- Reimagining the Archive: Rethinking Archival Practice and Theory The tone was set on Friday evening with Rick Prelinger’s animated keynote presentation, in which he spoke about the dynamic nature of moving image archives as sites of creation, participation, artistic practice, and activism rather than as places where content goes to die.
- Forensic Anthropology, Video, and Archives In mid-April, an episode of NPR program "Speaking of Faith," featuring a representative of the Argentine forensic anthropology team (EAAF) aired. The guest spoke about how recovering the remains of victims of repressive regimes leads to healing, the re-writing of history, and the prosecution of justice.
- Thoughts on archives “fitting in”, and processing the Rainlake donation. I have had the pleasure of interning in the WITNESS Media Archive for the past semester. I chose this internship because I hoped to put my Masters in Human Rights Studies and my Masters in Library Science to work in the video archive.
- Re-Stalinization and revisionism in Russia Last week Russian historian Mikhail Suprun was arrested by Russia's FSB security service for - as Truthdig put it - daring to study Russian history; more specifically, Stalin's gulags. Suprun's archives were confiscated; a police official who provided access to archive documents about gulag victims was also arrested. Suprun faces up to four years in jail if convicted.
- Mandela opens archives for new book The personal archive of Nelson Mandela will be opened for a new memoir; rights the collection of diaries, letters and other writings were auctioned this week at the Frankfurt Book Fair. From the Guardian UK: “Mandela himself, who bestowed these “traces of my life and those who have lived it with me” on his eponymous […]
- New Media History and Research on Rights, War, and Memory From researcher and guest blogger Karl Arthur Baumann, currently doing research and interviews here at WITNESS, about his project: The recent events in Iran have proven once again the potency and conscience raising capabilities of current communications technologies, vis a vis Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter. But to what extent have they created active responses? The […]
- Archives as Medium I recently stumbled upon Essays: Archives as Medium , on the web site Old Messengers, New Media: The Legacy of Innis and McLuhan (in turn part of Library and Archives Canada online.) From Lance Strate's essay The Medium is the Memory:
- Conference: Memory, Archives, Human Rights In Copehagen Denamrk, and Malmö, Sweden, June 4-5, 2009: Archives, Memory and Human Rights.
- "Treatment of History a Bellwether of Human Rights" The International Coalition of Sites of Conscience has distributed this statement pertaining to the recent raid and seizure of Human Rights Center Memorial's archive (thanks Bryan and Sam for forwarding):
- Archives, power & memory “There is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory.” – Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever. Clifford Levy’s November 26 NY Times article about renewed control and suppression of the archives in the Putin era chillingly illustrates Derrida’s thesis: “TOMSK, Russia: For years, the earth in this Siberian city had been giving […]
