Tuesdays, 6-10 PM, room 651, Fall 2005
Instructors: Howard
Besser & Ann Harris
Introduction to Moving Image
Archiving
& Preservation H72.1800
Oct 11 Collecting in Context:
Theoretical Underpinnings
see entire
syllabus
Assignments due before class:
- Read:
- Anne J. Gilliland-Swetland. Enduring
Paradigm, New Opportunities: The Value of the Archival Perspective in
the Digital Environment , Council on Library & Information
Resources, pub89, pp 1-16 [document pages 1-16, not Acrobat pages 1-16]
- Belk, Russell W. "A Brief History of
Collecting," in
Collecting in Consumer Society. New York: Routledge, 1995, pages 22-64
- Benjamin, Walter. "Unpacking My Library: A Talk
about Book
Collecting." Illuminations. Ed. and intro. by Hannah Arendt.
Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969, pp 59-67
- Pearce, Susan M. "Collecting Processes," in On
Collecting: An Investigation into collecting in the European tradition
. New York: Routledge, 1995, pages 3-35
- Jean Baudrillardís "The System of
Collecting." In
John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, eds., Cultures of Collecting,
pp. 7-24. London: Reaktion, 1994, translated by Roger Cardinal.
- Further Readings
- Pierre Bourdieu, The field of cultural
production:
essays on art and literature, Cambridge: Polity, 1993
- Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright in Practices
of
Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (Oxford University
Press, 2001)
- Buckland, Michael. (1997) What is a
Document?", Journal of
the American Society for Information Science 48 (9), pp. 804-809
- Harrison, Helen P. (ed.). Audiovisual
Archives. A practical reader for the AV Archivists. 1997
- Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the
Age of
Mechanical Reproduction" Illuminations. Ed. and intro. by
Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969, pp
217-251
- John Berger. Ways of Seeing , New
York: Viking,
1972
- Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett "Objects of
Ethnography" in
Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine (eds.) Exhibiting Cultures: The
Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, Washington: Smithsonian
Press, 1991, pp 386-443
- Pearce, Susan M. "Collecting in Time" in On
Collecting: An Investigation into collecting in the European tradition.
New York: Routledge, 1995 pages 235-254
- Drucker, Johanna. "The Codex and Its
Variations." The
Century of Artists' Books. New York: Granary Books, 1997. 121-59
Agenda
- Collection Management
(continued)
- Archival Arrangement--maintaining original order, context,
relationships
- Metadata Standards (EAD, Dublin Core, MARC)
- In-class presentations of case studies
- Appointments for Film Handling
- Introduction to Orphans
Assignment
- Discussion of Final Projects
- Why do we collect?
- Extensive
questions to
ponder
- Issues of evidence and authenticity
- Issues of representation
- Who collects what? for whom? and why? How do
collections define their collectors? How have museums influenced
colonialism, nationalism, and taxonomies (categories) of
knowledge? What kinds of interdependence exists between
institutions of collecting and certain methodological goals of art
history and anthropology? How can we learn to read exhibits
critically? What is a ërhetoricí or
ëpoeticsí of display? Why do people keep personal
collections of objects? How do ethnicities and genders appear--or
disappear--in museum contexts? How do museums also function to
support a local community memory and history? How do artists view
museums as social institutions? How can we imagine collecting
practices and museums in the future? How can the history of collecting
be read as an interdisciplinary intellectual practice?
- Why do we need museums? What should they look
like? Why do we collect things? What kinds of museums and
collections might we have in the future? What role might
electronic media play in the rethinking of the museum?
Would changes in museum practice necessitate changes in the
disciplines of art history and anthropology?
- How are moving images and sound part of the larger visual
culture and ways of looking and seeing? How does our understanding of
visual culture impact our role in moving image archiving and
preservation?
- How do reformatting and multiple formats of the same work
change how we look at a work? (e.g., are videos the same as films? Are
digital photographs the same as analog photos?)
- Is there a social context to viewing an object? (is
viewing a video at home the same as viewing a film in a theater? Is
viewing a mural on a screen the same as viewing it in-situ?)
- Who attributes value to a work, and under what
circumstances? How does one deal with the different values that
different communities may have towards any particular set of works?
- Are there ethical considerations in format conversions
(e.g., film colorization, pan-and-scan?)
Events this week