Unlike trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states. The rhizome […] has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills.

– Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

The Society of Affective Archives is a collective entity dedicated to artistic collaboration, the production of affective archives, and the preservation of peripheral knowledge. Inspired by the image of the rhizome, a form wherein multiple paths converge and divide in a continual process of transformation, the collective draws upon the principles of experimentation and creative encounters. Animated by the collection and safeguarding of that which lies on the cusp of disappearing or at the margins of consciousness, the Society is a romantic conceptual exploration conceived by its founding members, Fiona Annis and Véronique La Perrière M. Since 2010, they have jointly explored the territory of research and creation in the visual arts.

With collaboration at the heart of its mandate, The Society of Affective Archives seeks to foster encounters between different disciplines, cultures, and epochs. With an approach that embraces diverse modes of research, the collective pursues the creation of artworks, or affective archives, that resonate with past, present, and future generations. Thus, the “affective” archive is proposed as a prism for the imagination and a means of envisioning both the past and the future.

In assembling an ongoing collection of artefacts and artworks, the Society employs various forms of media including the artist book, film and the moving image, installation, public art and performance. Its work has received public recognition through the acquisition of an installation, in 2015, by the Museum of Civilization in Quebec City; the realization of a major public artwork at the Tiohtià:ke Otsira’kéhne Park on Mount Royal, commissioned by the City of Montreal’s public art bureau in 2018; and a new multimedia commission to integrate art with architecture at the medical library of the CHUM hospital, forthcoming in 2021.