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The Archive

Ernst W, Digital Memory and the Archive, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2013 In a collection of ten essays by media theorist Wolfgang Ernst, Digital Memory and the Archive presents a technocentric view of media archaeology. The essays are laid out in three sections, bookended by an introduction by Jussi Parikka and a more informal interview with Ernst by Geertz Lovink.

In the second essay, Media Archaeography: Method and Machine versus the History and Narrative of Media, Ernst writes about the ‘hardware of culture’ and describes media technology as having different modes of activation that ‘reveal their essence only in their operation’. Devices that can never physically change, but in their use be activated in new ways.

“If a radio from a museum collection is reactivated to play broadcast channels of the present, this changes its status: it is not a historical object anymore but actively generates sensual and informational presence.” Pg 58

This example of the radio changing status gave me some interesting ways of thinking about my VHS work, especially now that I’m considering recording 3D computer generated imagery onto an older analogue medium. Am I now changing its status from a historical object to one of a modern ‘informational presence’?

Van Alphen E, Staging the Archive, Reaktion Books, London, 2014 The key aim of this book by Ernst Van Alphen is to explore the history of artists who use their practice to “mobilize the model of the archive”. It begins by examining the shift of art culture away from narrative and towards the archive. Van Alphen then goes on to ask the reader the main question of the book, “what exactly does it mean that archives are no longer considered to be passive guardians of an inherited legacy but instead active agents that shape personal identity and social and cultural memory?” Pg14

In chapter two, Storage, Van Alphen looks at the very definition of the archive and it’s functions of storage. He brings up the distinction between collecting and storing, with collecting being selective placement of something into the archive, and storing being a blind, mass accumulation of things into an archive. He argues that this is something that isn’t always clear within archival art, and to define it we need to analyse the type of archival practice used by the artist. To illustrate this Van Alphen looks at various early contemporary artists working with archival modes, and argues their type of archivism. Projects from artists such as Duchamp, Broodthaers, and Boltanski are looked at in depth.

Zaatari A, Against Photography, Kaph Books, Beirut, 2018 Throughout the text Akram Zaatari and others often relate archival images with archaeology. I think this was meant in a much more literal way than the term used by Ernst, who defines media archaeology being “both a method and an aesthetics of practicing media criticism”. I find the more literal analogy quite interesting as we are indeed unearthing artefacts that would otherwise be lost to history, in an attempt to preserve and put on display for the world to see. In the opening essay, we are told about “situating the artist in the role of agent of historic memory, while also propelling the archival document into the realm of contemporary art.” Another interesting point brought up was the term post museum condition, one ascribed to the AIF by Catherine David. I like the idea of that term and feel that working without the boundaries of a traditional museum allows the AIF to operate in new and exciting ways, and the idea of a museum “unbound to space”, that could exist physically, online, or through reiterations of the archive made by the artists involved.

In discussing his work Against Photography, Zaatari mentions an interesting term that I find quite fascinating to consider with found photography. He mentions the word transactions when speaking about events that lead to prints or negatives being damaged or marked. He defines a transaction in this sense as “non photographic practices that affect the object or negative”. I find this choice of term interesting as the word transaction implies a two way exchange. Is this meant to imply an exchange between the object itself - which in the case of analogue process can be a living and constantly changing object - and the current holder of the print who may have altered the object? Or perhaps between the original maker of the object - who authored the image as a tangible object - and the current holder of the print?

New Media/Post-Digital

Zylinska J & Kuc K, Photomediations: A Reader, Open Humanities Press, London, 2016 This collection of essays has been a fantastic starting point that has led to the discovery of new research and ideas for this project, and has probably been my most read text to date. This was the main push in the direction of new media and looking at the future of photography. Some of the key texts include The Creative Power of Nonhuman Photography by Joanna Zylinska; Differential Interventions: Images as Operative Tools by Aud Sissel Hoel and Frank Lindseth; an interview with Charlotte Cotton and Jonathan Shaw; and Authorship, Collaboration, Computation? Into the Realm of Similar Images by Katrina Sluis. These texts help to create points of departure, especially in terms of new imaging technologies, such as hunting cameras mentioned in Nonhuman Photography, and warhead guidance cameras in Images as Operative Tools. These more experimental techniques are something that I like to think about when making my own work.

Philosophy/Media Theory

Benjamin W, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1938 In this well known piece of work, Walter Benjamin begins by tracing the history and introduction of mechanical reproduction from woodcuts through to photography. Benjamin argues the lack of authorship or history, and that once the history of a unique work is removed through mechanical reproduction, the aura of the work is diminished. In relation to my own project, Benjamin’s work also touches on the idea of the masses and the implications that reprinting of image and film has on the public as ‘the technological reproducibility of the artwork changes the relation of the masses to art.” Pg 36  Though critical of the way that reproducing a work removes it’s aura, Benjamin was much more critical of this happening in moving image, and less so with photographic work.

