Abstract Land & Filing Co.

Conceived as a fictional company, the Abstract Land & Filing Co. (ALFC) serves as a unique artistic repository for Morgan Ashcom's work, exploring the intersections of private property, big data, and industrial remnants. By utilizing discarded factory materials such as card trays, filing cabinets, and pocket frames, Ahscom blends archival images with contemporary photographs of the visible records and land management industries. The ALFC challenges and reconsiders the colonial notion that the power to describe equates to the power to control and invites new ways of imagining our relationships to one another.

In addition to a display from the company archives, the ALFC’s takeover will highlight Richmond community initiatives challenging capitalist notions of land use. Through an interactive community-based collaboration, ALFC has partnered with Maggie Walker Community Land Trust, MADRVA, and RVA Community Fridges. Folks are encouraged to invite other co-ops and radical land-based initiatives in the Richmond area for inclusion in a series of community-generated scrapbooks for each collective.

Please click the button below to upload a photo you’ve taken that relates to one of these initiatives! If you have a Richmond area initiative that might be interested in participating, please email info@candelabooks.com to have them added to the list.