Category: Articles

Exploring The Explorers Club

On October 4th, the Pratt Chapter of The American Library Association organized a tour of The Explorers Club, as well as a discussion with their Archivist and Curator of Research Collections, Lacey Flint. Headquartered at 46 East 70th Street since 1964, the Club occupies the former residence of Stephen C. Clark, an interesting figure among New York museums and history in his own right, and founder of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. While Clark did not have a direct affiliation with The Explorers Club, his tastes in architecture and interior design have certainly shaped its surroundings.

Welcome to the Club

As we ascended a hundred year old staircase and made our way past the mounted Polar Bear, it was clear we had entered a very unique kind of club. Seated before Ms. Flint, in a room lined by various framed expedition flags, our group was treated to a substantial information session about the history of the organization, and her professional responsibilities. Joined at times by other staff members who offered additional insights as they were going about their duties, we also had an opportunity for some Q&A with Ms. Flint following her presentation and throughout the tour.

We learned that Explorers Club flags have been carried to the top of Mt. Everest, and the depths of the Marianas Trench, both the North & South Poles, as well as the surface of the Moon. Since 1918, over 200 flags have accompanied Club members on excursions all over the globe (occasionally beyond) and as I foresee myself eventually working within a museum or similar institution, one of my first questions for Ms. Flint was about the preservation of the flags and other items in her care. Despite being ensconced in the opulent trappings of Madison Avenue, the Club’s collection is curated under relatively austere means, and many of the retired and framed flags surrounding us were in need of conservation care and remounting under appropriate archival glass.

The largest lunar flag was never flown, it remains in a sealed bag from the Apollo 13 mission

Progressing into what was previously the Clark family library, we were again reminded of the Club’s constant need for generating revenue, as they were in the midst of preparing the space for a ticketed event titled Tales from Dark Places. Though the bookshelves were partially obscured by large paintings of cave scenes (and rather ominous ones at that), it was easy enough to imagine a quiet read in the shadow of the fireplace’s massive mantel. What was less easy to imagine was how the family was able to navigate the assembled volumes, as Ms. Flint revealed to us a quirk of their personal cataloging. As opposed to author, title or even year of publication, we were told the books were sorted under broad generalities such as ‘things that fly’, a description that can encompass animals, aircraft and even celestial bodies.

This intriguing classification system brought to mind Finding Augusta, particularly the idea of “similarity” and the TSP. (Cooley, 2014) Viewing the library through the lens of the traveling salesman problem, I could imagine the parallels of trying to most efficiently find your way through the seemingly haphazard collection, while trying to gauge the similarity of subject matter as understood by someone else. Just as ‘Augusta’ could simultaneously describe many disparate things to different people, so did this Clark library lend itself to unique interpretations by those using it.

Just Lion around

Reaching the highest level of The Explorers Club, our group became acquainted with the main showroom, and its large taxidermy collection. Despite the delicate nature of the artifacts, the room housing them is not climate controlled, nor have any countermeasures been implemented as of yet to address ultraviolet degradation from sunlight through the windows. (Though we were told the curtains are kept drawn most of the time) I had recently read “Fundamental Forms of Information” before the tour, and as we learned more about the mounted specimens, a passage immediately came to mind:

. . . structures previously associated with life recede back into their natural, inert forms. Trace information is that information that is degrading from being represented information (encoded or embodied) into being natural information only (neither encoded or embodied). Trace information includes the no-longer-used wasps’ nest, waste heaps, carrion, disintegrating ancient scrolls, and so on.

Bates (2006)
Trace Information?

Even under the best of conditions, (and sadly the Club is far from being able to provide that) these artifacts and the information they contain, can not survive forever. As Bates explains, all organized elements eventually break down into basic patterns of matter and energy, and while organic decay is unfortunate, the loss of life of these animals in the first place is no small tragedy in itself. Though Ms. Flint assured the group that the particular examples on display were the result of scientific research, and not sport hunting, it is never easy to clearly discern the motivation of previous generations, and even a commemorative plaque within the room described the assorted animals as “trophies”.

