“The Gallery is Ephemeral”: Exploring the Intersection of Archival Practice and Technology in Artist-Run Initiatives.
Pages 651 - 660
Abstract
Artist-Run Initiatives (ARIs) are grassroots art galleries and project spaces that support artists by providing space for creative expression, experimentation, and exposure. While culturally important, these non-institutional collectives exist in precarious circumstances, with limited access to funding, heavy dependence on volunteers, and uncertainty in securing permanent space. We are particularly interested in how these issues intersect with ARIs’ uses of technology in archival practice. Through interviews with ARI committee members, our findings show intriguing perceptions of technological influence on archival practice, with concerns over reliance on cloud storage services, difficulties of digitising archival content, and how to present archived material on various digital platforms. We conclude with discussion on how future research might help support these communities to develop archival practices that are better suited to their practice.
References
[1]
[1]William C. Adams. 2015. Conducting Semi-Structured Interviews. In Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 492–505. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119171386.ch19
[2]
[2]The National Archives. Benefits of digitisation. Retrieved January 25, 2024 from https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/commercial-opportunities/digitisation-services/benefits-of-digitisation/
[3]
[3]Jeannette A. Bastian and Ben Alexander (Eds.). 2009. Community Archives: The Shaping of Memory.
[4]
[4]Jeannette A. Bastian and Andrew Flinn (Eds.). 2018. Community Archives, Community Spaces: Heritage, Memory and Identity. Facet.
[5]
[5]Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. 2022. Thematic analysis: a practical guide. SAGE Publications, London.
[6]
[6]Dan Brown, Deborah Jackson, and Neil Mulholland. 2018. Artists Running: Fifty Years of Scottish Cultural Devolution. Vis. Cult. Br. 19, 2 (May 2018), 139–167. https://doi.org/10.1080/14714787.2018.1474131
[7]
[7]Kath Browne. 2005. Snowball sampling: using social networks to research non‐heterosexual women. Int. J. Soc. Res. Methodol. 8, 1 (February 2005), 47–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/1364557032000081663
[8]
[8]Emma Bugden. 2020. Testing Grounds and Launching Pads: Situating the Artist-Run Space Today. Victoria University of Wellington. Retrieved September 11, 2023 from http://researcharchive.vuw.ac.nz/handle/10063/9007
[9]
[9]Beatrice Cannelli and Marta Musso. 2022. Social media as part of personal digital archives: exploring users’ practices and service providers’ policies regarding the preservation of digital memories. Arch. Sci. 22, 2 (June 2022), 259–283. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-021-09379-8
[10]
[10]Emma Jane Coffield. 2015. Artist-run initiatives: a study of cultural construction. Thesis. Newcastle University. Retrieved June 26, 2023 from http://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/handle/10443/3026
[11]
[11]Emma Coffield, Paul Richter, Rebecca Huggan, Rebecca Prescott, David Butler, Robin Beveridge, Dan Goodman, and Julie Monroe. 2020. MORE THAN MEANWHILE SPACES II: Creative Enterprise/ActionZones–Exploring the Scope for Supporting Artist-Run Initiatives and Cultural Workspaces in North East England. Feasibility Report. Newcastle University.
[12]
[12]Clara Crivellaro, Rob Comber, Martyn Dade-Robertson, Simon J. Bowen, Peter C. Wright, and Patrick Olivier. 2015. Contesting the City: Enacting the Political Through Digitally Supported Urban Walks. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’15), April 18, 2015. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2853–2862. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702176
[13]
[13]Gabriel Detter and Maurizio Nannucci (Eds.). 2012. Artist-run spaces: nonprofit collective organizations in the 1960s and 1970s. JRP/Ringier, Zurich.
[14]
[14]Okwui Enwezor and International Center of Photography. 2008. Archive fever: uses of the document in contemporary art. Steidl, Göttingen.
[15]
[15]Casey Fiesler, Shannon Morrison, and Amy S. Bruckman. 2016. An Archive of Their Own: A Case Study of Feminist HCI and Values in Design. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’16), May 07, 2016. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2574–2585. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858409
[16]
[16]Andrew Flinn. 2010. Independent Community Archives and Community-Generated Content: ‘Writing, Saving and Sharing our Histories.’ Convergence 16, 1 (February 2010), 39–51. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856509347707
[17]
[17]Rebecca Gulotta, Aisling Kelliher, and Jodi Forlizzi. 2017. Digital Systems and the Experience of Legacy. In Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ’17), June 10, 2017. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 663–674. https://doi.org/10.1145/3064663.3064731
[18]
[18]Rebecca Gulotta, William Odom, Jodi Forlizzi, and Haakon Faste. 2013. Digital artifacts as legacy: exploring the lifespan and value of digital data. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’13), April 27, 2013. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1813–1822. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466240
[19]
[19]Kerry Harker. 2020. Artist-led initiatives and cultural value/s in the contemporary art sector in the UK and Ireland from the 1990s to the present. University of Leeds.
