Archive Progress

Progress on the archive assignment is going smoothly, I think.  I have continued to write and organize my corresponding sources onto large pieces of paper.  Some of the current topics I have categorized my research into include: “What’s wrong with Empathy”, Alternatives to Empathy, and “Why we Cannot Understand the Other”.  What I have realized though, as much as I love my big pieces of paper, they’re slightly awkward to move around with.  And this wouldn’t be such a big deal, expect that I tend to not be very permanent these days.  On any given week you can find me doing laundry at 3 different houses in two different countries.  I often travel down to Niagara on the Lake or Syracuse, but live in Burlington.  Thus, toting my research is not the most ideal way to travel.  Hence the evolution of the project.

Recently, I have taken to transposing my written text into a text document on the computer.  While not a revolutionary method or archiving, this did allow me to

1.  Produce a duplicate and alternative to my  big pieces of paper, and

2.  Allow more possibilities of what I could do with the digitized text.

I opted to  create a third instance of my research, this time on the internet.  Viewable at www.feelingdisability.blogspot.com, my blog here doubles as a webpage and a blog.  Information based text archive of my research.  A blog wasn’t simply an arbitrary choice, either.  The customization and personalization that can happen with blogs these days allow for you to find a past entry, quickly and easily.  And so I though: if I can apply these searching devices to my research, that could allow me quickly and painlessly to find specific passages and topics.  It would be an ideal way of searching through my mounds of research!  The ‘tag cloud’ on the right I am specifically proud of.  It visually represents the frequency of words that I use to identify my blog postings.  The larger the word, the more often it has been used, the smaller the word, the less often.  The ‘tag cloud’ also allows me separate the entries based on the ‘tag’ or keyword.  Moreover, I am also placed a search bar in the blog as well, which can search the blog for words that I have not ‘tagged’.

This online archive is also updatable, with a potential infinite amount of space of which I can fill.  Given the multimedia accessories that I can put on the blog as well, it serves as a sort of ‘homepage’ for my research – a place where the public, and myself can see the research I’ve done so far, as well as create an on-going catalogue of new research.

Tension in the archive…

Archive’s aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.  Some people love them, while others loathe them.  Wilson, in his article, “Archives are Exhausting” provides us with alternative and opposing opinions regarding the archive.  With arguments stemming from big-wig philosophers – Wilson takes on opposing viewpoints that are both for and against the use of, and importance the archive has.

What was interesting however, was the overall theme of tension that arises out of this discussion.  A duality, or tension between two different ways of interpreting the archive seems to exist, and is clearly expressed in the ways that people decide to talk about them.

For example, the active and passive archives were identified in the article, and require no further elaboration.  In addition to this though, – a tension of the archive being both accessible and inaccessible needs to be recognized.  Archivists hold the keys to finding the information you’re looking for.  However, to have them help you, you must first play by their “rules”, so to speak.  A strict set of rules and code of conduct accompany the access to the archive.  Additionally – often the archives can be so large that finding EXACTLY what one wants can be shy of impossible.  Again, the archivist is the solution to the problem.  It is their job to know where things are.  Thus, we have access to the information, but at the same time it is camouflaged amongst the surrounding volume of records.  It is both accessible and inaccessible.  Moreover, tension is also witnessed as one realizes that archives can be considered both living and dead, as identified in the reading.  They can be dead, as they’re full of history, and information of the past.  Inversely, they’re constantly growing and will never be complete.  To me, this constant evolution denotes a live, active and changing environment.  Yet another example of the tension that the archive possesses is in the way that some consider it a useful item, while other’s simply don’t.  Some artists in particular attack the bourgeoise power that is associated with the archive, while other’s embrace it as a public service, and a new, hot topic in contemporary art.

On a macro scale, the most interesting point that Wilson did make was when he briefly mentioned how archives can be RE-ACTIVATED.  I liked this.  This re-activation or re-animation seems reminiscent of some sort of alchemy – and perhaps it is.  When speaking of re-animation, it is Mary-Shelly’s classic tale of mad-science gone awry that pops into my head.  Dr. Frankenstein re-animated dead limbs, and created new, living interpretation of a human being.

This may not be so far-fetched though.   Isn’t this what contemporary artists do now?  They re-animate old archival information into new works of art?   In each instance of this, they are reinterpreting the old archival information, and creating a contemporary work of art.

