Creative Archiving: A Case Study from the John Latham Archive

Abstract

This article looks at the history of the archive profession and emphasises the perceived role of the archivist as the keeper of truth. It focuses on the recent developments in archival practice with the adoption of post-modern thinking and its implementation with open-access archives online. Following a discussion of that approach, it introduces the concept of creative archiving as an alternative approach to archival practice and continues with the presentation of a case study from the John Latham Archive. It concludes with a discussion of the main pros and cons of creative archiving.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Antony Hudek whose contribution to the project was critical, and Simon Gould and Elisa Kay for their continual support. The author is also grateful to Karen Stuckey for her help and Jenny Bunn for her comments. This work was funded by the AHRC and supported by the John Latham Foundation, Ligatus and the CCW Graduate School—University of the Arts London.

Notes

 [1] Cook, ‘What Is Past Is Prologue: A History of Archival Ideas Since 1898, and the Future Paradigm Shift’, 17–63.

 [2] Muller et al., Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives.

 [3] Meehan, Rethinking Original Order and Personal Records, 27–44.

 [4] Jenkinson, A Manual of Archive Administration.

 [5] If the volume of output is possible to be processed, which is often the case with artists' archives, then perhaps such claim is pointless because material should not need to be discarded.

 [6] Booms, ‘Society and the Formation of a Documentary Heritage: Issues in the Appraisal of Archival Sources’, 69–107.

 [7] Cook continues his account of the development of the archival profession by highlighting various problems emanating from the development of computing as well as the fundamental changes introduced by digital files. He concludes his paper with re-employing the past practices to address these new computer-related problems.

 [8] Hardiman, ‘En mal d'archive’: ‘Postmodernist Theory and Record keeping’, 31.

 [9] Ibid., 29.

[10] Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression.

[11] Douglas and MacNeil, ‘Arranging the Self: Literary and Archival Perspectives on Writers' Archives’, 25–39.

[12] John Latham makes similar remarks with his work in the ‘Observer’ series mentioned in ‘Case study: the John Latham Archive’ section.

[13] Harris, ‘Something is Happening Here and You Don't Know What It Is: Jacques Derrida Unplugged’, 136.

[14] Schwartz, Having New Eyes: Spaces of Archives, Landscapes of Power, 3.

[15] Harris, ‘Law, Evidence and Electronic Records: Strategic Perspective from the Global Periphery’, 29–43.

[16] Ketelaar, Archives as Spaces of Memory, 13.

[17] Ibid., 17.

[18] Selection in personal papers is undertaken by the creator during his/her life when choosing to keep or discard a document and does not necessarily concern the archivist who often receives the material at a later date.

[19] Cook, ‘Electronic Records, Paper Minds: The Revolution in Information Management and Archives in the Post-custodial and Post-modernist Era’, 439 and Schwartz and Cook, ‘Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory’, 1–19.

[20] Douglas and MacNeil (op. cit.) explain how such knowledge and experience can be used for rebuilding original order and description for incomplete archives.

[21] If we consider the Internet as the ultimate archive, all other archives are disadvantaged within it, hence the struggle of online content providers to stand out.

[22] An example of such interpretation is described in “Case Study: The John Latham Archive” section.

[23] http://www.fedora-commons.org(cited 27 June 2011). Fedora allows the storage of digital files alongside their metadata. This can scale from basic Dublin Core metadata to any level of complex metadata, offering flexibility to the archivist while adhering to a standardised approach to managing the archive. Repositories such as Fedora offer a wide range of different methods of presenting data. Depending on the available resources one can build on the presentation layer to enhance visually the archivist's interpretation of the archive. Already structured systems make that possible to archives with fewer resources (e.g. Islandora—http://www.islandora.ca).

[24] http://www.drupal.org (cited 27 June 2011). Drupal can be used in combination with an existing repository such as Fedora or function as a mini-repository itself, which is perhaps more suitable for smaller applications. Again it offers great flexibility in the management and presentation of the content while allowing for standards to be used for managing the archive. Drupal has been used for creative archiving in the case study described in ‘Case Study: The John Latham Archive’ section.

[25] Walker, John Latham: The Incidental Person—His Art and Ideas; Latham, Report of a Surveyor.

[26] Hudek and Velios, The Portable John Latham, 64.

[27] Latham, Logsdail and Lisson Gallery, John Latham: Least Event, One Second Drawings, Blind Work, 24 Second Painting, 6.

[28] Latham, State of Mind: John Latham, § 3.3.

[29] Latham, Time-Base: And Determination in Events, 16.

[30] Walker, op. cit., 50.

[31] Ibid., 47–49.

[32] Velios and Gould, ‘Applying Artists' Methodologies to Archiving: a Case Study of John Latham's Archive’.

[33] Hudek, Sun Times.

[34] Ligatus, http://www.ligatus.org.uk/aae or through http://www.ligatus.org.uk/jla (accessed 27 June 2011).

[35] UK Archival Thesaurus (UKAT), http://www.ukat.org.uk (accessed 27 June 2011).

[36] A further publication outlining this work is planned.

[37] Velios, ‘The John Latham Archive: An On-Line Implementation Using Drupal’.

[38] David Bachelor, et al., ‘How artists construct their archives and document the artistic process’, session in Archiving the Artist Study Day, Tate Britain (12 June 2009), organised by ARLIS UK & Ireland, 2009. For further details, see https://www.tate.org.uk/britain/eventseducation/symposia/17470.htm (accessed 10 July 2011).