Thinking back on this risk of complacency with questionable past cultural norms brought to mind a recent reading selection from Robert Jensen. His examination of “neutrality” in GLAM fields points out the potential dangers in accepting the status quo of an institution’s practices. (Jensen, 2006) Looking back on the tour with this additional perspective, I find myself conflicted over The Explorers Club’s taxidermy collection. While the specimens may still possess historic significance and cultural relevance, is their continued display a tacit approval of all the killing necessary for them to exist in the first place?

These shadows of the past can loom large in the ornate corners of the old Clark home, but moral ambiguity was not the exclusive takeaway of the day. Despite some questionable collection priorities, the Club does maintain its dedication to exploring the natural world, and one item in particular struck me as an eloquent overlap of information and exploration.

Cheese

In this image, an inadvertent “selfie” of Neil Armstrong as captured in the reflection of Buzz Aldrin’s helmet, we see one of the only photographs of the first man to ever step foot on the Moon, and it was accidental! No satellite imaging, no high definition digital recording, not even a particularly captivating pose, just a man with some film in his camera snapping a photo of his coworker. Oh, and they just happen to be 200,000+ miles removed from the face of the Earth at the time. To be on the literal frontier of science, technology and human advancement, at the edge of the Abyss, and to capture it all with the click of a simple, mechanical shutter, it is a remarkable juxtaposition.

References

Bates, Marcia J. (2006). “Fundamental forms of information” Journal of the American Society for Information and Technology 57(8): 1033–1045. Retrieved from https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/articles/NatRep_info_11m_050514.html

Cooley, H. R. (2014). Finding Augusta: Habits of Mobility and Governance in the Digital Era. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pratt/detail.action?docID=1524277

Jensen, Robert. (2006). “The myth of the neutral professional” in Questioning Library Neutrality, ed. A. Lewis. Library Juice, 89–96.

All photos taken by Ian Gregory 10-04-2019 at The Explorers Club https://explorers.org/

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Reshaping Black Culture Through the Archives

Terrie Boddie, “Prison Industrial”, 2018

On October 19, 2019 I attended the Black Portraiture[s] V:  Memory and the Archive, Past. Present. Future. Conference hosted by New York University.  I attended two panel discussions.  The first  panel I attended was entitled:  Archival Noise:  Black Women, Sonic Remains and Afterlives in Transatlantic Slavery Archives.  There were four presenters who each contributed to the panel by discussing how literature, sound, and various other forms of artistry conveyed the harsh realities of black women during and after the transatlantic slave trade.  The panel discussion was compelling, but I found there was a notable absence of the role of archives in their research.  Only one panelist, I. Augustus Durham in his presentation on “I Love “Lucy” I Think?:  The Makings of Kendrick Dinkinesh” made mention of “the archive”,  but only in passing when he said: “the artist’s (team of creatives) had a deep sense of “the archive”. (Durham, 2019).  His statement was referencing the symbolism used to create an artistic piece by the hip hop artist Kendrick Lamar.   He did not mention which archival records he was referring to, nor did he mention what archival analysis was utilized to arrive at such a conclusion.   As this was a panel of humanities scholars, this led me to believe there was a distinction being made between the “archive” and “the archives”, and I was immediately reminded of the misconception commonly held in humanities studies about “the archive”, and archival studies.

Michelle Caswell who is a writer, scholar, and archivist writes:  “For humanities scholars, “the archive” denotes a hypothetical wonderland…” (Caswell, 1).  This was implied in Durham’s statement in reference to the archive.  She goes on to state that there are two separate discussions taking place between archival studies scholars and Humanities Scholars:

“the archive” by humanities scholars and (of) archives by archival studies scholars are happening on two separate tracks in which scholars in both disciplines are largely not taking part in the same conversations, not speaking the same conceptual languages and not benefiting from each other’s insights” (Caswell 1-2).

It was very compelling to see this disconnect between the two disciplines actually taking place in academic discourse.

