MEDIA AND THE ARCHIVE: Motions and Transformations

The Everyday Archive

This unit explores the term archive as it collides with the everyday. Everyday archives can be defined in a few different ways:













Readings

We will begin by taking a look at a 2013 In Media Res forum on "Everyday Archives," in which five individuals have curated pages dedicated to examining "everyday archives" from a variety of perspectives and fields.

Recommended:
As the In Media Res Call for Curators states,

Everyday we encounter massive amounts of information that is organized and synthesized by our smartphone apps, tumblr pages, and news aggregators. This week is interested in exploring the value of the term "archive" for describing our database culture. How does this term link us to a certain kind of intellectual history? This week is also focused on the ways digital archives shape our interpretation of different kinds of data, making even the most unwieldy data accessible and legible. 

Possible topics include: 

  • The archive as a tool for preservation and as a site of decay 
  • The archive's function in defining race/gender/class
  • The archival impulse facilitated by websites like Pinterest, Tumblr, and Facebook
  • The archiving of archives by institutions like The Library of Congress

Key Questions

Reflections

Individual Pages

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