Flusser V, Into the Universe of Technical Images, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1985 In this text, Vilem Flusser attempts to distinguish and define the difference between traditional and technical images. Throughout the text he offers many different meanings of what these two constitute, however as admitted by Flusser in a warning to readers at the start of the work, this text offers more questions than answers.

In the section To Make Concrete, Flusser states that in terms of technical images, it is impossible to create a physical surface from individual particles such as photons of light or atoms that make up bytes; and that we can only create a virtual representation of an image. I find this quite interesting to think about in relation to my research question, which asks whether my images can act as physical, 3-dimensional objects that function to convey the vast amounts of knowledge

The intention of this gesture is to make particles into two-dimensional images... It is, in fact, impossible to gather particles into surfaces. Since every surface is composed of infinitely many particles, an infinity of points would have to be assembled to produce actual surfaces. Therefore the envisioner can produce only a virtual image, that is, a surface full of intervals, like a raster. The envisioner must be content with the appearance of surface, with trompe l’oeil. Pg 21

“The photographic object as an excavation site.”

Throughout the text Zaatari and others often relate archival images with archaeology. I find this analogy quite fitting as we are indeed unearthing artefacts that would otherwise be lost to history, in an attempt to preserve and put on display for the world to see. In the opening essay, we are told about “situating the artist in the role of agent of historic memory, while also propelling the archival document into the realm of contemporary art.” I think the main difference between actual archaeology and this kind of photographic archaeology lies perhaps in what we do after we dig. Thinking about the term agent of historic memory - we are agents - which implies further involvement than just purely uncovering and displaying an object in a museum setting. “The power does not lie in the images we choose to preserve, but how we activate them to generate new narratives.” This lead onto some questions posed to the reader, of which I found three quite interesting to think about in terms of my own practice:

What is the role of the artist in the construction of common history?

What is the place for personal memory within this history?

How can multiple voices be interpreted through one voice?

These are questions I hope to continue to think about and hopefully find my own answers. Thinking back to my project last year I feel these questions could have been extremely helpful had I considered them before starting my project. Another interesting point brought up was the term post museum condition, one ascribed to the AIF by Catherine David. I like the idea of that term and feel that working without the boundaries of a traditional museum allows the AIF to operate in new and exciting ways, and the idea of a museum “unbound to space”, that could exist physically, online, or through reiterations of the archive made by the artists involved. In discussing his work Against Photography, Zaatari mentions an interesting term that I find quite fascinating to consider with found photography. He mentions the word transactions when speaking about events that lead to prints or negatives being damaged or marked. He defines a transaction in this sense as “non photographic practices that effect the object or negative”. I find this choice of term interesting as the word transaction implies a two way exchange. Is this meant to imply an exchange between the object itself - which in the case of analogue process can be a living and constantly changing object - and the current holder of the print who may have altered the object? Or perhaps between the original maker of the object - who authored the image as a tangible object - and the current holder of the print? Regardless of who it is that makes these marks on the image, it suggests that they are constantly updated and evolving, similar to growth rings in a tree. Zaatari mentions reproduction traces in analogue photography, which I find parallel to digital in the current age of geotagging, metadata, and data tracking. The images from his Against Photography series are at first glance blank pages that are wrinkled or blank negatives cracked by time and chemical reaction. However we learn that these are images from the archive that have been scanned with an ‘image-blind’ scanner, one which only looks at relief. The result is a somewhat 3D mapping of an image that ignores the subject matter and focuses purely on these transactions, cuts, scratches, tears, folds, cracks, etc. I think the idea of being image-blind is a really interesting way to look when considering the photograph as an object, however without the use of these machines it is nearly impossible to look past the photograph’s subject matter. At the very end of the book I found a paragraph the really inspired me and made me think about the archive a little differently in terms of how I could image the idea of an archive.

A photograph changes upon the vanishing of its referent. The death of a living person represents a threshold in the life of their portrait. Nahla Haidous’s picture would not have hung in public had she not been killed in the Qana Massacre. When the body vanishes, each of its descriptions is recalled to fulfil a new function. A picture hangs, an anecdote is told, a gesture is re-enacted in memory of. There are so many ways to re-enact significant traits of a description. Each trait would privilege a story over others as if withdrawing those others from description. How about withdrawing the portrait of Haidous from the reproduction of the framed portrait, completely? What would the frame tell us? And what about withdrawing the framed object completely? What would the shadow tell about the object? And if withdrawal continues successively, what would remain? A 4 x 5″ Kodak Ektachrome sheet of an EPP stock type 2252, discontinued in 2009? Or is it simply the number 0113sh? And what if even this Ektachrome sheet was no longer there? Would the memory of a light box surface have anything to tell? Do acid-free boxes in cold storage remember? And if there is an after-image to every image, is it recordable? Retrievable? An after image is ‘a visual impression of a vivid sensation retained after stimulus has ceased’. An after-image is photography.