This article gave a nice overview of the opposing viewpoints, but was underscored by the fact that archives are caught between a rock and a hard place.  While they exist peacefully, there is no doubt to the debate they can generate, and their potential to live a life outside of their stale, stagnant and confined environment.

 

A New Understanding of old Material: Rex vs. Singh + Faiers

During a conversation recently, someone brought up that they had never really “got” video art.  They postulated on a bunch of reasons why, but didn’t quite seem to nail the exact reason.  This was nice to hear.  For, I too,  have never much been into video art, either.  I just find it hard to understand.  I don’t know what in particular put me off of it – but something did.  I feel like I would just never know when to make a cut – and it just seems so laborious to take it all the way from beginning to end.  It might be because I equate it with acting… which I’m not good at.  Either way – video art and I have a history like oil and water.

Things may have changed, though.

Not expecting much out of this Rex vs. Singh film we saw at V-tape, I was pleasantly surprised by both the quality of the film, the message and the complex way in which the information was presented (as well as interested in the information, itself).  Furthermore, in relation to the archive, this film was certainly working with archival information, and ways of re-working and reconstituting it.  In other words – it was nice and pertinent to the class.  We had a discussion after the film, which some of this entry is based on.  However, I decided to take another look at the Faiers article, and see what sort of corallines and connections I could make.

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This film was beautifully shot.  There was amazing cinematic work done – all by professionals.  Slow, fluid pans, interesting angles and hi-end editing all worked together to create a solid film.  Moreover – the story – entrapment of two Sikh men by White Canadians – is not only poignant, but also a hidden scar on the history of Canada.

Faiers comments that  “popular film’s ability to become embedded in the public consciousness assists in the production of what Raphael Samuel termed in his work “Theatres of Memory” (72).   – It seems that a Theatre of Memory is exactly what the film was interested in creating.  By creating a film that is both beautifully executed and has a strong historical presence that is otherwise unknown, this film is attempting to create a theater of memory, which, (according to Faiers) will help the message become embedded and raise awareness in the public consciousness.  It is a strategic move on the filmmaker’s part.

Despite the likely poor translations and testimony pieced together, this re-creation, or rather – re-enactment is a marvel of sleuthing and research.  The multiple interpretations of the information was a neat and interesting way to communicate the flexibility the archive can have.  Think of it this way: the archive was controlling the content.  The text on the court pages, transcribed from dialogue were strictly held to – often spoken word-for-word by the actors.  This however, does not apply to the interpretation.  The interpretation of what and how to use the evidence and testimony was purely up to the artists.  Again, as Faiers suggests, each of these artists has re-constructed the film narrative and has subsequently released a fuller potential of the film!  The multiple interpretations allowed for multiple evaluations of just one scenario.

It was interesting to think of how this film can in a way, emancipate the archive.  It gives access to this story and information to people who would otherwise never go looking for it.  In a sense, it functions as part of the ‘unofficial knowledge’ that people gather.  A film like this seems to release the story into the air, and exposes the prejudice and anti-Semitism that was prevalent in Canada.  In a sense, the information and story have been reclaimed and reanimated by those interpreting it, and now – because of their cinematic presence – demand our attention.

Despite all of this, I wanted a conclusion.  I was disappointed that the results of the trail are unknown.  They were not in the archive, it seems.  It also seems likely that is was a conscious decision to leave out a constructed verdict from the re-enactment.  It allowed the film to (despite the multiple interpretations and artistic license taken) have some documentary credit.

But no one broached coming to a conclusion.  It seems that you can interpret what is there, but you can’t infer what’s not there.  This created an interesting tension as the film came to a close. As Canadians, we’re left to sit with our shameful history, imagining the likely conclusion and sentencing of these two men, while regarding and admiring this powerful and timely film that sits on a border between witnessing/re-creation and re-enactment.

Everyone’s a critic.

This Faiers article, entitled “Thawing” has really taken me back… back to say, 1989 – when VHS won the war over BETA, and dominated the videotape market.

So the story goes, I was just a young gaffer, excited as any other child to continuously relive their favorite everything.  Mine, for whatever reason, was a particular rendition of Rumpelstiltskin.  I was a quick learner and managed to observe how to watch, stop, rewind, play and repeat.  However, when it came time to eject, or switch tapes – I was in trouble.  I usually got the hired help I needed, either a brother or parent.  However, being a boy full of confidence, this one time I remember I decided to switch outthe tapes myself.  The removal went quite smoothly, however, the insertion of my favourite movie did not go as planned.  I push the videocassette in the machine with such fervor that I ended up pushing it off the top of the television, where upon it hit the floor and to my parents dismay, broke.  They had not yet finished paying for it.

