ABSTRACT
Whilst the visual archive of the spectators who posted videos of their visit will take pride of place in this chapter as an extraordinary instance of amateur archiving, it will have to be embedded in a larger archival performance with which it is necessarily enmeshed. The aim is to account for the shifting nature of Shibboleth as a ‘thing’ which is as linguistic as it is visual or sculptural. The chapter begins with a name change, referring to the time before Shibboleth became fully public. The proper name Shibboleth bears encrypted in its name not only the previous instances of its naming but, all the way back to their mythic origin, the arbitrary common name that acts as a crack and a split, founding an alliance in language and an irrevocable alterity. Mobile technology has intersected the installation not only by turning it into a recording field but also by cracking open another date within the duration of Shibboleth.
