ARCHIVAL
PRESENCE
PRESENCE
How can we work with archives in the absence of direct access to them?
How can we provide a meaningful interaction with archives when the physical interaction with them (for instance, touch) is limited?
How do digital archiving practices affect our notions of archival presence?
How can we provide a meaningful interaction with archives when the physical interaction with them (for instance, touch) is limited?
How do digital archiving practices affect our notions of archival presence?
Cover image: a 3d scan of MS210, an Ethiopic manuscript written in Ge'ez (ca. XVIII century). Scan by Xavi Aure.
Discussion participants:
Amy Goodwin, traditional signwriter, illustration educator, Falmouth University
Armand De Filippo, researcher, curator, Honorary Fellow of School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester
Lisa Sheppy, artist and researcher, Centre For Print Research, UWE Bristol
Xavi Aure, Research Fellow - Centre for Fine Print Research, UWE Bristol
Amy Goodwin, traditional signwriter, illustration educator, Falmouth University
Armand De Filippo, researcher, curator, Honorary Fellow of School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester
Lisa Sheppy, artist and researcher, Centre For Print Research, UWE Bristol
Xavi Aure, Research Fellow - Centre for Fine Print Research, UWE Bristol
Moderator: Ksenia Kopalova
Encountering a manuscript is not necessarily a tame, benign experience
Ksenia
I would like to start from a question about your practice and the ways you treat the idea of presence in your own work: what kinds of presence are important to you, what kind of obstacles do you encounter? To give an example: as an illustrator, I don’t really like my own presence in my work, and try to eliminate it as much as possible. Maybe there is something similar (or something opposite) in how you approach the topic of presence in archives?
Armand
It’s interesting to hear you speak of presence as your own presence, because my initial thought was: do I approach presence, or does presence approach me? It reminded me of a pivotal encounter with a manuscript which directed subsequent research. That was finding a manuscript in a cupboard, an unusual experience in itself - because it’s rare when we manage to get our hands on these things, something close to a thousand years old. It was the smell, the odour, that affected me quite strongly - it immediately triggered a taste memory, that of something I experienced about 40 years ago as a child. That moment changed completely my perception of what a manuscript might be, and how we might be able to engage with a manuscript, something way more material, vibrant and multi-sensorial than we’d usually think. This triggered some new understanding of how to enable encounters with manuscripts for public audiences, since typically it’s very hard to do that - they would typically be displayed in closed glass cases, and even an established high-profile academic finds it hard to get their hands on the manuscripts, with archivists or conservators turning the pages for them. It may be difficult to get the sense of the material, or how heavy it is.
I was thinking and trying to work out how to convey that material presence to a wider audience and what it might mean in terms of changing and shaping the meaning-making with manuscripts on the basis of embodied encounters with manuscripts, rather than purely visual ones.
In that sense some of the work that I’ve been doing is informed by the ecological process of rewilding, in terms of how the spaces in which we encounter manuscripts can be less prescribed and more open to uncertainty and adventure. Encountering a manuscript is not necessarily a tame, benign experience. It could be full of potential challenges and uncertainty.
I would like to start from a question about your practice and the ways you treat the idea of presence in your own work: what kinds of presence are important to you, what kind of obstacles do you encounter? To give an example: as an illustrator, I don’t really like my own presence in my work, and try to eliminate it as much as possible. Maybe there is something similar (or something opposite) in how you approach the topic of presence in archives?
Armand
It’s interesting to hear you speak of presence as your own presence, because my initial thought was: do I approach presence, or does presence approach me? It reminded me of a pivotal encounter with a manuscript which directed subsequent research. That was finding a manuscript in a cupboard, an unusual experience in itself - because it’s rare when we manage to get our hands on these things, something close to a thousand years old. It was the smell, the odour, that affected me quite strongly - it immediately triggered a taste memory, that of something I experienced about 40 years ago as a child. That moment changed completely my perception of what a manuscript might be, and how we might be able to engage with a manuscript, something way more material, vibrant and multi-sensorial than we’d usually think. This triggered some new understanding of how to enable encounters with manuscripts for public audiences, since typically it’s very hard to do that - they would typically be displayed in closed glass cases, and even an established high-profile academic finds it hard to get their hands on the manuscripts, with archivists or conservators turning the pages for them. It may be difficult to get the sense of the material, or how heavy it is.
I was thinking and trying to work out how to convey that material presence to a wider audience and what it might mean in terms of changing and shaping the meaning-making with manuscripts on the basis of embodied encounters with manuscripts, rather than purely visual ones.
In that sense some of the work that I’ve been doing is informed by the ecological process of rewilding, in terms of how the spaces in which we encounter manuscripts can be less prescribed and more open to uncertainty and adventure. Encountering a manuscript is not necessarily a tame, benign experience. It could be full of potential challenges and uncertainty.
Armand De Filippo, 'Outside and Beyond: the manuscript as object and the implications for interpretive settings', PhD fieldwork 'Displayscape'.
The display consists of audio and video, vellum stretched on a frame, 'deconstructed' manuscript materials openly available to sensory engagement. In the middle is a four-drawer plinth, atop which is the manuscript (MS210) in a glass case and to the side attached to the cabinet by a flexible arm, is an iPad with a digitised 2D version of the manuscript. All drawers were available to open and contained further manuscript materials, including scents.
Photo: Armand De Filippo
The display consists of audio and video, vellum stretched on a frame, 'deconstructed' manuscript materials openly available to sensory engagement. In the middle is a four-drawer plinth, atop which is the manuscript (MS210) in a glass case and to the side attached to the cabinet by a flexible arm, is an iPad with a digitised 2D version of the manuscript. All drawers were available to open and contained further manuscript materials, including scents.
Photo: Armand De Filippo
Ksenia
Could you give a couple of examples of how we can orchestrate those more flexible encounters with manuscripts - either from your own practice or other people’s?
Armand
In my own work what I did to try and enable this is. I did try to set up an experimental exhibition in a couple of different well-known institutions, who both said it was ‘too experimental’. So what I had to do was set up what I called a ‘displayscape’, which was devoid of all interpretation: there was no conventional textual or audio interpretation. And what I did was I ‘deregulated’ a manuscript, ‘exploded’ it. There was a manuscript at the centre of the exhibition, displayed conventionally in a glass case on a plinth, but in the drawers around it and on the floor below it, there were all the materials: fleshy, bony, oozy elements that tell what a manuscript is, - together with a 2d digitised version of the manuscript, and an audio-visual semi-immersive screens with films which broadly took the manuscript from its current state through its component parts to its animal non-human form, with a soundtrack consisting of a conventional, what-one-would-expect-mediaeval song, and some vocalised words from the Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book. And on top of that there was an asynchronistic soundtrack from a New Zealand-based ‘uneasy listening’ band, quite a menacing track written by a German composer, Ralf Hildenbeutel, written for an Italian mafia TV series. I spoke to both and they were both okay with using the sound in this way.
