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- Brunow, Dagmar, Dr. phil. 1966-
(author)
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Archival narratives : Curating history and memory in digitized collections
- 2019
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In: Structures and Voices: Storytelling in Post-Digital Times.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- How do archives employ narratives and storytelling to curate access to their digitized collections? Drawing on the results of my research project “The Cultural Heritage of the Moving Image” (2016-2018), this paper examines how film archives recontextualise and contemporize historical content online, how they reflect upon it and how they cope with legal constraints and ethical considerations. It presents findings from studying the processes of regulation according to which some stories become ‘acknowledgeable’ while others are not recognized. This paper discusses how archives can foreground archival social inequalities as a result of collection policies, colonial representations or metadata management. It will look at ways of reflecting on hegemonic power structures in the curation of online content. The cases, looking especially at issues of race, class and sexuality, stem from both national film archives and ‘minor archives’, such as grass-root or community archives. Among these are ‘The BFI Player’, the online portal of the British Film Institute, and the Swedish website ‘Filmarkivet.se’, which has created access to some of the digitized collections from the Swedish National Film Archives, administered by the Swedish Film Institute (SFI) and the Royal Library (KB), as well as the Lesbian Home Movie Project (Maine) and bildwechsel, based in Hamburg.
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| 2. |
- Brunow, Dagmar, Dr. phil. 1966-
(author)
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Archival power and audiovisual memory : recognizing social inequality in film archives
- 2019
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In: Power & the media. XXVII IAMHIST Conference. - Newcastle : Northumbria University. ; , s. 23-23
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- How can heritage institutions deal with the challenges of diversity policies and possibly work as an intervention into hegemonic memory? This paper looks at the dynamics of recognition and visibility in national film archives. Setting out to examine on what terms marginalised lives of social and ethnic minorities are made visible, it analyses the work of national film archives in Sweden and the UK. This approach positions the archive into an object of analysis, shifting the focus on the archive as a site of knowledge retrieval to a site of knowledge production (Foucault 1972, Stoler 2002). Instead of looking at ways of including minorities as a priori identities, I suggest studying the processes of regulation according to which different lifestyles and experiences become ‘acknowledgeable’ (Schaffer 2008, Thomas et al 2017). The paper discusses how archives can foreground archival social inequalities as a result of collection policies, colonial representations or metadata management. It will look at ways of reflecting on hegemonic power structures in the curation of online content. The case studies will be ‘The BFI Player’, the online portal of the British Film Institute, and the Swedish website ‘Filmarkivet.se’, which has created access to some of the digitized collections from the Swedish National Film Archives, administered by the Swedish Film Institute (SFI) and the Royal Library (KB).
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| 3. |
- Brunow, Dagmar, Dr. phil. 1966-
(author)
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Archival tactics and queer vulnerability : Curating access to audiovisual heritage in Europe
- 2018
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In: media tactics and engagement, The NECS 2018 Conference.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- How can heritage institutions deal with the challenges of diversity policies and possibly work as an intervention into hegemonic memory? This paper looks at the dynamics of recognition and queer visibility in audiovisual heritage. Setting out to examine on what terms queer lives are made visible, it analyses how national film archives in Sweden and the UK acknowledge queer vulnerability when following their diversity policies. This approach positions the archive into an object of analysis, shifting the focus on the archive as a site of knowledge retrieval to a site of knowledge production (Foucault 1972, Stoler 2002). Instead of looking at ways of including minorities as a priori identities, I suggest studying the processes of regulation according to which different lifestyles and experiences become ‘acknowledgeable’ (Schaffer 2008, Thomas et al 2017). These archival practices include the choice of metadata, the modes of selection for public screenings and online exhibition as well as the curation and contextualisation of online content. The case studies will be ‘The BFI Player’, the online portal of the British Film Institute, and the Swedish website ‘Filmarkivet.se’, which has created access to some of the digitised collections from the Swedish National Film Archives, administered by the Swedish Film Institute (SFI) and the Royal Library (KB).
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| 4. |
- Brunow, Dagmar, Dr. phil. 1966-
(author)
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“Archival Vulnerabilities” : Invited talk
- 2021
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In: The Whole Life Academy, Workshop no 04 “Archival Burnout in the Age of Vulnerability: [Disobedient] Commons and their Dilemmas, Speculations, Emotions”. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. 13. November 2021. - : Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)
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| 5. |
- Brunow, Dagmar, Dr. phil. 1966-
(author)
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Audiovisual Memory and Placemaking in the Music City : Salford Lads in the Digital Era
- 2020
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In: Book of Abstracts, Groove the City 2020. - Lüneburg : Leuphana University of Lüneburg. ; , s. 11-12
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper looks at the remediation of memory as a method of place making and negotiating urban spaces through music. It shows how music memories can be mobilised through the interplay of locations and digital tools. City tours, audio walks, tourist amateur photography or selfies in front of iconic buildings contribute to mapping the city. In classical concepts around the locatedness of memory (e.g. Pierre Nora’s notion of the lieux de mémoire), memories are tied to specific places. Yet, what is the ‘site’ of memory in times of digitization? The third wave of memory studies (Erll, Rigney, Rothberg) has focused on the transnational dynamics of memory, of memory as a process, as never stable, as always in flux. Drawing on my recent research on the digitization of audiovisual heritage, on the remediation of transcultural memory and on the construction of post-punk memory in Manchester, I argue that remediation creates nodal points (mnemotopes) around which narratives of the past are constructed. These mnemotopes can be mobilised for city branding (Brunow 2019). The paper argues that digital cultures (e.eg. social media) can be a means of “bringing home” transnational memories, tying these back into the local urban scape while remaining constantly in flux. Two cases of living archives will serve as theoretical objects to exploring the tensions of de- and reterritorialization within urban memory cultures: 1) The Salford Lad’s Club and 2) The Manchester Music Tours, a guided tour to locations relevant to bands such as Joy Division, The Smiths or Oasis.
