A Useful Archive
With digitization, the catalog undergoes dramatic changes – it no longer only publishes the metadata of resources but some of the resources themselves. It becomes permeable to other catalogs and search devices, potentially enabling contextualizing and mobilizing resources beyond institutional borders. In that regard, archival practice in the digital context has been experiencing a curatorial turn. Questions become relevant such as: How is it decided what resource is published? Who has the authority to give access, and who benefits from it? Where do we have an ethical responsibility to restrict access? How do we consider the needs of marginalized communities and non-institutional perspectives on giving or limiting access?
Digitization is a conscious act of reactivation. It carries the potential to re-narrate histories via critical and experimental approaches. The design of archival interfaces thus is not only a site of conflicting stakes and interests but also a space for potentially different modes of use and openness, representation, and contextualization.
Together with our guest, digital humanities researcher and designer Lozana Rossenova, we want to discuss how art, design, and practice-led research negotiate some of the problematic questions linked to the accessibility of digitized resources. We want to shed some light on how such approaches can contribute to rendering visible hidden mechanisms of the catalog and creating interventions contributing to the collective needs of the respective communities.
Schedule
14:00
Introduction by Lucie & Moritz
14:15–15:15
Lozana Rossenova (presentation) & Discussion
Break (15 min.)
15:30–16:15
Moritz (presentation) & Discussion
16:15
Wrap Up
Guest
Dr Lozana Rossenova is a digital humanities researcher and designer. She studied art and design in New York, before moving to the UK to pursue an MA degree at the Department for Typography and Graphic Communication in the University of Reading. She has previously worked in design agencies both in London and New York, working with non-profit, educational and cultural clients.
Between 2016–2021, Rossenova was a PhD candidate at the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University. The project was a partnership with Rhizome, a leading international born-digital art organization based in New York. Her research focused on questions related to data presentation and performativity in the online archive of born-digital art, which she examined through the lens of digital design (theory and practice). She is currently a Postdoc Researcher at the Open Science Lab at TIB (German National Library of Science and Technology, Hannover) working on the NFDI4Culture project for a national research infrastructure of cultural heritage data.
Rossenova is an active member of the Wikidata and Wikibase open source development communities, and a Steering Committee member of OpenRefine, an open source data management tool with wide adoption in heritage, research and digital humanities communities.
For preparation
- “Designing interfaces to support contextual interpretation and open conversations with users”, interview with Lozana Rossenova by Marialaura Ghidini, 18/10/2021, Curating Online, https://www.curating.online/interview/lozana-rossenova/.
Readings & Materials
- Ahmed, Sara: “Introduction. A Useful Archive”. In: What’s the Use?: On the Uses of Use, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2019, pp. 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478007210-002, https://www.dukeupress.edu/Assets/PubMaterials/978-1-4780-0650-3_601.pdf (PDF).
- “Discussion with Elodie on open access in relation to cultural appropriation – 51:43” In: Constant, Unbound Library, 31 May to 5 June 2020, https://video.constantvzw.org/Unbound_Libraries/recordings_worksession/.index/open_access_and_cultural_appropriation_discussion_200603.webm/play.mp4 (audio recording).
- Drabinski, Emily: “Teaching the Radical Catalog”. In: Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front, edited by K. R. Roberto. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2008, https://ischool.syr.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/drabinski_radcat.pdf.
- Groten, Anja: “Figuring Things Out Together: On the Relationship Between Design and Collective Practice”, dissertation, 2022, https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/3487176 (open access). Especially Chapter 3: Tool Building, detailing the example of the “Feminist Search Tool”.
- Kolb, Lucie and Weinmayr, Eva (eds.): “Teaching the Radical Catalog”, 2020–22, syllabus.radicalcatalogue.net.
- Rossenova, Lozana and Di Franco, Karen: “Iterative Pasts and Linked Futures: A Feminist Approach to Modeling Data in Archives and Collections of Artists’ Publishing.” In: Perspectives on Data, ed. Emily Lew Fry and Erin Canning (Art Institute of Chicago, 2022). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.53269/9780865593152/05 (online article).
- “Experimental publishing and new archival initiatives”, 27 January, convened by Ruth Blacksell and Lozana Rossenova with contributions from Simon Browne, Ami Clarke and Mindy Seu. The case study presentations include “The Bootleg Library”, the “Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing”, and the “Cyberfeminism Index”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLcNevRn5xQ (video).
- Rossenova, Lozana: “Beyond the screenshot: interface design and data protocols in the net art archive”, In: The Networked Image in Post-Digital Culture, edited by Andrew Dewdney and Katrina Sluis, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2023.
- “Decolonizing Digital Archives”, 23–27.1.23, Critical Media Lab IXDM Academy of Art and Design Basel, workshop convened by Flavia Caviezel, Bernhard Garnicnig, Lucie Kolb, Selena Savić, and Karolina Sobecka, https://criticalmedialab.ch/decolonizing-digital-archives/.