FFPEare

FFPEare is a hypothetical interdisciplinary concept in the realms of speculative art and digital humanities that blends the idea of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue preservation (FFPE) with Shakespearean studies. The term signals a focus on memory, decay, and the artifact as a preserved object, using FFPE-inspired metaphors to explore how cultural materials are curated, accessed, and interpreted.

In FFPEare projects, Shakespearean materials—manuscripts, performance recordings, and archival objects—are approached as if they were preserved specimens. Curators, scholars, and artists may design installations or digital interfaces that mimic steps from FFPE workflows (dehydration, embedding, sectioning) as symbolic processes for organizing provenance, annotation, and contextual layers. The goal is not to replicate laboratory procedures but to provoke reflections on preservation infrastructures, material fragility, and the temporality of literary memory.

Origins and scope of FFPEare are primarily found in contemporary art discourse and digital humanities discussions, where it is treated as a thought experiment rather than a standardized methodology. Projects often combine curatorial design, speculative annotation, and media archaeology to illuminate how preservation technologies shape our access to literary artifacts and how Shakespearean texts evolve in cultural memory through time.

Reception highlights a mix of enthusiasm and critique. Supporters view FFPEare as a productive metaphor for cross-disciplinary dialogue about memory, decay, and cultural infrastructure; critics caution that it remains symbolic rather than methodological and should not be conflated with actual preservation science. Related topics include formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue, Shakespeare scholarship, and digital humanities.