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. 
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THIS WEEK: Nick Hall and Andrew Flinn on ‘Public History and Historical Reconstruction’

BCMCR Research Seminar | History, Heritage and Archives
Archives, Public History and Historical Reconstruction
1600-1730 Wednesday 21 March
P424, Parkside, Birmingham City University
Free registration at this link

Dr. Nick Hall (Royal Holloway) – ADAPT: Using hands-on technological simulation to communicate television’s clockwork past to future digital users

The tools required to make and share moving images are ubiquitous in the developed world. Smartphones and high-speed wireless internet connections enable users to shoot video and share the results globally. The ease and speed of the digital age has multiplied the potential producers and audiences of video. Similar technological changes have changed the television industry beyond recognition: digital tapeless acquisition and desktop editing are now dominant technologies across genres.

Television production has always been somewhat opaque to audiences, but the recent growth in portable consumer video recording technology further obscures the mechanical and manual foundations of television production practice. As recently as the 1960s, a great deal of television footage was shot and recorded using clockwork film cameras, magnetic audio recorders, and analogue video tape. Shows were edited by hand with the aid of a wide range of mechanical editing aids. Assistant editors performed complex jobs now simplified by non-linear editing software suites such as Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere.

In the age of digital cameras and desktop video editing, the manual work of television production is at risk of being forgotten. Analogue technologies and workflows are increasingly incomprehensible to new generations raised on the smartphone and tablet. To remedy this, ADAPT – a five year research project funded by the European Research Council and led by Prof. John Ellis at Royal Holloway, University of London – is carrying out extensive research designed to capture and animate the hidden histories of historic television production.

ADAPT’s central innovation is to carry out a series of simulations in order to show how arrays of technological devices were used by teams of skilled professionals to make, edit, and broadcast television in the United Kingdom between 1960 and 2010. The project reunites teams of veteran television personnel – including camera operators, sound recordists, and film editors – with obsolete equipment, and captures the results as the subjects re-encounter equipment they have not used for decades.

This presentation will include footage captured during recent simulation exercise, which demonstrate how 16mm television footage was shot and edited during the 1960s. The presentation will address the manifold opportunities and methodological challenges associated with this novel mode of “hands-on” oral history, and consider the ways in which memories of past television production may be translated and interpreted for contemporary audiences.

Dr. Andrew Flinn (UCL) – Digging Where We Stand: community-based archives & participatory approaches to archiving and knowledge production

Drawing upon the speaker’s extensive experience of working with community archives and study of participatory knowledge productive practices this talk will contend that the history and practice of community-based archives suggests that rather than centres for preservation of culture many of these participatory approaches represent an activist agenda of use and knowledge production. The talk will use the framework of Lindqvist’s Dig Where You Stand manifesto and examples of social movement approaches to archiving and the useful past to illustrate the motivations, objectives and activities of both mainly physical and digital archives. The talk will conclude by raising some questions about the challenges and future of these participatory archives.

About the speakers:

Dr. Andrew Flinn is a Reader in Archive Studies and Oral History at University College London and author, recently of ‘Working with the past: making history of struggle part of the struggle’ in Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements: History’s Schools, eds Choudry & Vally (2018).

 Dr. Nick Hall is a research officer in the Department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway (University of London). He works on on the ADAPT project which examines the historical development of British television broadcast production technology. His research specialisms include early postwar American television history and cinematography and British postwar television history. A book based on his research into the history of the zoom lens in American film and television – The Zoom: Drama at the Touch of a Lever will be published by Rutgers University Press in 2018. www.zoomlenshistory.org.uk.

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THIS WEEK: David Gange and Dima Saber on ‘Cultural translation, history and loss’

BCMCR Research Seminar | History, Heritage and Archives
Cultural translation, history and loss

1600-1730 Wednesday 14 March
P424, Parkside, Birmingham City University
Free registration at this link

Dr. David Gange (University of Birmingham) – Sea Sites in Island History: Exploring the Lost Communities of Atlantic Britain and Ireland
There are many more once-inhabited islands in the British and Irish archipelago than there are cities. Many of these had been populated for centuries before a flurry of abandonment between 1850 and 1930. Such islands are lined with ruins: but-and-ben homes, field systems, water mills, abandoned boats, fish traps and shell middens from before the age of buildings. Nineteenth-century people here lived, consciously, in iron age and neolithic landscapes. The coasts are thickly layered in names – Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Norse, Scots, Welsh, occasionally even English – that preserve their history of usage. Regions where such islands predominate are richly served by historical archives so that it’s often possible to link an island ruin to families who used it and the processes that ended its productive life. Those who abandoned an island such as Havera, Shetland, in the 1920s can be heard discussing the joys and challenges of island life in the uniquely rich oral history collections of these regions. This paper explores the processes of researching such communities, but also asks what vision of British and Irish history might be developed by seeing the nineteenth century – the moment when Britain was turned inside out by the advent of roads and rail, and small islands became for the first time in their history ‘remote’ – from their perspective.

Dr. Dima Saber (BCU) Resistance-by-Recording: The disappearing archives of the Syrian war 
This paper will present the early findings of the ‘Resistance-by-recording: the visuality and visibility of contentious political action in the Arab region’ project after the first round of ethnographic work in Berlin in November 2017. Focussing primarily on the consequences of YouTube’s new algorithm to limit the proliferation of material considered graphic or supporting Jihadi propaganda, I will also explore the costs of the Syrian activists’ over-reliance on the current affordances of digital platforms and the challenges this precariousness poses for the preservation of a citizen-generated memory and history of the Syrian war.

About the speakers:
Dr. Dima Saber is a Senior Research Fellow at the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research. Her research is focussed on media depictions of conflict in the Arab region, and she is responsible for leading and delivering projects in citizen journalism, particularly exploring the relation between digital media literacy and social impact in post-revolution and in conflict settings such as Egypt, Palestine and Syria.

Dr. David Gange is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Birmingham. His books include a history of Egyptology, Dialogues with the Dead (Oxford, 2013) and The Victorians: A Beginner’s Guide (Oneworld, 2016). He is currently working on a book that involved kayaking all the Atlantic coastlines of Britain and Ireland across 2016-17, The Frayed Atlantic Edge (Harper Collins, 2019).