Deep Riffing in Hazel Meyer’s Non-archival Archive

Like Meyer’s collecting process, my writing method is guided by my own queer sensibilities, my familiarity with Meyer’s larger art practice, and my amateur interest in critical sports scholarship — a field in which I have no formal training beyond an alien curiosity. In the text that follows, I attempt to channel Meyer’s attentive care by devoting time and focus to three images from Non-archival Archive. Inspired by Wayne Koestenbaum’s column in Cabinet magazine, I engage each image via a method of “deep riffing,” taking each as a prompt for part-theoretical, part-academic, and part-creative musings on the visual cultures of sport, the representation of athletes’ bodies in the media, and the histories and affects that haunt athletic spaces and archives.² 2 - Wayne Koestenbaum’s column “Legend,” appeared in several issues of Cabinet magazine between 2010 and 2015, accessible online. Using the image’s imposed parameters, “deep riffing” aims to spark imagination through limitation by encouraging ideas to bounce around like a ball in a squash court, their frenetic energies amplified through focus and restraint.