[20]
[20]Indigo Holcombe-James. 2022. ‘I'm fired up now!’: digital cataloguing, community archives, and unintended opportunities for individual and archival digital inclusion. Arch. Sci. 22, 4 (December 2022), 521–538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-021-09380-1
[21]
[21]Andrew Gary Darwin Holmes. 2020. Researcher Positionality – A Consideration of Its Influence and Place in Qualitative Research – A New Researcher Guide. Shanlax Int. J. Educ. 8, 4 (September 2020), 1–10.
[22]
[22]Tom Jenkins. 2018. Cohousing IoT: Design Prototyping for Community Life. In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ’18), March 18, 2018. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 667–673. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173225.3173244
[23]
[23]David S. Kirk and Abigail Sellen. 2010. On human remains: Values and practice in the home archiving of cherished objects. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 17, 3 (July 2010), 10:1-10:43. https://doi.org/10.1145/1806923.1806924
[24]
[24]Terry Kuny. 1997. A Digital Dark Ages? Challenges in the Preservation of Electronic Information. 63rd IFLA Int. Fed. Libr. Assoc. Inst. Counc. Gen. Conf. (September 1997).
[25]
[25]Makayla Lewis, Miriam Sturdee, Josh Urban Davis, Mafalda Gamboa, Sarah Fdili Alaoui, Claire Elisabeth Ohlenschlager, William Gaver, Eli Blevis, and Lian Loke. 2023. Is it Art, is it HCI? Exploring Tensions Between Practice and Research. In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’23), April 19, 2023. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3583744
[26]
[26]Siân E. Lindley, Catherine C. Marshall, Richard Banks, Abigail Sellen, and Tim Regan. 2013. Rethinking the web as a personal archive. In Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on World Wide Web (WWW ’13), May 13, 2013. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 749–760. https://doi.org/10.1145/2488388.2488454
[27]
[27]Sarah Lowndes. 2010. Social sculpture: the rise of the Glasgow art scene. Edinburgh: Luath. Retrieved January 26, 2024 from http://archive.org/details/socialsculpturer0000lown
[28]
[28]Shannon Lucky. 2016. ARChives: Exploring the Community Archives of Canadian Artist-run Centres. Masters Thesis. University of Alberta.
[29]
[29]Shannon Lucky. 2017. Digital archiving in Canadian artist-run centres. In Participatory Heritage, Andrea Copeland and Henriette Roued-Cunliffe (eds.). Facet, 163–172. https://doi.org/10.29085/9781783301256.017
[30]
[30]Amelia McLeish. 2022. Artist-run initiatives and community: A practice-led examination of how artist-based communities are formed and understood in contemporary Australian art. Queensland University of Technology. https://doi.org/10.5204/thesis.eprints.234043
[31]
[31]Wendy Moncur. 2017. Digital Ownership Across Lifespans. In Aging and the Digital Life Course (1st ed.), David Prendergast and Chiara Garattini (eds.). Berghahn Books, 257–274. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt9qdb6b.21
[32]
[32]Gavin Murphy and Mark Cullen (Eds.). 2023. Artist-Run Europe: Practice/Projects/Spaces (2nd ed.). Set Margins.
[33]
[33]William Odom, Richard Banks, David Kirk, Richard Harper, Siân Lindley, and Abigail Sellen. 2012. Technology heirlooms? considerations for passing down and inheriting digital materials. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’12), May 05, 2012. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 337–346. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2207723
[34]
[34]Andrew Prescott. 2020. Community archives and the health of the internet. In Communities, Archives and New Collaborative Practices (1st ed.), Andrew Prescott, Simon Popple and Daniel H. Mutibwa (eds.). Bristol University Press, 251–268. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvx1hvvd.24
[35]
[35]Jim Ricks (Ed.). 2021. Artist-Run Democracy: Sustaining a Model (1st ed.). ONOMATOPEE.
[36]
[36]Sara Callahan author. 2022. Art + archive: understanding the archival turn in contemporary art. University Press, Manchester.