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| 6. |
- Brunow, Dagmar, Dr. phil. 1966-
(author)
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Between Remembering and Forgetting : The Archive and Cultural Memory
- 2018
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In: Documenta archiv Konferenz: Archiving the Unarchivable – Das Unarchivierbare archivieren. - : Documenta Archiv.
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Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In the wake of the ‘archival turn’ the digitization of archival collections has been regarded as an important means of countering forgetting, especially in view of analog film stock and videotapes slowly decaying. But has digitization become a hollow promise? Can long-term preservation really be granted? The initial optimism has been challenged by the increasing number of data cemeteries, too. These are due to short-lived digitization projects, which are lacking sustainable planning. And to add, archival storage alone does not automatically contribute to cultural memory. Instead, archival holdings need to be circulated again, preferably in various media environments, in order to feed into our constantly changing, dynamic cultural memory. This keynote address will explore the relation between memory and forgetting in the archive. Advocating for sustainable archival projects, it will discuss the impact of materiality (e.g. paper, videotapes and digital data). Looking at media specificity involves the question of what gets lost in media transformation, for example in video documentations of performance art or expanded cinema. Situating itself within recent trends in cultural memory studies, the talk will outline the challenges and possibilities of today’s archival practice. Drawing on a number of case studies from the documenta archive as well as other heritage institutions, it will present ways of curating access to digitized collections. Different modes of access allow for a re-circulation of the archive, thus providing ways of constructing cultural heritage and memory.
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| 8. |
- Brunow, Dagmar, Dr. phil. 1966-
(author)
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Decolonizing audiovisual heritage in Europe : Migrant and diasporic lives in national film archives
- 2018
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In: Global Challenges 2018 : Borders, Populism and the Postcolonial Condition - An international conference on critical theory, postcoloniality, migration and populism.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We cannot speak of the past without the archive, Stuart Hall famously stated. The archive, now a buzzword in the arts and humanities, cannot be conceptualised without taking power relations into account (Foucault, Derrida, Stoler). In his keynote “Whose Heritage” (1999), Hall points at the hegemonic whiteness and at the interests of the middle class invested in the creation of heritage and memory in the UK. In recent years, many heritage institutions in Europe have started to emphasize the (albeit problematic) notion of “diversity” as a fundamental requirement for their work. However, when it comes to the impact of digitisation on audiovisual heritage, a post-colonial perspective is still missing. This paper, which is part of my research project “The Cultural Heritage of Moving Images” (financed by the Swedish Research Council, 2016-18), looks at the ways national film archives in the UK and Sweden try to face the challenges involved in carving out a discursive space for migrant and diasporic memories. Arguing that it is not enough to merely “insert” these memories into the hegemonic narrative, it will discuss ways of decentering the audiovisual heritage of the nation. My paper will look at archival approaches to avoiding essentialism and dealing with the politics of representation in film images into which a colonial gaze is already inscribed. How can the colonial gaze be foregrounded (or subverted) when creating access to film collections through online curation? This paper argues for the need of the archivists to take a self-reflexive stand which highlights the role of the archive as an agent in its own right.
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| 10. |
- Brunow, Dagmar, Dr. phil. 1966-
(author)
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From the safe space into cyberspace? : The ambivalence of lesbian visibility in film archives
- 2019
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In: The Lesbian Lives Conference 2019. - Brighton : University of Brighton. ; , s. 6-6
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Visibility has long been an important goal in European lesbian activism and an important means of political empowerment. Yet, visibility can also bring about an increased vulnerability for marginalized groups, especially in times of hate speech and an increasing political backlash. Moreover, we need to ask: whose visibility is recognized by whom, and on what grounds? In my paper I look at the ways both national and grassroot film archives recognize lesbian lives through collection and selection policies, through the use of metadata and via the curation of online access. Presenting case studies from the Swedish and British Film Institutes, from the Hamburg-based archive bildwechsel as well as the Lesbian Home Movie Project in Maine, this paper discusses the ambivalence of lesbian visibility after (amateur) film footage has left the safe space of the archive to be widely circulated online. The paper looks at legal and ethical challenges archivists are facing when dealing with nudity, lesbian affection and other representations which challenge hegemonic heteronormative scopic regimes. How can an ethically conducted archival practice be guaranteed? How can archives avoid making lesbian lives invisible again? This paper presents some of the results of my research project “The Cultural Heritage of the Moving Image” (Swedish Research Council 2016-2018).
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