These separate tracks became even more evident during the second panel discussion of the day called:  “New Media, Techno, Archive, and Art.  Speakers on this panel discussed AI (Artificial Intelligence), big data, new media art, and addressed the biases embedded within these technologies.  The panelist I would like to highlight is Dorothy Berry who is an Archivist at Houghton Library at Harvard University.  Her presentation was entitled:  “Archives in the Age of Digital Reproduction:  Towards Discoverable Blackness.  In her presentation she discussed the importance of Provenance in archival study and ways it could be applied in archival preservation of the historical records of African Americans.  She stressed the importance of context in analyzing these archival records and the need for more collective description.  She then went on to discuss the embedded racism found in the Library of Congress subject headings, and why patrons of color can be more active pointing out these things for modification (Berry, 2019).

While listening to Berry I was again reminded of the power archivists have in shaping memory.  When dealing with marginalized communities whose histories and experiences have been largely misrepresented, applying  provenance, and cultivating proper context in archival preservation becomes an even more daunting task:

“The nature of the resulting “archive” thus has serious consequences for administrative accountability, citizen rights, collective memory, and historical knowledge, all of which are shaped – tacitly, subtly, sometimes unconsciously, yet profoundly – by the naturalized, largely invisible, and rarely questioned power of archives (Swartz & Cook, 4).

Berry’s presentation demonstrated the influence archivists have in shaping collective memory.  Berry also was able to convey the role racism plays (whether intentional or not) in affecting how African American archival records are archived. Berry’s presentation touched on issues of diversity emphasizing in her talk that 89 percent of archivists are white . She emphasized there was much need for community engagement (Berry, 2019).  In The Quest For Diversity in Library Staffing: From Awareness to Action, Jennifer Vinopal using the ALA’s 2007 Diversity Counts Report states:  “…a vicious cycle that the lack of diversity perpetuates: “[T]he lack of diversity in regards to race and ethnicity, age group, disability, and other dimensions…work [sic]to distance the very communities they seek to attract” (Vinopal, 2013).  This “vicious cycle” is reinforced by Berry’s call for more participation from people of color in bringing awareness to biases within the archives, specifically in the archival preservation of African American Culture. There is a sentiment within the African American Community due to the forms of racism endured such as Jim Crow, that has led African Americans to internalize the belief that they are not welcome in certain spaces.  I see this sentimentality being played out here, in reference to the lack of participation from the African American community, even in the reframing of African American culture through the archives.

As I mentioned earlier, I attended two panels each panel was very informative, and was very different from one another. The theme of the conference was memory and archive through the lens of the black experience.  The topics of discussion were about how these concepts intersect and how we can better understand, work through, and work with the power structures that govern our society in the United States and abroad.  Also, how marginalized groups can empower themselves with the use of modern technology to create, preserve, and reframe culture.  As the technological age continues to advance rapidly, we are continuously challenged to find ways to adapt.  Issues of privacy, racism, inclusivity, cultural preservation, and transparency are more important than ever.  These topics will continue to be of great concern as we continue to move forward. Through these panel discussions I was able to begin to identify themes from course discussions, and see how they manifest themselves through academic discourse.

Works cited:

Berry, D. (2019, October). Archives in the Age of Digital Reproduction:  Towards discoverable blackness.  Paper presented at the Black Portraiture[s] V Memory and the Archive Past. present. Future. NewYork University. New York, NY

Durham, A. I. (2019, October) I love “lucy’, I think?: The makings of kendrick dinkinesh.  Paper presented at the Black Portraiture[s] V Memory and the Archive Past. Present. Future. New York University. New York, NY.

Caswell, M. (2016) “The Archive” is not the archives:  Acknowledging the intellectual contributions of archival studies. Reconstruction:  Studies in contemporary culture 16(1). Retrieved from:  https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7bn4v1fk

Vinopal, J. (2013, January, 13). The quest for diversity in library staffing:  From awareness to action. In the Library with a Lead Pipe Retrieved from:  http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2016/quest-for-diversity

Schwartz, J.M., Cook,T. (2002). Archives, records, and power:  The making of modern memory. Archival Science, 2 , 1-19, Retrieved from: https://www.nyu.edu/classes/bkg/methods/schwartz.pdf

Illustration:  Boddie, T. (2018) Prison Industrial.

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The Ever-Evolving Life of Archives

by Jay Rosen

I recently attended a presentation and panel discussion at this year’s Lapidus Center Conference on Enduring Slavery, hosted on October 10-12 by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at New York Public Library. The theme of this year’s conference was “Resistance, Public Memory, and Transatlantic Archives,” which I thought might connect to some of our previous discussions on archives, cultural preservation, and collective memory in the United States.

