Before the advent of computer databases, the brand name ‘Rolodex’ was a familiar generic term for a range of rotary filing devices. Our version holds images and texts which have been circulating between four researchers currently working in Oxford:
Utsa Bose (Faculty of History, University of Oxford)
Chris Dorsett (Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, and Cultural Negotiation of Science research group)
Poojan Gupta (Associate Artist of Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and Central Saint Martins, London
Elizabeth Hallam (School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, and Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford)

Rolodex imaginaries could be described as two artists experimenting with what happens when a rolodex falls open in unexpected places. On the other hand, it’s also an historian of science finding different ways to consider the rotating device as a research tool. Or, alternatively, it’s an anthropologist exploring ‘questions in motion’ through her photographic and textual entries made during research in fieldsites, archives and museums. ‘Rolodex Imaginaries’, a collaborative project exhibited at Gallery North as a part of Institutional Fieldworking: Cultural Negotiation of Science, Newcastle, 2023.