Archive & Memory

Archive & Memory

An archive is a collection of documents and records, such as letters, official papers, photographs, recorded material, or computer files that is preserved for historical purposes. As such, an archive is considered a site of the past, a place that contains traces of a collective memory of a nation, a people or a social group. Artists have always shown an interest in archives, either as inspiration for their own work, or to use and re-appropriate material. An archive has therefore become a site of reproduction. Although often not recognised as archives, commercial sites like YouTube and Facebook are examples of this: documents are posted and reposted all the time in these environments. Previously regarded as tedious repositories of the past, with the additional stereotype of archivists as spinsters who were picky, hardworking, standoffish, and, by most accounts, pitiable enforcers of orders and structures, today the image of archives is changing. They are becoming exciting places where one can adapt and appropriate through processes of cut-and-paste.

An archive was once a place to preserve the past, to build legacies as well as to remember and recognise the roots from which to grow. However, as Michel Foucault reminds us, memories and archives do not survive by chance but are constructed to serve structures of power. Thus, the shape of an archive constrains and enables the content it encloses, and the technical methods for building and supporting an archive produces the document for collection. After all, the word ‘archive’ is derived from the Greek arkhē, which means government or order, origin and first place. However, digital technologies have changed and altered the status and meaning of an archive. The creation of documents and their aggregation into all sorts of different – especially online – archives has become part of everyday life. Archives are now being collectively built. As Arjun Appadurai asserts in his text Archive and Aspiration, ‘we should begin to see all documentation as intervention, and all archiving as part of some sort of collective project. Rather than being the tomb of the trace, the archive, is more frequently the product of the anticipation of collective memory.’

It could be argued that whether the archive is composed of print, photographs, film and/or digital media, the technologies used to organise, search and share documents have taken over the purview of a state, with the crowd acting as the control mechanism. Digital archives have changed from a stable entity into flexible systems, referred to with the popular term ‘Living Archives’. But in which ways do these changes affect our relationship to the past, present and future? What are the implications for this mode of forgetting, for memories, as well as for what is suppressed? Will the erased, forgotten and neglected be redeemed, and new social memories be allowed? Will the fictional versus factual mode of archiving offer the democracy that the public domain implies, or is it another way for public instruments of power to operate?

These and other questions will be addressed and discussed from the perspective of both lens-based and networked media, by looking at different topics that relate to archive and memory, from database to narrative, time, and the glitch, and through the works of (among others) Johan Grimonprez, Chris Marker, Geoffrey Bowker, Lynn Hershmann, Paul Otlet, Suzanne Briet, Rosa Menkman, Graham Harwood, Thomson & Craighead, David Lowenthal, Etoy, Walter Benjamin. There will be additional visits to Beeld & Geluid (home of the National Broadcasting Archives and owner of unique audio-visual collections), Hilversum; Sonic Acts Festival, Amsterdam; and Netherlands Media Art Institute (an institute dedicated to video and media art), Amsterdam.

Thematic Seminar taught by Annet Dekker

Annet Dekker is independent curator and researcher. Subjects of interest are the influence of technology, science and popular culture on art and vice versa. Currently she works as webcurator for SKOR, as researcher on the project ”Born Digital art in Dutch art collections” for SBMK, VP, NIMk and DEN, as lecturer at Piet Zwart Academy for the thematic project “Archive & Memory” and new media theory at Rietveld Academy. In 2009 she initiated aaaan.net with Annette Wolfsberger. At the moment they organise the Artist in Residence programme at the Netherlands Media Art Institute in Amsterdam and they produced Funware, an international touring exhibition in 2010 and 2011 about fun in software (curated by Olga Goriunova). Since 2008 she is writing a PhD on strategies for documenting net art at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London, under supervision of Matthew Fuller. http://aaaan.net

Schedule