It seems to me that the personal archive is very much about preserving ones' self: preserving memory, experience, and  giving purpose to one's existence. What I found interesting was the methods we go about collecting, analyzing and sorting through, then displaying these memories.  We box them up, store them away for another time.  Boltanski's efforts to label the moments of his life so that it can be reassembled at any point leads me into Kabakov's statement about one man's treasures being another's trash.  We save things because they are sentimental, and how do you describe that to someone that does not experience the same thing?  He says, "For others who don't know my memories, these papers are simply trash."

So in my thinking about the archive, it is more about preserving memory and making it have importance, not only to yourself but also to others.  Susan Hiller is trying to put objects together so that by association they have a stronger meaning.  The collections of our personal items (clothes, furniture, books, paintings, photographs) represent ourselves.  I am really intrigued by the ways in which these items can so easily lose their meanings when taken out of context, when we die and our collections are sold at estate sales or wind up in thrift stores.  The memory is detached and the value disappears...