Slought and the Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Pennsylvania are pleased to announce a public screening of "in which the thinking man finds himself in a gigantic orphanage..." on Monday, February 21, 2005 from 5:00-6:30pm in the Class of '55 room on the 2nd floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library. This screening has been organized in conjunction with "The Revolt of the Bees, Wherein the Future of the Paper Hive is declared," an exhibition at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library that proposes a new culture of memory and archiving in the true spirit of the beehive.

"in which the thinking man finds himself in a gigantic orphanage (where people are continually proving to him that he has no parents" (2004) is a 24-minute Slought video production that explores the archive in disarray from the perspective of a man lamenting his orphan status, material accumulation, and senility (shot on location in historic Founder's Hall at Girard College, with a monologue read by Gary Indiana). A voiceover by artist and critic Gary Indiana has been adapted from Thomas Bernhard's Gargoyles (English trans. 1970).

The video documents a romantically degraded library and the monumental staircases that surround it, and explores the idea of a collection in demise at a vulnerable and destructive moment in its history. Monumental staircases in a magnificent Greek Revival structure of the 19th century (Founder's Hall) lead to a room that houses unconventional archival material such as nineteenth century laundry and food receipts for the construction of the building, heating repairs, utility invoices, bank ledgers, and visitation logs. This material culture exists in a state of haphazard accumulation and romantic degradation that is startling in juxtaposition with the building's architectural splendor. The video invites its audience to imaginatively recreate and reconfigure the history of this archival site and its everyday documents through contemporary practice.