Panel 20: The Archivist
Francesca Marini (Archival Studies, British Columbia), “Your Friendly
‘Enemy,’ The Archivist”
This paper will attempt to clarify the debate over “the archive” from the perspective of an
archival scholar and archivist who is fully engaged in new approaches to archiving and
who mostly works with performing arts archives. The artistic, social, political and
personal aspects of the performing arts, as well as their entertainment dimension, embed
most of the components of the archiving debate. Over time, archives and archivists’ work
have come under increased scrutiny on the part of academic disciplines and a variety of
artistic and activist practices. For a series of complex reasons, archives are often
presented in a negative light, for example: within the postmodern discourse of “archives
and power;” within the debate raised within performance studies about the legitimacy and
modes of performance documentation; and in the context of the work of social and
political activists, who often show resistance when it comes to trust the materials related
to their efforts to the care of archives. The debate about the archive, its role and functions
has been raging within the archival community itself; in literary studies; in performance
studies; and may other areas.
This debate is not unified and runs in an almost parallel way in the different communities.
While the debate rages, changes take place, but are not always noted by all communities.
For example, work done in South Africa and Australia by archivists who are social and
political activists is not necessarily known or acknowledged outside the archival
community. Similarly, some performance scholars continue to critique the “archival”
approach, but fail to recognize the work of those archivists who work closely and
innovatively with performance and performers. Critics of archives also often fall into the
“archival” trap themselves, by initiating documentation projects that are at all effects
traditional in their approach to archiving, but nonetheless claim to be different. The
ongoing debate often takes antagonistic and academic elitist stances that become
counterproductive, because they end up excluding people from a variety of communities,
instead of making them welcome partners.
This paper represents an attempt to bring some clarity to the main components of the
archiving debate, mostly within the context of performing arts archiving. This paper will
outline the main dimensions and approaches to archiving, in order to show when
archivists carry out their work in a way that promotes and supports artistic practice,
political accountability, social justice and inclusion, and when archivists instead align
themselves with mainstream power and outdated modes of archiving. This paper aims to
promote dialogue among disciplines and ideas, and bring out the commonalities of goals
and practices across the spectrum. The paper is relevant to the overall conference theme,
and in particular to the following topics: “The relationship between the archive and the
archivist/archon;” “mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in the archive;” “visibility and
pedagogy;” “the role of reflexivity;” “function of the narrative form for the archive;” “the
future of the archive;” and “the affective relationship between the archive and the body.”
Amy Marshall Furness (Information, Toronto)
This paper will report on research in progress: a professional archivist’s attempt to
develop a definition of visual artists’ archives through the paradigm of qualitative social
science research. Much continues to be written about art and archives, but the author’s
research seeks to address the perceived lack of an adequate hermeneutic for
understanding the various forces which come into play as an archival collection takes
shape in the institution. The author will describe her doctoral research project, currently
underway at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, in which a case study of
the artist Vera Frenkel’s archives serve as the basis for refining the current understanding
of personal archives in the institutional setting. The discipline of archival science is the
starting point for this investigation, but the literatures of art history and literary studies
also serve as important foundations. Frenkel commenced the donation of her archives to
Queen’s University in 2006, with future accruals planned. Through a series of interviews
with the artist and the archivist, coupled with empirical observation of the archives still in
the studio and those transferred to the institution, the author will investigate the
transformations undergone by an archival collection en route to the repository. Far from
a monolithic entity, this eventual archive will be revealed as the product of myriad
authorial forces.
Kathryn Harvey (Communication Studies, Archival and Special Collections,
Guelph), “What Archives Are and Do: A History”
A rather presumptuous paper title one might say, but if we are to think of archives within
the context of everyday life, especially in a political sense, expansiveness is almost
inevitable. The necessity for such breadth was pointed out in the 1992 UNESCO
publication Manuals and Textbooks of Archives Administration and Records
Management: A RAMP Study which was unable to identify any publications that provide
a general survey of the history of archival theory and principles across the globe. It notes
AThe history of archives and archival institutions is usually discussed in a rather general
way in the manuals and textbooks. The 3rd International Symposium on Archival
Training expressed the need, in the interest of both teachers and searchers, to put more
emphasis on the study of the history of record keeping and archives at both national and
international levels.@1 Sadly, the assessment of 17 years ago remains largely accurate
today.
1
Records
Pirko Rastas, Manuals and Textbooks of Archives Administration and
Management:
A
RAMP
Study.
UNESCO,
1992.
Available:
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/ramp/html/r9211e/r9211e0a.htm#8.1.%2
0The%20history%20of%20archives%20and%20basic%20archival%20principle
s.
This paper will attempt to articulate both the stable principles and the changing character
of archives, predominantly in Europe and North America from the earliest archives of
Rome. My examination starts from the premise that archives are fundamentally social
institutions that change as society does; nonetheless, certain principles remain
predominantly unchanged over the centuries. Questions to be addressed include: Is the
very definition of what an Aarchives@ is stable through time and place? Has the principle
of provenance changed over the years? Has our application of this principle changed?
What should we make of the proliferation of specialized archives and the emphasis on
communities participating in the selection and description of their own records?
This paper draws on works as diverse as the Encyclopedia Britannica=s famous 11th
edition and the writings of theorists such as Brien Brothman, Terry Cook, Jacques
Derrida, Luciana Duranti, Terry Eastwood, Michel Foucault, Paul Ricoeur, Roy
Schaeffer, and others in order to demystify the concept of Aarchives@ as it pertains to
deliberately constructed institutions of documentary heritage (as opposed to museums,
photograph albums, personal libraries, or art installations, etc.). The ultimate goal of the
paper is to foster a better historical understanding of archives as social institutions and
thus educate users about what to expect from the materials they find or don=t find inside.