Tuesdays, 6-10 PM, room 651, Fall 2004
Instructors: Howard
Besser & Ann Harris
Introduction to Moving Image
Archiving
& Preservation H72.1800
Oct 5 Collecting in Context: Theoretical
Underpinnings (HB)
see entire
syllabus
Assignments due before class:
- 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
Topics covered:
- Discussion of Final Projects
- In-class presentations of case
studies
- Introduction to Orphans
Assignment
- 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?)
- Tomorrow Nancy Goldman
speaks,
12th floor Dean's Conference Room, 5:30. The
International Federation of Film Archives; & The CineFiles online
film clippings database (2 separate Talks)
Agenda
- Review of Brian's Talk
- Case Study Presentations (25 min each)
- Discussion of Final Projects
- Introduction of Orphans Assignment
- Discussion on the theoretical
underpinnings of Collecting
- Current Events
- Recent important news articles
- Judge
rules e-voting vendor misrepresented law, AP Wire Story, Sf
Chronicle, Oct 2, 2004
- Geneva
Declaration on the Future of the World Intellectual Property
Organization, Sept 29, 2004
- MusicTrashing
the Copyright Balance, Marjorie Heins, Free Expression Policy
Project, Sept 21, 2004 (Bridgeport Music case)
- Copyrighting
the President: Does Big Media have a vested interest in protecting
Bush? You betcha, by Lawrence Lessig, Wired Magazine 12.08, Aug 2004
- BBC's plans to make their works publicly available through a
"Creative Archive"
- letter
from Friends of the Creative Domain to the British Department of
Culture, Media and Sport, June 10, 2004
- BBC
to Open Content Floodgates, Wired News, June 16, 2004
- BBC
Creative Archive licensing to be based on Creative Commons, Simon
Perry, Digital-Lifestyles.info, May 26, 2004
- The
Stuff of City Life: Museums are where New Yorkers have always gone to
escape the speeded-up and ephemeral. But for how much longer?,
James Traub, NY Times Magazine, Oct 3, 2004
- Assignment for next week