The Meeting
Location: White Cube Archive
Present: All
Time: 11-6pm, Thursday, 1 March 2012
Archive: Notes
Archive is a source of knowledge, one of the ideas of commons and how to share commons – in this case, does the commons regulate the usage of archival knowledge? In our experiences of the four archival space we’re entered thus far– two of which were private – White Cube, John Latham – and two of which were public – Tate and British Museum, the following key themes have been raised:
1. Notions of public and private. At first this was simply a spatial awareness of the archive as a space that mediates the public and private dialectic, and this then extended into the notions of information as public or private property, as we discovered more and more how the two Acts – Data Protection 1998 and Freedom of Information 2000 – affected the way archives were organised and managed, for example, the British Museum Central Archive is a historical archive and so is totally public, the Tate is organised along three tiers – current, semi-current and historical, and the White Cube operates as a private archive, being a private space, yet is opening itself to the public. The John Latham archive is public, and currently undergoing a project to digitize its archive with a team from Camberwell. Notions of accessibility are raised. In all archives, certain contracts/applications need to be filled/signed, aside from the British Museum, which just requires an online request.
2. The separation between documentation, administration archives and artworks. We have entered into cultural institutions, and in each case, the documentation is separate. In the White Cube, the artworks are in warehouse storage (though there is a small space for the archive), in the British Museum they have object archives as well as documentation for each department, with the central archives governing only administration material regarding the running the running of the museum, correspondence, meeting minutes, reading applications, the Tate has the archive, which was again separate from the documentation. Artworks were stored in the Tate Modern’s art storage spaces. This raises questions on notions of materiality and material production, as well as issues of data protection – documentation requires a completely different environment due to the fragility of paper and photographic materials. The distinction is between the immaterial value of the documentation archive and the material value of the artworks.
3. Notes on the lexicon and subjectivity within space that should be or are expected to be objective spaces –There was a sense of archive as a territory, constantly negotiating the importance of the space, in which Archivists have to constantly negotiate the ideas of the archive, its practices, organisation, its importance, and its historical value, its internal usage and public access. It is managed practically as opposed to aesthetically – more than once, archivists say it is about common sense more than anything. However, archivists do make note of the subjectivity that comes with running an archive. The archives operates as a state within a state so to speak, a sort of border where information is passing through, is collected, a destination and a crossroads, a point of reference, and an ongoing history.
4. At this point, Archive as word (Derrida) and Archive as Space (Lefebvre) and the temporal (Bogor)…The Archive as space with reference to Lefebvre’s science of space, both an end and a beginning: in terms of space, the Tate archive was an ideal example of unfolding spaces, in that it was spatially staged, with some rooms open to the public, others not, such as the main storage space. It was also staged in terms of content, through the categorizing of material according to current, semi-current and historic, which is guided by the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This means that law, and as a result politics, become very much part of the archival space.
The Latham archive, though most literally connected to the notion of archive as house of knowledge (as comparable to the British Museum, and a traditional archive in that it is a full body of documents created by a single person, (see definition of artificial and true archive in the SCAM documentation in references to para-practice). The notion of archive and object comes up here, with items within the Latham space being “archival” in that they are documents of the artist’s life? This can be compared to the British Museum, in that departments contain archives that relate to objects themselves, thus touching on the object as archive (see talk on the Cyrus Scroll).
5. Digitization, in all cases the digitization of archives as somewhat of an unchartered territory was acknowledged….though the Tate Archives have a robust digital system, while the White Cube is developing its own…though the problem is more to do with the archiving of digital correspondence and information and also dealing more with the virtual as opposed to physical storage space, making the Latham space interesting in that it is approaching the digitization of the archive as a creative project as opposed to systematic.
6. Value.
Gaps in the archive – ie. Charlie’s radio show who had to remove aspects due to ownership/privacy etc..or in the case of Latham separating himself from the APG archive..to gaps in the ICA archive..thus it gives at times, an incomplete image of history?
And what of ownership? Tate, V&A – is this information owned? Is it public? How to access? You have to earn access into archives..ie. British Transport museum – public/private, trying to access you have to through certain loopholes to get to the information, and once you get through you face certain restrictions, too. (see British Transport Museum tab) They make it very hard, as Tate, British Transport Museum has an online catalogue that says information is public but it is aesthetic information?
7. Archive as Resource and our approach to it. Archive as commons performed through the institution..relfects the institution, so we can’t say that it is inde Archive as framework. Institution in an Institution.