So that created an immersive space in which participants could go and find their own way. They could touch everything, smell everything, - there were lots of synthetic odours in the room as well. I had a piece of parchment from a piece of vellum on a frame in the room, as well as theatrical blood. There were dry mixed inks and wet mixed inks, which could all be tasted by the participants. All the participants wore a subcam, which was in the pair of glasses that they wore, so we could then watch the film back together and talk about what they felt. That came with lots of interesting perspectives on what it means to engage with a manuscript. In particular, there was a participant without sight, who never engaged with a manuscript before, but through this was able to do so. That was quite profound and emotional - I think, for both of us.
Could you give a couple of examples of how we can orchestrate those more flexible encounters with manuscripts - either from your own practice or other people’s?
Armand
In my own work what I did to try and enable this is. I did try to set up an experimental exhibition in a couple of different well-known institutions, who both said it was ‘too experimental’. So what I had to do was set up what I called a ‘displayscape’, which was devoid of all interpretation: there was no conventional textual or audio interpretation. And what I did was I ‘deregulated’ a manuscript, ‘exploded’ it. There was a manuscript at the centre of the exhibition, displayed conventionally in a glass case on a plinth, but in the drawers around it and on the floor below it, there were all the materials: fleshy, bony, oozy elements that tell what a manuscript is, - together with a 2d digitised version of the manuscript, and an audio-visual semi-immersive screens with films which broadly took the manuscript from its current state through its component parts to its animal non-human form, with a soundtrack consisting of a conventional, what-one-would-expect-mediaeval song, and some vocalised words from the Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book. And on top of that there was an asynchronistic soundtrack from a New Zealand-based ‘uneasy listening’ band, quite a menacing track written by a German composer, Ralf Hildenbeutel, written for an Italian mafia TV series. I spoke to both and they were both okay with using the sound in this way.
So that created an immersive space in which participants could go and find their own way. They could touch everything, smell everything, - there were lots of synthetic odours in the room as well. I had a piece of parchment from a piece of vellum on a frame in the room, as well as theatrical blood. There were dry mixed inks and wet mixed inks, which could all be tasted by the participants. All the participants wore a subcam, which was in the pair of glasses that they wore, so we could then watch the film back together and talk about what they felt. That came with lots of interesting perspectives on what it means to engage with a manuscript. In particular, there was a participant without sight, who never engaged with a manuscript before, but through this was able to do so. That was quite profound and emotional - I think, for both of us.
Armand De Filippo, 'Outside and Beyond: the manuscript as object and the implications for interpretive settings', PhD fieldwork 'Displayscape'.
Manuscript materials: content of the drawers, including oak galls, and a range of colour pigments, feather and reed quill, hemp twine, beeswax, and a fragment of parchment, not fully prepared and smooth enough to be written upon.
Photo: Armand De Filippo
Manuscript materials: content of the drawers, including oak galls, and a range of colour pigments, feather and reed quill, hemp twine, beeswax, and a fragment of parchment, not fully prepared and smooth enough to be written upon.
Photo: Armand De Filippo
When we talk about presence, we also must talk about absence
Ksenia
It’s so interesting that you mention how the conventional ways of displaying an archive do not convey the multi-sensorial nature of encountering a manuscript, which results in us having to stage it in almost a theatrical way. Was this kind of a bodily interaction with an archive something important in anyone else’s work?
Lisa
I’ve used archives quite a lot in my art practice as starting points for ideas. The first time I did this was when I worked in the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire. I went there in search of a memory I had as a child - it was a memory of a dress owned by Charlotte Brontë. It was not only just about the dress, but also about my mother and my childhood. So it was as much about her, as about the object itself. This was a part of my Masters in Multidisciplinary printmaking at UWE in Bristol. When I got there, it turned out that the actual dress did not exist, so it might have been my imagination - so when we talk about presence, we also must talk about absence. In the museum they had a collection of other objects that belonged to the Brontë sisters, and they allowed me to handle those objects that had known provenance - such as white lace gloves and shoes, the space was ‘alarmed’, it was a very precious, tense environment. And because of that I was only allowed to use very basic means of recording my feelings and thoughts - only pencil and paper, and drawing directly from observation. That was a unique experience with the archive, but it was very important for my work, since it not only allowed me to experience the objects closely and over a concentrated period of time, but also to connect with the Brontë narrative from which I took into a series of glass and textiles work. These themes I developed from the archive evolved over a number of years after those encounters with presence and absence.
Ksenia
It is interesting that in this interaction with an archive your own presence has become something that can almost ‘ruin’ a certain atmosphere and a very fragile structure. And no digital recording was allowed?
Lisa
No, nothing! In a way, it forced me to find ways to interact with an archive in a different way. The space was very silent, just me and the museum curator.
It’s so interesting that you mention how the conventional ways of displaying an archive do not convey the multi-sensorial nature of encountering a manuscript, which results in us having to stage it in almost a theatrical way. Was this kind of a bodily interaction with an archive something important in anyone else’s work?
Lisa
I’ve used archives quite a lot in my art practice as starting points for ideas. The first time I did this was when I worked in the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Yorkshire. I went there in search of a memory I had as a child - it was a memory of a dress owned by Charlotte Brontë. It was not only just about the dress, but also about my mother and my childhood. So it was as much about her, as about the object itself. This was a part of my Masters in Multidisciplinary printmaking at UWE in Bristol. When I got there, it turned out that the actual dress did not exist, so it might have been my imagination - so when we talk about presence, we also must talk about absence. In the museum they had a collection of other objects that belonged to the Brontë sisters, and they allowed me to handle those objects that had known provenance - such as white lace gloves and shoes, the space was ‘alarmed’, it was a very precious, tense environment. And because of that I was only allowed to use very basic means of recording my feelings and thoughts - only pencil and paper, and drawing directly from observation. That was a unique experience with the archive, but it was very important for my work, since it not only allowed me to experience the objects closely and over a concentrated period of time, but also to connect with the Brontë narrative from which I took into a series of glass and textiles work. These themes I developed from the archive evolved over a number of years after those encounters with presence and absence.
