Unit 31 is an archive of items from Southampton and her inhabitants’ past. Step inside and you\u2019ll find yourself amongst a myriad of items, ranging from the logbooks of ships long since broekn up to the wedding dresses of brides who have lived and died. While our module asks us to reflect upon our personal relationships to objects, Unit 31 felt akin to being inside a stranger\u2019s house. A collection of objects, alien to me, with which I had no tangible connection.<\/p>\n
These objects are not worthless. Rather the value behind them lies largely in being able to understand and connect to the history behind them. Unit 31 illustrates the need for narrative to enable us to understand and appreciate the past. In Unit 31 the items lie bare until they can be used for an exhibit that can paint a more comprehensive, compelling vision of the past that we can experience, allowing us to see the items as more than material. One item that did stand out \u2013 the deck chair from the Titanic<\/em>\u2019s sister ship, Olympic<\/em>\u2014 was shaped by the narrative told by the curator about visitors climbing on it (as in the scene in the film Titanic<\/em>) to take selfies. The curator\u2019s story allowed the item to hold a cultural value; the movie created a significance for it.<\/p>\n Relics of the past are important for what they may represent historically but also culturally, they provide a physical manifestation of a time lost to that clasp of time. If my visit to Unit 31 taught me anything it was the value of being able to craft an immersive history so that we can re-experience and appreciate objects for more than their material or superficial worth.<\/p>\n Dr Jonathan Conlin<\/em><\/p>\n Unit 31 is also a record of Southampton\u2019s diverse history across many spheres. Mangles, bicycles, toys, cash registers, a dentist’s chair; all aspects of the city’s life have their relics here, in the three storeys of industrial shelving and warren of cabins. Many items are in wooden crates, adorned with small photographs of the treasures within.<\/p>\n This is a record of Southampton’s distant and not-so-distant past. The cabins provide climate-controlled storage for works on paper, textiles and metal objects. Cherished uniforms and an impressive collection of wedding dresses offer more than a record of life in Southampton, they also reflect its citizens’ changing views of themselves and of their own histories: of what was disposable, and what should be cherished.<\/p>\n Unil 31 is a cross between an attic and a closet, except it is the city’s attic, the city’s closet: full of objects which ceased to fulfil their main function, yet retained such a hold on their owners that the latter could not bear to throw them away. Viewed in this way, perhaps the barrier separating the objects we see in museums and those we cherish in our homes seems less substantial.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/history\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/236\/2019\/05\/IMG_2458-copy-300x225.jpg\")