Location: White Cube Archive
Present: All
Time: 11-6pm, Thursday, 1 March 2012
Archive: Notes
Archive is a source of knowledge, one of the ideas of commons and how to share commons – in this case, does the commons regulate the usage of archival knowledge? In our experiences of the four archival space we’re entered thus far– two of which were private – White Cube, John Latham – and two of which were public – Tate and British Museum, the following key themes have been raised:
1. Notions of public and private. At first this was simply a spatial awareness of the archive as a space that mediates the public and private dialectic, and this then extended into the notions of information as public or private property, as we discovered more and more how the two Acts – Data Protection 1998 and Freedom of Information 2000 – affected the way archives were organised and managed, for example, the British Museum Central Archive is a historical archive and so is totally public, the Tate is organised along three tiers – current, semi-current and historical, and the White Cube operates as a private archive, being a private space, yet is opening itself to the public. The John Latham archive is public, and currently undergoing a project to digitize its archive with a team from Camberwell. Notions of accessibility are raised. In all archives, certain contracts/applications need to be filled/signed, aside from the British Museum, which just requires an online request.
2. The separation between documentation, administration archives and artworks. We have entered into cultural institutions, and in each case, the documentation is separate. In the White Cube, the artworks are in warehouse storage (though there is a small space for the archive), in the British Museum they have object archives as well as documentation for each department, with the central archives governing only administration material regarding the running the running of the museum, correspondence, meeting minutes, reading applications, the Tate has the archive, which was again separate from the documentation. Artworks were stored in the Tate Modern’s art storage spaces. This raises questions on notions of materiality and material production, as well as issues of data protection – documentation requires a completely different environment due to the fragility of paper and photographic materials. The distinction is between the immaterial value of the documentation archive and the material value of the artworks.
3. Notes on the lexicon and subjectivity within space that should be or are expected to be objective spaces –There was a sense of archive as a territory, constantly negotiating the importance of the space, in which Archivists have to constantly negotiate the ideas of the archive, its practices, organisation, its importance, and its historical value, its internal usage and public access. It is managed practically as opposed to aesthetically – more than once, archivists say it is about common sense more than anything. However, archivists do make note of the subjectivity that comes with running an archive. The archives operates as a state within a state so to speak, a sort of border where information is passing through, is collected, a destination and a crossroads, a point of reference, and an ongoing history.
4. At this point, Archive as word (Derrida) and Archive as Space (Lefebvre) and the temporal (Bogor)…The Archive as space with reference to Lefebvre’s science of space, both an end and a beginning: in terms of space, the Tate archive was an ideal example of unfolding spaces, in that it was spatially staged, with some rooms open to the public, others not, such as the main storage space. It was also staged in terms of content, through the categorizing of material according to current, semi-current and historic, which is guided by the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This means that law, and as a result politics, become very much part of the archival space.
The Latham archive, though most literally connected to the notion of archive as house of knowledge (as comparable to the British Museum, and a traditional archive in that it is a full body of documents created by a single person, (see definition of artificial and true archive in the SCAM documentation in references to para-practice). The notion of archive and object comes up here, with items within the Latham space being “archival” in that they are documents of the artist’s life? This can be compared to the British Museum, in that departments contain archives that relate to objects themselves, thus touching on the object as archive (see talk on the Cyrus Scroll).
5. Digitization, in all cases the digitization of archives as somewhat of an unchartered territory was acknowledged….though the Tate Archives have a robust digital system, while the White Cube is developing its own…though the problem is more to do with the archiving of digital correspondence and information and also dealing more with the virtual as opposed to physical storage space, making the Latham space interesting in that it is approaching the digitization of the archive as a creative project as opposed to systematic.
6. Value.
Gaps in the archive – ie. Charlie’s radio show who had to remove aspects due to ownership/privacy etc..or in the case of Latham separating himself from the APG archive..to gaps in the ICA archive..thus it gives at times, an incomplete image of history?
And what of ownership? Tate, V&A – is this information owned? Is it public? How to access? You have to earn access into archives..ie. British Transport museum – public/private, trying to access you have to through certain loopholes to get to the information, and once you get through you face certain restrictions, too. (see British Transport Museum tab) They make it very hard, as Tate, British Transport Museum has an online catalogue that says information is public but it is aesthetic information?
7. Archive as Resource and our approach to it. Archive as commons performed through the institution..relfects the institution, so we can’t say that it is inde Archive as framework. Institution in an Institution.