Ksenia
It is interesting that in this interaction with an archive your own presence has become something that can almost ‘ruin’ a certain atmosphere and a very fragile structure. And no digital recording was allowed?
Lisa
No, nothing! In a way, it forced me to find ways to interact with an archive in a different way. The space was very silent, just me and the museum curator.
Archives can be quite static, and this opens up space for thinking how they can be more interactive, interdisciplinary, physical
Ksenia
It’s so interesting how certain means of documentation, like drawing, are considered to be ‘safer’ than others. As an illustrator I encounter this sort of attitude all the time. Amy, I was wondering if this intersects with your experiences, since you use drawing - and signwriting - as a way to engage with archives quite a lot in your work?
Amy
I sit somewhere between Lisa and Armand. I definitely agree with Lisa’s point that with presence comes absence, they coexist, but my approach is that I use absence to produce presence and fill gaps. My practice of signwriting is responding to those gaps - through using found material, collating it together, uncovering things that hadn’t been properly catalogued, through my own archival research and oral history collation. Nevertheless, I still allow for gaps and dubious moments to be given space in the work that I’m creating.
Taking it back to what we discussed at the beginning, the archive that I create is an illustrated space, but it’s an active space, and it’s participated in by the viewer who gets a physical experience of connection with it. For me archives can be quite static: everything is behind glass, or you’re not allowed to touch things, or need to wear gloves, or there may be, as Lisa said, restrictions in documentation methods. For me that opens up space for thinking what an archive can be, how it can be more interactive, interdisciplinary, physical. I’m concerned with how to take that further and document that to display alongside the original archive.
For instance, my current project is a collaboration with the London College of Fashion. There are three of us, we are academic makers who are working with an archive that has become inaccessible because it has been moved to a new site. We only have the catalogue entries: we cannot go through an archive and see the physical presence. But we are making a work that has a physical presence and will result in an exhibition responding to the catalogue entries and thus almost making a new presence. It’s an interesting experience, since we are filling gaps, but these gaps are there just temporarily.
For a long time I worked independently, but now, since this is a collaboration, it forms new ways of thinking of what presence can be, how you can respond to the catalogue entries - and we became hyper-focused on that because that’s all we can access. So we are starting to interrogate these catalogue entries in a way that you wouldn’t normally interrogate such material. It’s a new way of working for me that has certainly stemmed from an interest in gaps and absences.
Ksenia
Would you say the catalogue entries have become physical objects for you?
Amy
Absolutely, the catalogue entries have become the presence. Also, the London College of Fashion archive existed for quite some time, and was maintained by a number of archivists, who had their own voices. And with time you start to recognise those voices - in marks they use or phrasing, and we are trying to call that out in the responses that we’re making.
It’s so interesting how certain means of documentation, like drawing, are considered to be ‘safer’ than others. As an illustrator I encounter this sort of attitude all the time. Amy, I was wondering if this intersects with your experiences, since you use drawing - and signwriting - as a way to engage with archives quite a lot in your work?
Amy
I sit somewhere between Lisa and Armand. I definitely agree with Lisa’s point that with presence comes absence, they coexist, but my approach is that I use absence to produce presence and fill gaps. My practice of signwriting is responding to those gaps - through using found material, collating it together, uncovering things that hadn’t been properly catalogued, through my own archival research and oral history collation. Nevertheless, I still allow for gaps and dubious moments to be given space in the work that I’m creating.
Taking it back to what we discussed at the beginning, the archive that I create is an illustrated space, but it’s an active space, and it’s participated in by the viewer who gets a physical experience of connection with it. For me archives can be quite static: everything is behind glass, or you’re not allowed to touch things, or need to wear gloves, or there may be, as Lisa said, restrictions in documentation methods. For me that opens up space for thinking what an archive can be, how it can be more interactive, interdisciplinary, physical. I’m concerned with how to take that further and document that to display alongside the original archive.
For instance, my current project is a collaboration with the London College of Fashion. There are three of us, we are academic makers who are working with an archive that has become inaccessible because it has been moved to a new site. We only have the catalogue entries: we cannot go through an archive and see the physical presence. But we are making a work that has a physical presence and will result in an exhibition responding to the catalogue entries and thus almost making a new presence. It’s an interesting experience, since we are filling gaps, but these gaps are there just temporarily.
For a long time I worked independently, but now, since this is a collaboration, it forms new ways of thinking of what presence can be, how you can respond to the catalogue entries - and we became hyper-focused on that because that’s all we can access. So we are starting to interrogate these catalogue entries in a way that you wouldn’t normally interrogate such material. It’s a new way of working for me that has certainly stemmed from an interest in gaps and absences.
Ksenia
Would you say the catalogue entries have become physical objects for you?
Amy
Absolutely, the catalogue entries have become the presence. Also, the London College of Fashion archive existed for quite some time, and was maintained by a number of archivists, who had their own voices. And with time you start to recognise those voices - in marks they use or phrasing, and we are trying to call that out in the responses that we’re making.
Amy Goodwin, 'The Archive as Illustrated Space' (2020)
Ksenia
It’s interesting that you say how sometimes we have to construct a separate presence to convey an archive. I wonder how this sits within your respective practices, since, for instance, in social sciences the presence of the researcher is often treated as an obstacle to be eliminated as much as possible, or at least taken into account. In some of the art practices, on the contrary, the presence of the artist sometimes becomes the core part of the work. Xavi, maybe you could share a bit of your experience here?
Xavi
My background is in the conservation of paintings. I have always been fascinated with the material aspect of paintings and other cultural heritage artefacts. And I am almost a bit obsessed with marks and traces on the surface. Looking at those marks and traces of the artist is what allows me to understand the surface and I capture those with the technology that I use. Since I left conservation I have been working on this aspect: trying to use technology to capture the details, to cut through the surface of materiality of manuscripts, to capture these traces - left not only by the makers, but also those who read those manuscripts. With paintings, for instance, you also capture the traces of all the previous restorations that also tell the story of the painting. That’s where I sit in terms of presence, for me it’s trying to understand the making of that artwork through what’s left on the surface, and trying to engage the public with that information from the surfaces.
Ksenia
I’m recalling your work on embroidery conservation, where you used jesmonite casting replicating the embroidery captured by 3D scanning technique. It was really interesting to see how the cast strips off some qualities like colour, but foregrounds traces and marks on the surface - something that would not necessarily be noticed at first when seeing the actual object. What changes for you in terms of presence in this transformation?