[37]
[37]Phoebe Sengers and Chris Csikszentmihályi. 2003. HCI and the arts: a conflicted convergence? In CHI ’03 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’03), April 05, 2003. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 876–877. https://doi.org/10.1145/765891.766044
[38]
[38]Batia Sharon. 1979. Artist-run galleries—A contemporary institutional change in the visual arts. Qual. Sociol. 2, 1 (May 1979), 3–28. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02390131
[39]
[39]Chris Sharratt. 2018. Why Did Creative Scotland Defund Storied Glasgow Art Gallery Transmission? Frieze. Retrieved April 3, 2023 from https://www.frieze.com/article/why-did-creative-scotland-defund-storied-glasgow-art-gallery-transmission
[40]
[40]Miriam Sturdee, Makayla Lewis, Mafalda Gamboa, Thuong Hoang, John Miers, Ilja Šmorgun, Pranjal Jain, Angelika Strohmayer, Sarah Fdili Alaoui, and Christina R Wodtke. 2022. The State of the (CHI)Art. In Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’22), April 28, 2022. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3503722
[41]
[41]Elizabeth Tait, Marsaili MacLeod, David Beel, Claire Wallace, Chris Mellish, and Stuart Taylor. 2013. Linking to the past: an analysis of community digital heritage initiatives. Aslib Proc. New Inf. Perspect. 65, 6 (January 2013), 564–580. https://doi.org/10.1108/AP-05-2013-0039
[42]
[42]Nick Taylor, Keith Cheverst, Peter Wright, and Patrick Olivier. 2013. Leaving the wild: lessons from community technology handovers. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’13), April 27, 2013. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1549–1558. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466206
[43]
[43]Nick Taylor, Ursula Hurley, and Philip Connolly. 2016. Making Community: The Wider Role of Makerspaces in Public Life. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’16), May 07, 2016. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1415–1425. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858073
[44]
[44]Transmission. 2018. Transmission's Creative Scotland Funding Response Statement. Retrieved September 4, 2023 from https://web.archive.org/web/20180202064931/https://mailchi.mp/5941e5be915a/transmissions-creative-scotland-funding-response-statement
[45]
[45]Vasilis Vlachokyriakos, Rob Comber, Karim Ladha, Nick Taylor, Paul Dunphy, Patrick McCorry, and Patrick Olivier. 2014. PosterVote: expanding the action repertoire for local political activism. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS ’14), June 21, 2014. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 795–804. https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2598523
[46]
[46]Jimmy Zavala, Alda Allina Migoni, Michelle Caswell, Noah Geraci, and Marika Cifor. 2017. ‘A process where we're all at the table’: community archives challenging dominant modes of archival practice. Arch. Manuscr. 45, 3 (September 2017), 202–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/01576895.2017.1377088
[47]
[47]Xuan Zhao, Niloufar Salehi, Sasha Naranjit, Sara Alwaalan, Stephen Voida, and Dan Cosley. 2013. The many faces of facebook: experiencing social media as performance, exhibition, and personal archive. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’13), April 27, 2013. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2470656
[48]
[48]2020. Arts Index: England 2007 - 2018. National Campaign for the Arts. Retrieved from https://www.campaignforthearts.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/NCA-Index-07-18_-1.pdf
[49]
[49]2022. Levelling Up the United Kingdom: Executive Summary. UK Government. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/levelling-up-the-united-kingdom
[50]
[50]2022. Response to Scottish Government Draft Budget 2023/24: Statement following meeting of the Creative Scotland Board, 19 December 2022. Creative Scotland. Retrieved September 6, 2023 from https://www.creativescotland.com/news-stories/latest-news/archive/2022/12/response-scottish-government-draft-budget-2023-24-creative-scotland-board
Index Terms
- “The Gallery is Ephemeral”: Exploring the Intersection of Archival Practice and Technology in Artist-Run Initiatives.
Recommendations
Artist Pointer
CHI EA '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing SystemsArtist Pointer is critically questioning the role of the artist in a process of exhibiting digital art, no matter if being a piece of software or if the work became physical through digital manufacturing, like 3D printing, 3D milling or laser-cutting.
...
Comments
Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
June 2024
718 pages
ISBN:9798400704857
DOI:10.1145/3635636
Copyright © 2024 Owner/Author.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.
Sponsors
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 23 June 2024
Check for updates
Qualifiers
- Research-article
- Research
- Refereed limited
Conference
C&C '24
Sponsor:
Acceptance Rates
Overall Acceptance Rate 108 of 371 submissions, 29%
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 152Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)152
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)21
Reflects downloads up to 13 Dec 2024
Other Metrics
Citations
View Options
View options
View or Download as a PDF file.
PDFeReader
View online with eReader.
eReaderHTML Format
View this article in HTML Format.
HTML FormatLogin options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign in