"Attention - Work of Art"/"This is Not a Work of Art

My project is starting to take shape and George was right when he said it would require about a week of time amongst the objects in Elsewhere to develop an idea. It's becoming clear that George, Steph and Josh are really curates in the historical (but not religious)sense that they are "guardians or protectors" of the objects collected here. I guess they are also curators in a modern sense because this space is a kind of informal collection of 20th Century history and they are working their way through documenting and ordering the objects. Interestingly, a curate is also defined as "one entrusted with the cure of souls" which I think applies here as well because I have always felt that found objects contain some trace or sense of past owners and like I said before there is a kind of Miss haversham-esque air of broken dreams to a lot of the stuff here.
The Elsewhereians have backgrounds in Literature and subsequently are interested in the relationship between object & text, which is influencing the nature of my installation. Without going too deeply into it, I'm taking on the role of artist as curator but instead of arranging objects to create a narrative or new meaning, I am manipulating a series of objects before I order them. I also really want to get the community involved so I'm trying to work out a way to do that.
I think I'll also end up referencing artists who have worked with text and I'm hoping that will be the way to draw the public into participating...