I loved my copy of Rumpelstilskin to death.  Well, the death of the machine.  I wasn’t upset that the machine broke – I was scared that my tape my trapped in it!

I’d like to discuss how Faiers posited that film occupies a specific archival status, due in part to it’s ability as an object to be collected, and as it’s ability to be re-classified and reincorporated into new narrative strategies.   While I don’t argue the ability for the videotape to be endlessly re-classified and reincorporated into new forms of media (this is now done in excess. One needs to only peruse Youtube or watch RIP: A Remix Manifesto) but I can’t help but wonder about film’s archival status.  They’re being preserved, no doubt – but the fragility and slow disintegration of VHS tapes every time they’re played is a specific characteristic of the medium itself.  It is part of its unique personality.  But, this entropic characteristic stops us from viewing the original.  The original films exist more so as objects rather than films, just as my copy of Rumpelstilskin did for me.  Loved when played, but coveted as an object as well.  We understand the films on their reel when considering their potential to be played and viewed, rather than doing it.  Instead, we resort to digitized copies and reproductions.  In the same way that (as we looked at in the Savadoff article) each woodcut will be different, so too will the VHS tape altered after each viewing and each copy.  To prevent this, we view digital copies. I won’t argue that film’s ability to be reproduced is finite, rather than infinite possibility.  However, I do think that if the only way we know films is through their digitized, and other mediated formats, then we miss out on the original.  In the same way that photo reproductions in a book do not compare to the actual prints, we must stay critical when suggesting the film’s reproducibility.  Thus, I do think that some films DO indeed suffer from being ‘second hand’ to the original.  All we are viewing now are copies.  We’re just looking at variations of the first wood-cut, so to speak.  The aura is always stuck to the original.  Just because we can make reproductions, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is beneficial for the medium, figuratively and literally.

Does that make sense?  I feel like it’s a jumble of a bunch of ideas, but basically what I’m trying to get across here is simply that the reproducibility of VHS, although neat and specific to the medium, doesn’t mean that we should, and that if we do – I believe it does intrinsically change the original, and create a duplicate that is somehow slightly removed, and unauthentic from the original.

That being said, this Faiers article was fun to read – I have never really thought of how we create our own archives in our mental states – if this is true, then really (as the adage goes) everyone is a critic – as we’re all selective upon what we watch and then ‘store’ in our memories .

I particularly liked how Faiers suggested that in a sense, we’re all our own curators of our memory museums – passively and actively.  Although this was written as recently as 2002, I wonder what the impact of a media stimulant like YouTube has been on our memory museums.  They must be expanding at an exponential rate – and certainly much younger than ever before!  Has this infiltration of media made us sloppier curators?  Has is made us more selective?  We’re bombarded by so much – and more often than not – we give in to our curiosities and click on bizarre titles of clips and sometimes get bizarre results as well.  How has this affected our curation process?  Are we open to more ‘surprises’?  Have we potentially even lost our curatorial sense – and opened ourselves up to just about anything?

Furthermore, with this newfound ability to expand our own archives – mentally and physically – I find it fascinating how really; the cinematic archives will always be incomplete – so long as there is always a cinema industry (and I assume this can be professional or amateur).  Faiers summed this up nicely, and even included his own susceptibility to catch phrases like, “museum” or “collector”.  This made me think of multiple editions of specific films.  In the same way my brother now owns up to 4 copies of the Star Wars Trilogy, I wonder what his impulse is?  What was it about each variation that compelled him to replace, overwrite and write anew his mental archive?  What compelled him to feel that his Star Wars mental archive was incomplete without yet ANOTHER installation of the infamous series?  What was going to make his collection complete – or rather, what would it take to make his collection complete?

Reproductions…

Hmmm…. Reproductions, eh?  Not an easy topic to tackle in our days of digitalization, and image proliferation.  The author however, Barbra Savadoff, did a pretty good job tackling the issues.  I enjoyed the discussion, especially when it seemed pertinent to go up against Walter Benjamin.  Coming from a fine arts background, this paper rekindled a (recently hidden) passion for painting.  My undergraduate training was first and foremost – in painting.  Photography for me, up until recently was 2^nd fiddle.