Xavi
Textiles are new for me, I never worked with them before, and it’s very different to working with a painting or a manuscript. I’m not aware of how textiles were done, of the specifics of the weaving process. In manuscripts or paintings removing the colour gives a whole different dimension to the object. It’s no longer what’s painted, it’s what’s left - when you remove the colour. It’s the history of the surface - that’s what fascinates me. And these cast reproductions help a lot, as this is not the same as looking at plain images - you actually see the 3D, tactile cliche - it gives a completely different type of engagement with an object.
It’s interesting that you say how sometimes we have to construct a separate presence to convey an archive. I wonder how this sits within your respective practices, since, for instance, in social sciences the presence of the researcher is often treated as an obstacle to be eliminated as much as possible, or at least taken into account. In some of the art practices, on the contrary, the presence of the artist sometimes becomes the core part of the work. Xavi, maybe you could share a bit of your experience here?
Xavi
My background is in the conservation of paintings. I have always been fascinated with the material aspect of paintings and other cultural heritage artefacts. And I am almost a bit obsessed with marks and traces on the surface. Looking at those marks and traces of the artist is what allows me to understand the surface and I capture those with the technology that I use. Since I left conservation I have been working on this aspect: trying to use technology to capture the details, to cut through the surface of materiality of manuscripts, to capture these traces - left not only by the makers, but also those who read those manuscripts. With paintings, for instance, you also capture the traces of all the previous restorations that also tell the story of the painting. That’s where I sit in terms of presence, for me it’s trying to understand the making of that artwork through what’s left on the surface, and trying to engage the public with that information from the surfaces.
Ksenia
I’m recalling your work on embroidery conservation, where you used jesmonite casting replicating the embroidery captured by 3D scanning technique. It was really interesting to see how the cast strips off some qualities like colour, but foregrounds traces and marks on the surface - something that would not necessarily be noticed at first when seeing the actual object. What changes for you in terms of presence in this transformation?
Xavi
Textiles are new for me, I never worked with them before, and it’s very different to working with a painting or a manuscript. I’m not aware of how textiles were done, of the specifics of the weaving process. In manuscripts or paintings removing the colour gives a whole different dimension to the object. It’s no longer what’s painted, it’s what’s left - when you remove the colour. It’s the history of the surface - that’s what fascinates me. And these cast reproductions help a lot, as this is not the same as looking at plain images - you actually see the 3D, tactile cliche - it gives a completely different type of engagement with an object.
Embroidery 3d-scanning process by Xavi Aure, at the Centre For Print Research, UWE Bristol.
Photo: Ksenia Kopalova
Photo: Ksenia Kopalova
Ksenia
It’s almost like a landscape, a sculptural object, or even an environment.
Xavi
Yes, a landscape is something that Armand always mentions. In the past we’ve done a kind of a deep dive into manuscript surfaces through 3D renderings. It feels like you’re in the middle of a mountainous landscape, which is actually just distortions of the surface.
Armand
Yes, I think something that Lisa and Amy said relates to the concept of landscape. I totally agree that presence is one side of the coin, and absence is the other. I think it’s often applied in the landscape context within the art world. There is a certain enigmatic quality to it. When you’re looking at a surface of manuscript using RTI (Ed.: Reflectance Transformation Imaging) or any other technology, it turns out that this surface is anything but flat and two-dimensional. This is where it starts to get tricky and philosophical, because manuscript is a kind of a travel through time, transcending linear chronology and human time scales. Inherent in all that is the notion that this object was embedded into events that we didn’t witness and takes us to places that we weren’t part of. And that is where those material qualities can start to conjure the sense of the eerie, which can play with the ideas that we can’t quite grasp, which loom somewhere out there. This is something intrinsic for a manuscript, because what we’re looking at is, essentially, a part of a dead animal. Within the museum or gallery context it’s almost always presented as an art object, historical artefact, cultural representative. But behind this there is a really bloody, messy, noisy, painful history. There’s a lot of suffering and death, and multisensory experience behind that, which is entirely erased in most of the presentations of manuscripts. This is what you start to see a bit better with technology like RTI, but when a manuscript is displayed in a vitrine, you only see the page that the curators decided to leave open, and the other 99% of the manuscript remains hidden. Technology allows you to see details like hair follicles, blood veining, holes in the parchment that expose the reality of the substrate behind the text and show that this is a human/non-human collaboration of organic and inorganic elements.
I think it is really interesting what Amy was saying about having to use purely the catalogue entries, because the criticisms around cataloguing of manuscripts are a part of a much broader debate on censorship and contextual refinement. In my point of view, it leaves out all of those materialities: the dense, the heft, the size, - all of those physical qualities of a manuscript. A new generation of scholars who see in a 2d digitised manuscript won’t know that it’s the size as big as a Great Dane, or a small book that would fit into someone’s pocket, because these would be the same on the screen. So the catalogue entry can be deceptive, which raises a question if the whole relationship with a manuscript is a fundamental deceit - because of the way we can engage with them, which is entirely different from a very intimate experience of the original makers and users of those manuscripts. The work that Xavi is doing starts to reveal those experiences and it gives us an opportunity to explore that liminal space between absence and presence.
It’s almost like a landscape, a sculptural object, or even an environment.
Xavi
Yes, a landscape is something that Armand always mentions. In the past we’ve done a kind of a deep dive into manuscript surfaces through 3D renderings. It feels like you’re in the middle of a mountainous landscape, which is actually just distortions of the surface.
Armand
Yes, I think something that Lisa and Amy said relates to the concept of landscape. I totally agree that presence is one side of the coin, and absence is the other. I think it’s often applied in the landscape context within the art world. There is a certain enigmatic quality to it. When you’re looking at a surface of manuscript using RTI (Ed.: Reflectance Transformation Imaging) or any other technology, it turns out that this surface is anything but flat and two-dimensional. This is where it starts to get tricky and philosophical, because manuscript is a kind of a travel through time, transcending linear chronology and human time scales. Inherent in all that is the notion that this object was embedded into events that we didn’t witness and takes us to places that we weren’t part of. And that is where those material qualities can start to conjure the sense of the eerie, which can play with the ideas that we can’t quite grasp, which loom somewhere out there. This is something intrinsic for a manuscript, because what we’re looking at is, essentially, a part of a dead animal. Within the museum or gallery context it’s almost always presented as an art object, historical artefact, cultural representative. But behind this there is a really bloody, messy, noisy, painful history. There’s a lot of suffering and death, and multisensory experience behind that, which is entirely erased in most of the presentations of manuscripts. This is what you start to see a bit better with technology like RTI, but when a manuscript is displayed in a vitrine, you only see the page that the curators decided to leave open, and the other 99% of the manuscript remains hidden. Technology allows you to see details like hair follicles, blood veining, holes in the parchment that expose the reality of the substrate behind the text and show that this is a human/non-human collaboration of organic and inorganic elements.
