He Fa on the Hanging-Tag Archivist

White tags spread around my black clothes, each marked with an orange dot and separated from the next by a gap. Short orange hair seems to add another mark above, but nothing hangs in front of my face. I am surrounded by my own apparatus of classification without yet being covered by it. I can still look directly at you between the labels.

An archivist needs classification, or even neighbouring things might never meet. I inherit the tags’ ability to help retrieval but remove their specific wording, making their occupied positions visible first. A mark can attract attention and obstruct other relations. More diligent tagging does not necessarily bring us closer to the object.

Fine threads lift the cards away from the fabric, making classification an adjustable external apparatus. I want to retain that distance. If a label is declared part of a body, changing it seems to negate the whole person. If it can always be moved aside, change gains an operational space. Identical orange dots do not mean identical contents, just as one indexing format cannot guarantee that the experiences it holds are alike.

Nor can the work end with “stop labelling people”. Having no marks is not automatically freer; material that cannot be found may be the first to lose its chance to speak. The questions are whose convenience the tags serve, which differences a category flattens, and who can point out a mistake. My impassive face does not guarantee the system’s correctness. It keeps a position within the apparatus from which those questions can still be answered.

Orange soles beneath white shoes echo the dots on the cards without turning me into another card. I keep the gap before my face. An index may approach it; for now, let it remain unfilled.