Reading this article instantly made me think of Sherrie Lavine, and I’m happy she was (all to briefly) mentioned.  Aside from her appropriations, this article in particular made me think of her images where she used the negatives from other artists (like Walker Evans).  Her works, titled “After”(instert artist name here) are what I’m specifically thinking of.  In these works, on the one hand – she’s is creating a ‘copy’ from the original negative (so, the process isn’t necessarily different from her predecssors) but it’s not the original artists who are doing the printing.  So, they doesn’t have the same particular touch to the image printing.  Moreover – when Lavine’s ‘artwork’ is then documented, it has gone a 3^rd step back from the original conception.  The problem here seems to be that she’s challenging the authorship the reproduction.

The one place where I would have wished  Savadoff would have gone further would be in the area of installations.  Photogrpahic documentaion of installations become the replacement and the reproduction at the same time – as installations often cannot be re-created.  This gives the reproduction added stress – perhaps more than that of say, a painting.

Recently, the digitalization of installations into 3D QuickTime Virtual Reality panoramas (QTVR) has turned into an excuse for seeing them in context with their surrounding space.  To me, this seems like an idea that is alive in spirit, but ultimately fails.  You get the 360 vewing of the work, and a limited idea of the space that surrounds it.

Similar to how the viewing angle and scale for a Barnett Newman painting is critical for it’s full appreciation, so too is the presence and space necessary for an installation.  Moreover, often the human presence completes the installation.  To be ‘viewed and experienced’ from the comfort of a desk, chair and perhaps even a couch, completely subvert the original intent.  It seems that the proliferation of the digital images would allow one to “view” the works with their eyes, but this is far different from “seeing” it.

Colour, and tonal range were touched on the article – but colour calibration seemed to be brushed over.  This, to me, seems like another large issue.  Yes, the ab. Ex painters were mentioned, and surely no one will have the spiritual experiences that Rothko strived for in his paintings, or the variety of tones in a Titian or Carravaggio – but I’m thinking more digitally.

With the advent of Photoshop, anyone who is using images can now change the saturation levels and the tonal range of ANY image.  This in tandem with the proliferation of imagery can (as mentioned) continues the dissemination of inaccurate imagery exponentially.  This is breeding a generation of art-appreciators who are largely learning based on uncontrolled and unmediated imagery.

Additionally – the texture of the artworks photographed likely won’t translate well either.  I’m thinking particularly of impressionists.  The “stroke” contained more than just colour information to these painters.  The stroke added movement, fluidity, time and texture to their works.  This is completely lost on a reproduction.  A reproduction averages all strokes – to view in person gives the ability for the eyes to interact with the work and respond.  I can’t help but think of the Roy Lichtenstein painting of the close-up of the Ab-ex stroke, rendered by his ben-day dots.  Similarly – you miss the texture of the photographic image, and the areas where the tonal range is beyond what can be captured on the reproduction – the variety of blacks and whites, and the subtleties in-between.

Preliminary Organization

Given my small (in context) amount of research, it’s interesting to think back to the Sekula article, and our previous readings, which physically measured the size of growing archives.  I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to deal with those archives, or start to organize them for tat matter.  Even the Bertillion archives in Paris would have been monsters to organize, and keep organized!  I guess, the VOLUME of the archive is becoming more apparent to me as a fundamental issue.

So, I have all my papers and research in one big pile.

Now what?

Time to organize.

I have wanted to do this a long time ago.  Procrastination has no doubt kept me from digging into this as much as I wanted to.  The job just seemed to be a little too large for me to even know where to begin!

But – one must start somewhere.

What I’ve stared to do is list topics in which my research falls into.  And, rather than categorizing my research one topic at a time, I’ve decided to start with four topics at a time.  Then, I go through my selected papers and readings, and glean theme specific material for each category.

At this point, I’m sure how many topics I’ll end up, but as an organizing mechanism, this will visually show me how much, and where my evidence is focused.

I’ve found that visually seeing my research has allowed me to gain a superior sense and scope of my work, and the work that is “out there”.  On a side note, I’m also getting excited regarding how this is helping the project come together.  But, then again… maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

More to come soon!

Stuff

After coming across this a few years ago, I just couldn’t resist plopping this down, especially with the upcoming presentation on the essay/show, “The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away”.

My Archive?