I think it is really interesting what Amy was saying about having to use purely the catalogue entries, because the criticisms around cataloguing of manuscripts are a part of a much broader debate on censorship and contextual refinement. In my point of view, it leaves out all of those materialities: the dense, the heft, the size, - all of those physical qualities of a manuscript. A new generation of scholars who see in a 2d digitised manuscript won’t know that it’s the size as big as a Great Dane, or a small book that would fit into someone’s pocket, because these would be the same on the screen. So the catalogue entry can be deceptive, which raises a question if the whole relationship with a manuscript is a fundamental deceit - because of the way we can engage with them, which is entirely different from a very intimate experience of the original makers and users of those manuscripts. The work that Xavi is doing starts to reveal those experiences and it gives us an opportunity to explore that liminal space between absence and presence.
Armand De Filippo, 'Outside and Beyond: the manuscript as object and the implications for interpretive settings' Phd fieldwork 'Displayscape'.
A full calfskin (vellum) stretched on a hazel frame. The animal shape is clearly apparent, and the shape of the animal's spine can still be discerned running down the centre.
Photo: Armand De Filippo
Most people under the age of 30 didn’t find that there was a problem with the ‘real’ vs the ‘simulacra’
Ksenia
You mentioned how digitalisation can be a process embedded into the museum policies. It’s interesting that stripping the archives off their material drama can be a part of the process of institutionalisation. But apart from that there are some obvious benefits to digitalisation, often connected with accessibility. How do you respond to such institutional policies when it comes to digitalisations of archives?
Amy
In the project I mentioned before with the LCF archive that has become inaccessible we're also required to produce a digital response to be archived on LCF's 'documenting practice' portal. And now we have started making physical work and discussing what is this digitalisation. For me it’s not about just trying to replicate, because, as Armand was saying, you cannot replicate the archive digitally because you lose the sense of scale, context, or materiality, or tactile aspect of the objects. So we're not replicating, but questioning how can it be a new form and a new perspective, how can it be a new form and a new perspective that would create an immersive experience of an archive, or rather - a response to an archive, - using digital means. And for us that involves working across disciplines, specifically when approaching documentation: using audio and visual documentation.
Armand
I think it’s an important point about cataloguing the audio. An audio description or closed captioning can be important elements of allowing access digitally. Shakespeare Birthplace Trust had audio descriptions on their catalogue, which is a part of the concept of ‘sensory gain’. A particular favourite of mine, - if you ever get a chance to have a look - is a description of a wooden doll. I think the person has the right voice for the object - even though that’s very subjective. I think this audio element is linked to the notion of Unheimlich, with the voice leaving the body and entering another body. And if it’s a digital voice, it has left the body twice, and it goes through a series of zeros and ones before it reaches another body. That adds a very interesting dimension to what we think of presence and absence.
Also, with manuscripts there is this really hot debate around digital and realism, and the validity of one versus the other, and there’s some really interesting imagery around the so-called ‘frankenscripts’, the Frankensteinian digital versions of a manuscript. The digital technology changes what a manuscript can be very quickly, and certainly, with the younger participants there is an expectation that it has to be fully engaging, but also - that there is no difference between the concepts of authenticity and realness. You can engage with the realness of the manuscript because you can see what it’s made of, and there are elements of tactility and hapticity in engaging with the screen. Most people under the age of 30 didn’t find that there was a problem with the ‘real’ vs the ‘simulacra’.
Ksenia
I think this opens up possibilities for thinking what a digital body mediating sensory experiences could be, almost as if a digital body was an equally valid counterpart in this interaction.
Armand
In manuscripts one could even argue that a digital version is not a revolution, but an evolution of what a manuscript is, because each one is hand-written, each one is a reproduction of the earlier one. So the digital ‘twin’ is a continuation of this logic, even though what we call it is still very much in the process of development.
You mentioned how digitalisation can be a process embedded into the museum policies. It’s interesting that stripping the archives off their material drama can be a part of the process of institutionalisation. But apart from that there are some obvious benefits to digitalisation, often connected with accessibility. How do you respond to such institutional policies when it comes to digitalisations of archives?
Amy
In the project I mentioned before with the LCF archive that has become inaccessible we're also required to produce a digital response to be archived on LCF's 'documenting practice' portal. And now we have started making physical work and discussing what is this digitalisation. For me it’s not about just trying to replicate, because, as Armand was saying, you cannot replicate the archive digitally because you lose the sense of scale, context, or materiality, or tactile aspect of the objects. So we're not replicating, but questioning how can it be a new form and a new perspective, how can it be a new form and a new perspective that would create an immersive experience of an archive, or rather - a response to an archive, - using digital means. And for us that involves working across disciplines, specifically when approaching documentation: using audio and visual documentation.
Armand
I think it’s an important point about cataloguing the audio. An audio description or closed captioning can be important elements of allowing access digitally. Shakespeare Birthplace Trust had audio descriptions on their catalogue, which is a part of the concept of ‘sensory gain’. A particular favourite of mine, - if you ever get a chance to have a look - is a description of a wooden doll. I think the person has the right voice for the object - even though that’s very subjective. I think this audio element is linked to the notion of Unheimlich, with the voice leaving the body and entering another body. And if it’s a digital voice, it has left the body twice, and it goes through a series of zeros and ones before it reaches another body. That adds a very interesting dimension to what we think of presence and absence.
Also, with manuscripts there is this really hot debate around digital and realism, and the validity of one versus the other, and there’s some really interesting imagery around the so-called ‘frankenscripts’, the Frankensteinian digital versions of a manuscript. The digital technology changes what a manuscript can be very quickly, and certainly, with the younger participants there is an expectation that it has to be fully engaging, but also - that there is no difference between the concepts of authenticity and realness. You can engage with the realness of the manuscript because you can see what it’s made of, and there are elements of tactility and hapticity in engaging with the screen. Most people under the age of 30 didn’t find that there was a problem with the ‘real’ vs the ‘simulacra’.
Ksenia
I think this opens up possibilities for thinking what a digital body mediating sensory experiences could be, almost as if a digital body was an equally valid counterpart in this interaction.
Armand
In manuscripts one could even argue that a digital version is not a revolution, but an evolution of what a manuscript is, because each one is hand-written, each one is a reproduction of the earlier one. So the digital ‘twin’ is a continuation of this logic, even though what we call it is still very much in the process of development.
