Tag: archives

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CLUSTER STATEMENT: Cultural Translation in History, Heritage and Archives

Each of the six research clusters at BCMCR have produced a statement on what cultural translation means for researchers in their area. The statement for the History, Heritage and Archives cluster is as follows:

“Cultural translation informs two interrelated strands in the work of scholars in the Histories, Heritages and Archive cluster. First, researchers frequently use and explore how processes of cultural translation interact with the development and circulation of national identities. This can range from videogame history, where scholars explore how Britishness is formed and transmitted by internationally-developed products, to histories of internationalism, where researchers examine how ideas like non-violence are promulgated globally through international conferences. Secondly, the cluster’s work is attentive to the way culture is or is not translated through time. This might mean viewing the archive as a translator, or as facilitating the process of translation, or indeed exploring how the archive might be in some ways an obstacle to the ‘temporal’ transmission of culture. Finally, when the archives in question are those not traditionally supported via state institutions, particularly local music archives, questions of cultural translation – what is preserved, what is lost, by who, for who – take on a pressing political exigency.”

You can find specific examples of research from History, Heritage and Archives scholars at BCU  here.

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SEMINAR SERIES: Histories, Heritages and Archives | Angela English on ‘Sequestered Collections’

Sequestered Collections: cultural value and access in moving image archives

by Angela English

My research looks at how archive film might play a role in public history practice. I am currently engaged in a systematic critique of current practices with moving image material and what role is played by film archivists. Public engagement with archive film has been ongoing for some years in various organisations, both nationally and locally particularly using film for memory work with older people. However a systematic critique of different models of use has not been undertaken to date particularly in terms of understanding of outcome.

Informing the critique were ideas of archive film as ‘incomplete object’ and ‘orphaned text’. Shand (2014) makes a distinction between amateur films and amateur footage which can be fragmentary and often without explanatory intertitles or soundtrack.  He calls amateur archive footage, particularly non-fiction footage, ‘an incomplete object’ (p.199)

Czach (2014) says the ‘orphaned home movie’ can be a stubbornly resistant text (p. 35), as it may have no provenance, no genre and no narrative. For the practice critique, I interviewed former colleagues and experienced archivists and practitioners to get as wide an overview as possible as to current practice models, topics of concern and also to create a hierarchy of what seemed important to them in their work and in the sector.

Two areas of concern that arose during the interviews were cultural value and access. Archivists did not seem able to articulate exactly what form historical, social or cultural value takes, though all felt archive film material was valuable. Value seemed defined by an absence and a threat. Some perceptions of value suggested by participants in the practice critique were: marketability as value; KPIs and other instrumental ‘metrics’ (for example numbers of screenings or audience members) as a way of finding value in outreach projects; value through user interaction with archive material and individual enjoyment or pleasure.

Prelinger (2007) calls access to moving image archives ‘a sticky door’. (p.114)  and also suggests that ‘many institutions sequester their holdings behind walls of copyright maximalism, policy or indifference, rendering them inaccessible to many’. (p.114)  Access to collections may be seen expensive in terms of staffing, budgets or equipment. Interrogating the idea of the sequestered collection led to various suggestions of routes to access to moving image archives by participants. These included: the importance of the curator to contextualise orphaned texts; rights clearance is important as anxieties about IPR and copyright can restrict access; digitisation as a route to access.

The practice critique study will be ongoing until later in 2018 and more data will create a wider picture of current practices with moving image archives.

References

Czach, Liz. “Home Movies and Amateur Film as National Cinema.” Amateur Filmmaking: The Home Movie, the Archive, the Web (2014): 27-37. 

Prelinger, Rick. “Archives and Access in the 21st Century.” Cinema Journal 46.3 (2007): 114-118.

Shand, Ryan. “Retracing the local: amateur cine culture and oral histories.” (2014): 197-220.

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SEMINAR SERIES History, Heritage & Archives | Cultural Translation, History and Loss

Dima Saber’s research paper ‘Resistance-by-recording: the visuality and visibility of contentious political action in the Arab region’

by Simon Crisp

In the first of three History, Heritage & Archives BCMCR seminars, Dr Dima Saber and Dr David Gange tackled the topic of cultural translation, history and loss by talking about some of their respective recent and on-going projects.

Dima started the event talking about the ‘Resistance-by-recording: the visuality and visibility of contentious political action in the Arab region’ project, which explores how variously situated activists use camera-related practices in their struggles for rights, along with the issues of distribution and archive and a re-centring of the agency of human beings over technologies. David then presented his project ‘Sea-Sites in Island History: Exploring the Lost Communities of Atlantic Britain and Ireland’ which had seen him kayak the Atlantic coasts of the British Isles exploring and documenting the culture, history and archives of those coastlines and the communities which have resided there.

Both talks were fascinating in their own right and spoke of issues of history, archive, and loss. David’s accounts of the alternative histories of modernity on the coast were particularly striking for me in the way in which they question the cultural perspectives and dominant visions of British and Irish history, along with the unique access and outlook afforded by approaching these locations from the sea. However, I will focus here on how Dima’s talk prompted me to think about, and question, the idea of Cultural Translation.

Having briefly heard about Resistance-by-recording at a Journalism Activism, Community research seminar last year, I was expecting my thoughts about how the project relates to ideas of cultural translation to be based on the way in which it works across borders, how activists in different situations use varying digital media practices, and how they collaborate with each other. But, as Dima talked about issues raised during an ethnographic research trip to Berlin, and a recent Stockholm roundtable, I found my focus shifting to questioning cultural translation and the digital.

Dima said YouTube’s increasing use of algorithms to identify and limit what was considered to be Jihadi supporting propaganda had become a major issue for the project and the digital activists involved. YouTube’s identification and removal of videos, and channels can now be done with no human interaction and has caused digital activists to change their focus from documenting human rights violations to archiving and preserving historically and culturally significant footage which may get removed or deleted.

Suggestions to insert a human-led stage into the process whereby somebody who understands Arabic and knows the context would be able to distinguish between a terrorist propaganda video and evidence of a human rights violation, raise further questions about the translation of culture into the digital. While algorithms can be used to analyse and recognise, they still cannot understand and translate what they are identifying into other contexts and histories. They are not culturally aware but have been given the power to wipe from voices and memories from history. Thinking about this has left me with more questions about how the idea of cultural translation can be used not just when exploring movements across borders or between languages, but also into the digital.

Finally, another point I found particularly interesting was the questioning of the role of research and academics, and Dima’s suggestion of acting as a facilitator – or put another way a translator – between the activists and the tech companies on whose platforms they rely. It was said that this could be done by using the power of an academic network to get people around the same table or writing papers which will be helpful to tech companies, but that also address the issues impacting the activists.

Simon Crisp is a MA student at Birmingham City University.