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Abstract
This paper outlines the prodigious field of public history preservation practice prompted by popular music culture, exploring the relationship of affect, history and the archive. Framing this exploration with a concept of cultural justice, it considers the still uncertain place of popular music as a subject of heritage and preservation, assessing the parameters of what counts as an archive and issues of democratization. It offers a discussion of the archival and affective turns in the humanities as a means of framing the politics of practice focused on popular music culture. The paper offers empirical evidence of the relational qualities of the popular music archive considered in affective terms. Discussion draws first on evidence from the vernacular practices of communities in what Baker and Collins describe as ‘do-it-yourself’ archives and secondly from ‘authorized’ collections in established archival institutions (Baker and Collins, “Sustaining Popular Music’s Material Culture,” 3). The paper explores the motivations of popular music archivists and how they articulate the affective dimensions of their work, and how their work qualifies personal and collective commitments and expressions of value and indeed, relations with users. In conclusion, affect is identified as pertinent to wider issues in the relations of archive, archivist and user and the possibilities of historical practice.
Notes
1. Farge, The Allure of the Archives, 31.
2. Caswell et al., “To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing,” 12.
3. Kelley, “Public History,” 16.
4. Samuel, Theatres of Memory; Jordanova, History in Practice; de Groot, Consuming History.
5. Samuel, Theatres of Memory, 8.
6. Samuel, Theatres of Memory; see also: de Groot, Consuming History; Leggott and Taddeo, Upstairs and Downstairs.
7. Long, “Really Saying Something?”
8. Cohen et al., Sites of Popular Music Heritage.
9. Bottomley, “Play It Again.”
10. Brocken, The Twenty-first-century Legacy of the Beatles.
11. See: Baker et al., “The Sound of Music Heritage.”
12. Baker and Collins, “Sustaining Popular Music’s Material Culture,” 3.
13. E.g. Steedman, “After the Archive”; Eichorn, The Archival Turn In Feminism.
14. Maher, “Archives, Archivists, and Society,” 253.
15. Boscacci, “The Archive in Contemporary Art,” 3.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., 4.
18. Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 205.
19. Flinn, “Community Histories, Community Archives”; Cook, “Evidence, Memory, Identity, and Community.”
20. Geoghegan, “A New Pattern for Historical Geography.”
21. See: Quinn, “The Archivist as Activist.”
22. Ernst, Aura and Temporality.
24. DeSilvey, “Art and Archive.”
25. Cameron, “Participation, Archival Activism and Learning to Learn.”
26. De Leeuw, “Alice Through the Looking Glass.”
27. Ashmore et al., “Working-with: Talking and Sorting in Personal Archives.”
28. Ibid., 89.
29. Cameron, “Participation, Archival Activism and Learning to Learn,” 100.
30. Quoted in Ibid., 100.
31. Clough, “Introduction to The Affective Turn.”
32. Agnew, “History’s Affective Turn.”
33. Robinson, “Touching the Void.”
34. Caswell et al., “To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing.”
35. De Leeuw, “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” 274.
36. Robinson, “Touching the Void,” 506.
37. Cifor and Gilliland, “Affect and the Archive, Archives and their Affects.”
38. Cifor, “Affecting Relations.”
39. Maher, “Archives, Archivists, and Society,” 254.
40. Small, Musicking, 9.
41. Michelsen, “Histories and Complexities,” 25.
44. Benjamin, Walter Benjamin’s Archive, 25.
45. See argument in Reynolds, Retromania, 3; Kam, “Success in Failure,” 176.
46. See Leonard, “Exhibiting Popular Music,” 174.
47. Januszczak, Waldemar. “Loving the Alien.” The Sunday Times online. Accessed January 27, 2017. http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/arts/Visual_Arts/article1232390.ece
48. Young, T. 2016. “From Squalor to Grasping Cynicism: How Rip-off Tat for Fans to Buy and Recreated Sixties Bedsit Show That New Rolling Stones Show Is Nothing More than an Exhibition in Money Making.” Daily Mail Australia, April 6 Accessed January 27, 2017. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3525661/From-squalor-grasping-cynicism-rip-tat-fans-buy-recreated-sixties-bedsit-new-Rolling-Stones-exhibition-money-making.html
51. Pattenden, “Joe Corré on Burning His Sex Pistols Collection."
53. Ahmed, “Happy Objects,” 31.
54. Ibid., 35.
55. Ibid.
56. Grossberg, “Another Boring Day in Paradise.”
57. Rodman and Vanderdonckt, “Music for Nothing Or, I Want My Mp3,” 246.
58. Ibid., 248.
59. Ibid., 260.
60. Discussed in Caswell et al., “To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing.”
61. Cifor, “Affecting Relations.”
62. Ibid., 27.
63. Cvetkovich, An Archive of Feelings.
64. Manoff, “Theories of the Archive,” 10.
65. Manoff, “Theories of the Archive.”
66. Interview, September 2015.
67. Featherstone, “Archive.”
69. Baker, “Affective Archiving and Collective Collecting,” 59.
70. Ibid., 46.
71. Interview, February 2014.
72. See: Long and Collins, “Affective Memories of Music in Online Heritage Practice.”
73. Joint interview, July 2013.
74. Interview, April 2014.
75. Interview, June 2013.
76. Interview, August 2010.
78. Interview, April 2014.
81. Interview, September 2011.
82. Interview, February 2014.
83. Baker, “Affective Archiving and Collective Collecting,” 46.
84. Ibid., 59.
85. Interview, December 2014.
86. Interview, September 2010.
87. Ibid.
88. Interview, September 2010.
89. Interview, August 2010.
90. Interview, August 2010.
91. Collins and Long, “Fillin’in Any Blanks I Can”; Long, “Really Saying Something?”
92. Interview, August 2010.
93. Interview, August 2010.
94. Rodman and Vanderdonckt, “Music for Nothing.”
95. Pad.ma, 10 Theses on the Archive, 356 (Capitalisation in original).