Ksenia
That’s really interesting! Lisa, I know your work is very much engaged with the material qualities of archives, so I was wondering what you think of the potential for digitalisation, and what are the ways you engage with digital archives?
Lisa
I’ve just completed my PhD at the Centre for print Research, which was dedicated to a near obsolete technique of printing on ceramics called tissue transfer. I worked in the archive in the Museum of Royal Worcester for a number of months to find evidence of production methods. I wasn’t looking at the finished printed ceramic objects but evidence of material production. This experience was very different to the previous one: here I was allowed to look through all the material in the archives - there was open access to it. I was looking for objects that had a trace of their making, trying to figure out the process from its component parts. I was looking at industrial craft, something that wasn’t produced by one single person but within the division of labour involving many individuals. I was attempting to piece these parts of the process together into one operation. This was the basis of my PhD, and I did achieve that in the final stages of the research. But the obstacle I encountered in this workflow was that everything came to a halt in Covid, so there was no access to anything. However I was able to use my photographic representations of these objects - so engaging with the archive through purely digital means from primary sources.
Now that I’ve finished the PhD I’m returning to the archive in the Museum of Royal Worcester. Worcester’s contribution to the narrative of the history of the process was important to my research lineage and it was their invention in the 18th century and at one time the leading manufacturers of printed porcelain. But currently there’s only one pottery called remaining in Stoke on Trent, The Burleigh Pottery who’s producing tissue transfer, but have developed new means to interpret the engraving part of the process. So the plan for me is to arrange future collaborations with the museum, to stage an exhibition. Currently I’m putting together ideas on how to display the works and engage with a visiting audience.
That’s really interesting! Lisa, I know your work is very much engaged with the material qualities of archives, so I was wondering what you think of the potential for digitalisation, and what are the ways you engage with digital archives?
Lisa
I’ve just completed my PhD at the Centre for print Research, which was dedicated to a near obsolete technique of printing on ceramics called tissue transfer. I worked in the archive in the Museum of Royal Worcester for a number of months to find evidence of production methods. I wasn’t looking at the finished printed ceramic objects but evidence of material production. This experience was very different to the previous one: here I was allowed to look through all the material in the archives - there was open access to it. I was looking for objects that had a trace of their making, trying to figure out the process from its component parts. I was looking at industrial craft, something that wasn’t produced by one single person but within the division of labour involving many individuals. I was attempting to piece these parts of the process together into one operation. This was the basis of my PhD, and I did achieve that in the final stages of the research. But the obstacle I encountered in this workflow was that everything came to a halt in Covid, so there was no access to anything. However I was able to use my photographic representations of these objects - so engaging with the archive through purely digital means from primary sources.
Now that I’ve finished the PhD I’m returning to the archive in the Museum of Royal Worcester. Worcester’s contribution to the narrative of the history of the process was important to my research lineage and it was their invention in the 18th century and at one time the leading manufacturers of printed porcelain. But currently there’s only one pottery called remaining in Stoke on Trent, The Burleigh Pottery who’s producing tissue transfer, but have developed new means to interpret the engraving part of the process. So the plan for me is to arrange future collaborations with the museum, to stage an exhibition. Currently I’m putting together ideas on how to display the works and engage with a visiting audience.
Lisa Sheppy, ‘An industrial craft reinstated: a printmaker’s perspective on tissue transferware’, PhD completed at the Centre For Print Research, UWE Bristol.
Photo: Lisa Sheppy
Photo: Lisa Sheppy
We have to accept the limitations, but at the same time develop digital techniques allowing us to foster ways of sensing that are close to physical encounters
Ksenia
You mentioned that the degree of access varies drastically from one institution or project to another, and I was wondering how these restrictions affect your work, and how they affect your approach to both the project and the institution?
Xavi
From my conservation point of view I understand these limitations, and I’m not going to oppose them, since it all comes down to the value of the object. If it’s very valuable, you obviously want to preserve it, so you have to set restrictions in order to allow it to be preserved for the future. The smaller institutions may not have this worry, and it may be okay to handle their objects. I think this is where all these new technologies need to be pushed to bigger institutions that don’t allow access. Even though it’s not going to be the same as manual handling, it will give you an extra dimension to the object. So we have to accept that there will be limitations, but at the same time develop these digital techniques that would allow us to foster ways of sensing that are close to physical encounters.
Ksenia
I find it interesting that this institutionalised digitalisation reinforces the difference between the digital and physical objects, with digital objects being paradoxically more accessible for the sense of touch and interaction, being more tangible than the physical ones. It’s interesting how this kind of work moves us towards a new understanding of what a digital experience might be - not just a simulacra or a replication of the ‘real’, ‘authentic’ experience, but an experience of its own kind.
Armand
When I was working in an archive several years ago the thrust of all the digital work at that point in time was to reproduce the original document, so that the original document wouldn’t have to be consulted, which has lots of implications, like - why would one need to visit the archive at all? I think this requires us to think about what we regard as information. I think there has been a shift toward object-oriented ontology with a material turn in archives and social sciences which speaks of the importance of material encounters. There was a recent outcry regarding one of the government archives digitising their materials and destroying all the originals - we would lose that material evidence, and any hope of what we might have learnt from those physical documents, as well as the notion that knowledge might be corporeal.
But at the same time digital technologies allow us to see what we would not have seen even if we went to the physical archive, because we can’t get close enough. I’ve had several cases when I’ve not been able to even arrange an appointment to look at a manuscript without several letters of endorsement. I’ve been asked to leave the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam because I spent too much time with a painting, looking at it on the wall. Or in an exhibition in Berlin I was followed by stewards when I was walking 360 around a displayed cabinet because I wanted to see the binding of a manuscript. So there is a conventional behavioural pattern, which does not allow for any deviation within those interpretative institutions - libraries, archives, and museums. ‘Move slowly, but keep moving’ - that’s what you’re supposed to do in a museum. As soon as you stop, or should you decide that you want to go back and look at something, you’ve got three hundred people moving in the opposite direction. There’s no way you can have that serendipitous experience, it’s really difficult. The same goes for archives: if you want to have another look at a document after seeing something else, it’s embarrassing, because the conservator would come to you and say: why do you want to look at this again, it’s all online.
You mentioned that the degree of access varies drastically from one institution or project to another, and I was wondering how these restrictions affect your work, and how they affect your approach to both the project and the institution?
