I recently attended this workshop, called Archiving Now, which took place as part of the CSD-award funded Researching the Contemporary project. The theme raised questions relating to how to define a contemporary culture studies or practice, compiling archives of the now and the role of institutions already archiving and disseminating this culture. Here's an overview of the presentations.
Roger Luckhurst
Luckhurst's PhD was on J.G. Ballard and Angela Carter. At the time there was no scholarly support for Ballard (pre-Internet, only approx 9 published essays on Ballard) but on the Angela Carter side, because she had just died, she was suddenly considered respectable and study-able.
Concerns around the newest thing and chasing the newest thing; when someone dies it becomes safe to study them (myth of being complete - beginning-middle-end linearity).
In fact, the archive is continually opening and expanding. Still discoverable (see Robert Eaglestone). Ask identity politics questions of the archives and open them up in new ways.
Luckhurst's mummy project is about things that are NOT digitised.
Calls for researchers have recently been put out to help archivists catalogue their archives (see National Archives).
Perspective on the contemporary is difficult. Need for the 'parallax view'. To gauge the contemporary you might:
* Change genre (utopian writing?)
* Change discipline (e.g. what is contemporary art?, Marc Auge)
* Change historical period (e.g. the perception of information overload dates as least as far back as the nineteenth century).
* Change genre (utopian writing?)
* Change discipline (e.g. what is contemporary art?, Marc Auge)
* Change historical period (e.g. the perception of information overload dates as least as far back as the nineteenth century).
Importance of auto-critique (self-modifying), e.g. Foucault: from archaeology to genealogy to technologies of the self.
Senate House Library - collections.
Building collections, facilitating access etc. (typed book, audiobook, photo of the manuscript).
The medium is one of the messages.
Google works according to natural language (not so with research databases, they require precision), it is not like relational databases (you can't query across databases).
openarchives.eu - EU funded
Peter Suber - Open Access
Changing the dynamic of me seeking information and it being fed back to me.
Objects of analysis, whether arborescent or rhizomatic, are always more dependent on methods of retrieval.
Holly Pester
The archive is a fertile site for practice-based research models. As a researcher, you're being guided by the intellectual structure, the archivist's index, is it art or archive? To some extent the indexing is arbitrary.
The researcher must be deviant with the materials and critique the structures of the institution through acts of research - discuss.
The Atlas Group - fictional archive
Machinemachine stream - Daniel Rourke
Kieran Connell
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies - a 50th anniversary project after the centre was closed.
Birmingham is now recognising the importance of Contemporary Cultural Studies as part of its history (blue plaque).
CCCS - at odds with culture of doing academic research at the University.
1964 - "The Cult of the Contemporary" - accusation when the centre was founded by Hoggart. Always marginalised, often a target.
Mermaid (1968) - modest aims but questioning (Hall)
After Hoggart's departure (1969), the centre took up more cultural theory approaches (Althusser, Gramcsi, Lacan, Foucault).
Hall took up directorship (a utopian enclave?) - Birmingham St Press, Bosses Enemy, Project Fund, Women and Words (lip service or genuine outreach initiatives?)
CCCS's aim - To narrate and take seriously everyday experiences. The object of research is a moving target.
Now institutionalised, e.g. Pathways to Impact, collaborative projects.
Hall maintained an engagement with contemporary events through collaborations.
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