The Everyday Archive
- archives devoted to documenting, assembling, preserving everyday life (the quotidian) and lived moments that may not readily be considered archivable experiences
- archives focused on underrepresented stories and lived experiences that are typically outside of the juridical realm of "the archive" as legitimized by national history or by the state
- archives that we encounter on a daily basis: email, social networks, news sites, idea/content-sharing websites, and so on.
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:
- Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers curated by Matt Delmont
- Zooming into an Instagram city: reading the local through social media by Nadav Hochman and Lev Manovich
- Just Me and Allah: A Queer Muslim Project by Samra Habib
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
- How would you define what "the everyday archive" is?
- What are some qualities of an everyday archive?
- What is the purpose of the archive you've chosen? What does it document and preserve?
- What is "everyday" about this specific archive?
- Why is it important to archive and document the everyday?
- Is the archive serving a specific community, or for a larger public?
- What important cultural/social/political purposes does this archive achieve (or try to achieve)?
- How does this archive blur the boundaries between "the everyday" and "the archive"?
Reflections
- Everyday archives could happen unintentionally: at times without the purpose of becoming an archive
- Role of the capacity of digital storage in the proliferation of everyday archives
- The "who" gets emphasized; everyday archives are often community-driven
- The imaginative and creative power of everyday archives (element of hope?)
- Collision between public and private spheres