Xavi
From my conservation point of view I understand these limitations, and I’m not going to oppose them, since it all comes down to the value of the object. If it’s very valuable, you obviously want to preserve it, so you have to set restrictions in order to allow it to be preserved for the future. The smaller institutions may not have this worry, and it may be okay to handle their objects. I think this is where all these new technologies need to be pushed to bigger institutions that don’t allow access. Even though it’s not going to be the same as manual handling, it will give you an extra dimension to the object. So we have to accept that there will be limitations, but at the same time develop these digital techniques that would allow us to foster ways of sensing that are close to physical encounters.
Ksenia
I find it interesting that this institutionalised digitalisation reinforces the difference between the digital and physical objects, with digital objects being paradoxically more accessible for the sense of touch and interaction, being more tangible than the physical ones. It’s interesting how this kind of work moves us towards a new understanding of what a digital experience might be - not just a simulacra or a replication of the ‘real’, ‘authentic’ experience, but an experience of its own kind.
Armand
When I was working in an archive several years ago the thrust of all the digital work at that point in time was to reproduce the original document, so that the original document wouldn’t have to be consulted, which has lots of implications, like - why would one need to visit the archive at all? I think this requires us to think about what we regard as information. I think there has been a shift toward object-oriented ontology with a material turn in archives and social sciences which speaks of the importance of material encounters. There was a recent outcry regarding one of the government archives digitising their materials and destroying all the originals - we would lose that material evidence, and any hope of what we might have learnt from those physical documents, as well as the notion that knowledge might be corporeal.
But at the same time digital technologies allow us to see what we would not have seen even if we went to the physical archive, because we can’t get close enough. I’ve had several cases when I’ve not been able to even arrange an appointment to look at a manuscript without several letters of endorsement. I’ve been asked to leave the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam because I spent too much time with a painting, looking at it on the wall. Or in an exhibition in Berlin I was followed by stewards when I was walking 360 around a displayed cabinet because I wanted to see the binding of a manuscript. So there is a conventional behavioural pattern, which does not allow for any deviation within those interpretative institutions - libraries, archives, and museums. ‘Move slowly, but keep moving’ - that’s what you’re supposed to do in a museum. As soon as you stop, or should you decide that you want to go back and look at something, you’ve got three hundred people moving in the opposite direction. There’s no way you can have that serendipitous experience, it’s really difficult. The same goes for archives: if you want to have another look at a document after seeing something else, it’s embarrassing, because the conservator would come to you and say: why do you want to look at this again, it’s all online.
Amy Goodwin, 'She Destroys the Palace' from the series 'Annie: Challenging Patrons' (2019)
Image: Amy Goodwin
Image: Amy Goodwin
When it is an object that has a physicality, it takes up space, but how would that work in digital spaces?
Amy
I wonder if the digitisation of archives would make this process of slowing down less daunting and less questionable than in a physical archive. I had an experience when I wanted to visit an archive, and I was taken seriously only when I was undertaking my PhD: after years of trying to get access to certain archives, all of a sudden people were willing to give that access, talk to me, and collaborate.
Getting back to the issues of replication in the digital, and the question of what the digital can bring, in my work I’m trying to talk about the importance of taking up physical space. My PhD is about women’s lives, which historically had never taken up space. So I have to get my head around how that can be achieved digitally. When it is an object that has a physicality, it takes up space, but how would that work in digital spaces?
Xavi
I think these technologies are facilitating changes in the policies of institutions. Once it’s clear what’s achievable with technology - 3D scanning or whatever else, - the curators, art historians and custodians of these objects - realise that, actually, maybe it is worth doing this type of digitisation. ARCHiOx Project, for instance, used similar 3D imaging techniques with manuscripts, and as a result all of a sudden there emerged all of these talks about how amazing this technology is. So it created a wave of interest, which wasn’t there before. Since this is Oxford, and since they have discovered so many interesting things using this technology, it can lead to other institutions thinking that, actually, maybe we can also use it.
Armand
I think this is what Walter Benjamin saw in the 30s: reproduction does democratise the image, but it comes with the loss of aura. My own impression of people using digital archives - with their gasps of astonishment as they see it - is that the details that are imperceptible to the human eye, but are rendered with digital technology, create their own sense of aura. So it’s not as black and white as it might seem when you read the debates about one against the other.
Xavi
These are just very different kinds of experiences. Recalling my background in conservation, the act of actually touching the surface or interacting with it, cleaning it, retouching it, is very different to going to a museum and still seeing the actual object - but without touching it - and this is a very different experience of actually seeing it on the screen. Each encounter gives a different experience, and that is fine, that’s how it is: you will never get the same experiences when seeing an object on the screen and in a museum.
I wonder if the digitisation of archives would make this process of slowing down less daunting and less questionable than in a physical archive. I had an experience when I wanted to visit an archive, and I was taken seriously only when I was undertaking my PhD: after years of trying to get access to certain archives, all of a sudden people were willing to give that access, talk to me, and collaborate.
Getting back to the issues of replication in the digital, and the question of what the digital can bring, in my work I’m trying to talk about the importance of taking up physical space. My PhD is about women’s lives, which historically had never taken up space. So I have to get my head around how that can be achieved digitally. When it is an object that has a physicality, it takes up space, but how would that work in digital spaces?
Xavi
I think these technologies are facilitating changes in the policies of institutions. Once it’s clear what’s achievable with technology - 3D scanning or whatever else, - the curators, art historians and custodians of these objects - realise that, actually, maybe it is worth doing this type of digitisation. ARCHiOx Project, for instance, used similar 3D imaging techniques with manuscripts, and as a result all of a sudden there emerged all of these talks about how amazing this technology is. So it created a wave of interest, which wasn’t there before. Since this is Oxford, and since they have discovered so many interesting things using this technology, it can lead to other institutions thinking that, actually, maybe we can also use it.
Armand
I think this is what Walter Benjamin saw in the 30s: reproduction does democratise the image, but it comes with the loss of aura. My own impression of people using digital archives - with their gasps of astonishment as they see it - is that the details that are imperceptible to the human eye, but are rendered with digital technology, create their own sense of aura. So it’s not as black and white as it might seem when you read the debates about one against the other.
Xavi
These are just very different kinds of experiences. Recalling my background in conservation, the act of actually touching the surface or interacting with it, cleaning it, retouching it, is very different to going to a museum and still seeing the actual object - but without touching it - and this is a very different experience of actually seeing it on the screen. Each encounter gives a different experience, and that is fine, that’s how it is: you will never get the same experiences when seeing an object on the screen and in a museum.
