy Meals. Distributed globally, they attracted collectors who believed in their future value. Today, after 25 years, these once-coveted Snoopy toys are abandoned and sold at much cheaper prices in illegal flea markets, car boot sales, and via online marketplaces for second-hand goods.


In this small, but growing online archive Pat and Ksenia collect these 1999 toys from sellers in Hong Kong, the UK, and Russia, attempting to get a glimpse of the intertwining personal and economic histories around these objects. This archive uses the imperfections of 3d scanning and drawing to highlight the patchy, changing, irregular, disappearing stories behind these objects and their economic environments.

https://momento360.com/e/u/71cb5a48ec034b9e9fc58fa174649e77?utm_campaign=embed&utm_source=other&heading=141.01&pitch=4.2&field-of-view=100&size=medium&display-plan=true
Reworked ‘Norwegian’ Snoopy found in a Hong Kong illegal night flea market. Texts inserted into the image: ‘In other countries there is panic-buying of rice. People here are panic-buying a toy [Hong Kong Standard 1998)’ (Bosco Joseph et al.)
'NORWEGIAN' SNOOPY
‘American’ Snoopy scanned by a collector and vintage goods shop owner Emily May Anscombe, who purchased at a carbon sale from a person who was selling his grandad's belongings, since the grandad wanted to go travelling around the world and was getting rid of his collections.

The customised texture features copyright free maps, extrapolated into semi-abstract textures with AI, thus creating a patchy, ragged skin made of AI-conceived maps: what is this toy's travel history? And what would be the travel history of its first owner?
'AMERICAN' SNOOPY