Given how I gather information and organize it, it seems like the most natural choice for this project is to create an archive of my research thus far.  This can hopefully accomplish a few things at once:

1)    Clarify the most important pieces of research versus supporting articles

2)    Organize my information into categories

3)    Greatly help in creating an outline for a written thesis (wouldn’t this be nice!)

4)    Help me to see how much I have researched, and where I need to do more research

How this is necessarily going to take place is still in the development stages – I tend to enjoy writing particular like ‘points’ on large pieces of paper and generally making a mess of it with various arrows, circles and bullets courtesy of a trusty sharpie marker.  Although these pieces of paper are an organizational method itself, I am considering photographing them, and posting them to some webspace – perhaps even a blog.  Additionally, I’m considering digitally listing the same information on the large pieces of paper – I can use the computer search functions to quickly find key words or phrases, as I’ve found in articles (I could even link the articles for download!) – In a sense, I’m producing an online archive that could be potentially accessed from anywhere and by anyone.

To begin, I’m going to start a list of photographers who have photographed people with disabilities. These are photographers, which I can reference, contrast with, and critique.  Below their works are keywords that I have used to describe their style and the images they captured.

Photographers:

David Hevey – “The Creatures Time Forgot” – Book focusing on the problems of representation of People with Disabilities.  Author goes on a bit of a rant.  Imagery focuses mainly on the “correct” ways to do Charity Imagery.

Eugene Richards – “A Procession of Them” – Photographs taken from various institutions in Mexico, Armenia, Paraguay, Hungary, Kosovo, and Argentina.

-       Pitiful Images

-       ‘shot from the hip’

-       extremely intimate, yet generic/distant

-       black and white photographs

Abraham Menashe – “Inner Grace” – no text

-     emancipatory spirit

-       uplifting

-       contrast to the heavy institutional images or Richards and Kaplan

-       sense of dignity

Burton Blatt & Fred Kaplan – worked in tandem to create the photographic essay called, “Christmas in Purgatory”

-       Black and White Photographs

-       Identities concealed

-       Exposed inhumane conditions

-       Adults and children

-       Profound sense of isolation and alone

Tobacco Cans

So this is my first blog entry ever.  I know, strange eh? I find I am often interested to read others, however I am slightly self-conscious and find that I hesitate to put my incomplete thoughts out into the world for others to read.  That being said, I guess it’s time to break the ice and trek into new territory:

I’ve been at my grandparents’ farm a lot lately.  After living and working his own vineyard in Niagara on the Lake for roughly 50 years, my grandfather passed away earlier this year in March.  For now, the remaining family have taken over the farm responsibilities, and prepared the vineyard for perhaps its last harvest under our family name.  This alone was daunting, however, so was the task of clean up all the crap.  You see – my grandfather was a packrat.

He kept everything!  Everything on a farm, and to a farmer – likely has some use later on down the road.  For example, he saved every lighter that he ever used, with plans to remove the remaining bits of flit from them.  Multiples of tools were plentiful, as were his trademark plastic cans of loose Players tobacco that he smoked for countless years.

I remember that he always rolled his own cigarettes.  He used to teach me how to do it too.  But as us family members started to clean up the ‘junk’ that we found, grandpa’s filing system (or lack of) started to emerge.  Those tobacco containers were everywhere!  And not only everywhere – they were labeled too!  Perhaps that’s why this became his brand.  A cigarette taste he could deal with, and a container for nuts, bolts, seeds, nails or whatever else was lying around!

All this talk on archives and filing systems got me thinking about this ‘filing system’ of his.  Nothing necessarily profound, I suppose, but just early memories and meandering thoughts on how we all (whether we’re aware of it or not) create and making these filing systems for ourselves.

But, I guess I’m interested to figure out what’s happening now.  He had so many tools and so much stuff, that to get rid of all of it – we first had to re-organize it and now we’re dismantling it. Are there consequences to this? It seems like a delicate task to be meddling with any of the aforementioned items.  The archive (or at least this one specifically) is tied so close to memory.  Changing, manipulating and altering could bring to the foreground feelings and emotions of family members and prove just how valuable the memory of it[him] is.  It could be both cathartic and traumatic.  Are all personal archives this way?

Also, with plans to sell the farm (likely with many items still in the barns) what does this ‘transfer of ownership’ entail?  Can personality become detached from archives, when the items in them are inherently personal?