A jesmonite cast made after embroidery 3d-scanning by Xavi Aure, at the Centre For Print Research, UWE Bristol.
Photo: Ksenia Kopalova
Photo: Ksenia Kopalova
The backgrounds of people who work in archives - curators, collections managers, archivists - are often in conservation or archival practices, so they often do not have the same origin as the people documented
Armand
If it’s there! I just had a really interesting experience of seeing an exhibition at the Senate House at UCL. I went to see Shakespeare’s First Folio. I had to go four flights of stairs, get a ticket to the library, get into the library, …first case, where the folio should be, - empty. A little description saying, ‘for the conservation reasons, it will only be here for these 6 days within the next two months’. Presence of absence!
Amy
And the presence of frustration! I guess this fits into what Xavi was saying about the value of certain objects. When it comes to the institutional aspect of archives, sometimes they create tension between the purpose of the archive and the institutional policies.
The archive that I worked with for my PhD, the National Fairground and Circus Archive (NFCA), housed paraphernalia, artefacts, and objects from travelling industries, which are traditionally not grounded in education and academia. And yet the archive was housed at the University of Sheffield and therefore had institutional properties and principles that it was bound by - both those of an archive and of a university. Because of that it is somewhat inaccessible to the travelling showmen and showwomen. Growing up in fairground families you traditionally don't remain in education for long and thus, don't feel comfortable in academic situations. So the audiences are not the descendants of what the archive is holding. But then, and this is more positive, the NFCA have digitised a wealth of their photographic collection, so now that’s accessible through the internet, and it is used so widely by the showmen and showwomen. So in this case digitalisation is making the archive more accessible to people whose families are documented.
Armand
I think this case of the community of origin being excluded from the things that they’ve created - I think this parallels postcolonial discourse. The manuscript that Xavi and I were working on was an Ethiopian manuscript, which was looted during the 19th century. A part of that loot is at the British Library, and they repatriated some of it, but not in a physical form, but a digital form. It was really interesting, because a curator was sent in person with a digital archive to take it back to Ethiopia - it’s an interesting blurred combination of a digital and in-person presence.
Amy
Absolutely, and then again, the backgrounds of people who work in archives - curators, collections managers, archivists - are often in conservation or archival practices, so they often do not have the same origin as the people documented. This can result in a separation and misrepresentation happening across communities and cultures.
Armand
That seems to be a very strong point for community involvement into the processes of acquisition, cataloguing, and other museum processes. The Sensational Museum, for instance, is looking at it from the point of view of disability, and completely reconsidering the whole museum process in an interdisciplinary way - from acquisition to display, - thinking about how it works for people who don’t use sight as a primary means of engagement.
Ksenia
I think this opens up room for all sorts of experiments with decentralised display of archives.
Xavi
Yes, for instance, the International Image Interoperability Framework, or IIIF, is a collaborative initiative that establishes a common protocol for the sharing and displaying of high-resolution digital images. This open standard is designed to promote universal access to digital media from archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions worldwide. By adopting IIIF, these institutions enable users to access, compare, and analyse images from any participating collection seamlessly. I've found it particularly beneficial for examining artworks by the same artist spread across different museums. Moreover, IIIF proves invaluable for reuniting manuscripts and folios that have been scattered to various locations, allowing for their digital reconstruction and study as if they were physically together.
Armand
It’s really interesting when you reflect on the fact that everything that is in the museum, an archive, or a library, is decontextualised or recontextualised anyway.
If it’s there! I just had a really interesting experience of seeing an exhibition at the Senate House at UCL. I went to see Shakespeare’s First Folio. I had to go four flights of stairs, get a ticket to the library, get into the library, …first case, where the folio should be, - empty. A little description saying, ‘for the conservation reasons, it will only be here for these 6 days within the next two months’. Presence of absence!
Amy
And the presence of frustration! I guess this fits into what Xavi was saying about the value of certain objects. When it comes to the institutional aspect of archives, sometimes they create tension between the purpose of the archive and the institutional policies.
The archive that I worked with for my PhD, the National Fairground and Circus Archive (NFCA), housed paraphernalia, artefacts, and objects from travelling industries, which are traditionally not grounded in education and academia. And yet the archive was housed at the University of Sheffield and therefore had institutional properties and principles that it was bound by - both those of an archive and of a university. Because of that it is somewhat inaccessible to the travelling showmen and showwomen. Growing up in fairground families you traditionally don't remain in education for long and thus, don't feel comfortable in academic situations. So the audiences are not the descendants of what the archive is holding. But then, and this is more positive, the NFCA have digitised a wealth of their photographic collection, so now that’s accessible through the internet, and it is used so widely by the showmen and showwomen. So in this case digitalisation is making the archive more accessible to people whose families are documented.
Armand
I think this case of the community of origin being excluded from the things that they’ve created - I think this parallels postcolonial discourse. The manuscript that Xavi and I were working on was an Ethiopian manuscript, which was looted during the 19th century. A part of that loot is at the British Library, and they repatriated some of it, but not in a physical form, but a digital form. It was really interesting, because a curator was sent in person with a digital archive to take it back to Ethiopia - it’s an interesting blurred combination of a digital and in-person presence.
Amy
Absolutely, and then again, the backgrounds of people who work in archives - curators, collections managers, archivists - are often in conservation or archival practices, so they often do not have the same origin as the people documented. This can result in a separation and misrepresentation happening across communities and cultures.
Armand
That seems to be a very strong point for community involvement into the processes of acquisition, cataloguing, and other museum processes. The Sensational Museum, for instance, is looking at it from the point of view of disability, and completely reconsidering the whole museum process in an interdisciplinary way - from acquisition to display, - thinking about how it works for people who don’t use sight as a primary means of engagement.
Ksenia
I think this opens up room for all sorts of experiments with decentralised display of archives.
Xavi
Yes, for instance, the International Image Interoperability Framework, or IIIF, is a collaborative initiative that establishes a common protocol for the sharing and displaying of high-resolution digital images. This open standard is designed to promote universal access to digital media from archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions worldwide. By adopting IIIF, these institutions enable users to access, compare, and analyse images from any participating collection seamlessly. I've found it particularly beneficial for examining artworks by the same artist spread across different museums. Moreover, IIIF proves invaluable for reuniting manuscripts and folios that have been scattered to various locations, allowing for their digital reconstruction and study as if they were physically together.
Armand
It’s really interesting when you reflect on the fact that everything that is in the museum, an archive, or a library, is decontextualised or recontextualised anyway.