In 2018, while transferring M_A’s archives from our Silver Lake home to our headquarters in Chinatown, we received a box from Jenna Didier titled Failure File; a material history of failure from our files. We think of failure as an empirical category, an observable moment of collapse and breakdown, but also a manufactured concept-- broken world thinking. Considering failure as a history and a culture also brings us to the question of repair. Failure Files is audio was initially collected by Oliver Hess, documented by Mateus Campos, interpreted and narrated by Virginia Swenson and Sage Roebuck.

Virginia Swenson is a writer and sound/performance artist based in Los Angeles. They graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Lewis & Clark College in 2019, where they studied art and English. Their work often uses sound to facilitate social practice and performance.