The particular session I attended was entitled, “Emerging Perspectives on Public Memory and Popular Representations of Anti-Black Violence.” The conversation was introduced by Jennifer DeClue, Assistant Professor in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College, who also presented original research and moderated the subsequent discussion.[1] Other panelists included Dr. Tyler Perry, Assistant Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Dr. Allison Page, Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Old Dominion University. Because the material presented in DeClue’s presentation was especially interesting to me, I’ve decided to focus exclusively on that here.

The title of DeClue’s presentation was “Staging Slavery: Public Television and the Performance of Slave Narratives.” Her discussion centered on “The History of the Negro People,” a 9-part televison series which aired on the public television network NET (now PBS) in 1965. The series explored lesser known narratives of black people in America and throughout the world, featuring episodes on ancient African civilizations, the racial history of the American south, and the experience of black people in Brazil, among other topics.

Poster for 1965 television series “History of the Negro People”

The episode discussed by DeClue is simply titled “Slavery.” Included in it are staged dramatizations of slavery that emphasize resistance; significantly, these dramatizations were based on the actual stories of enslaved people in America. The testimonies used in “Slavery” were collected as part of FDR’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) program in the 1920s. Though the WPA is mostly remembered for grand-scale public works projects like the construction of highways and buildings, it also included the Federal Writers Project, which facilitated the collection of American folklore and oral histories. As DeClue put it, a “database” of oral histories by formerly enslaved people was amassed through these efforts. The “raw material” embodied in these histories was then reanimated through the dramatic performances described by DeClue, and given a national audience through the medium of public television.

As previously mentioned, “Slavery” primarily highlighted instances of resistance to slaveholders and the institution of slavery itself. The episode included re-tellings of the stories of infamous rebels Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, and John Brown, as well as narratives of lesser known enslaved people who dared challenge the “peculiar institution.” In chronicling American slavery through the lens of resistance and using the words of people who endured it,  the episode marks an “intervention into the dominant narrative of slavery,” shifting our public memory of slavery away from narratives of servility and complacency and towards tales of humanity and resilience.

The excerpts from “Slavery” that DeClue played for the audience highlight the potency of archives, as well as their insurrectionary potential. More specifically, they demonstrate that archives contain material that can be used to disrupt dominant understandings of history and uplift the narratives of marginalized people. As the Schwartz and Cook reading we were assigned earlier this semester suggests, archives have tremendous power in shaping our collective memory and identity, and can be used as tools to promote hegemony or resistance, depending on the materials available and the objectives of those who use them.   

At one point, DeClue mentioned that Federal Writers Project employees discovered that former slaves were less likely to be as forthcoming with white interviewers as they were with black ones. This unsurprising fact demonstrates that the archival record is anything but an unmediated collection of stories and documents. Rather, the records available to us today were shaped — implicitly and explicitly — by the people in positions to receive, create, and preserve them. As DeClue reminded us, it’s remarkable that so many powerful and subversive stories were collected by this project, given that most interviewers were white and were thus received less comfortably by black storytellers. What might this archival record look like if only black people collected these histories?

Still image from Ja’Tovia Gary’s “An Ecstatic Experience”

In closing out her presentation, Jennifer brought up the avant-garde short film “An Ecstatic Experience,” created by Brooklyn-based artist and filmmaker Ja’Tovia Gary. The film repurposes footage from “Slavery,” overlaying etchings, drawings, and other markings over images from the 1965 segment. In manipulating this footage, Gary added yet another “layer” to the archive and underscored the fact that archival materials evolve over time and in response to current understandings of the issues they embody and reflect. I found it exciting (and a bit dizzying) to try and peel back the archival “layers” included in DeClue’s presentation. For one, there are the narratives collected by the Federal Writers Project — these testimonies themselves comprise a kind of “transatlantic archive,” as DeClue put it. There is then the archival repository represented in “The History of the Negro People,” now over fifty years old. From there “An Ecstatic Experience” was born, further commenting on and repurposing the “raw material” collected by the Federal Writers Project in the 1920s. Finally, there is DeClue’s own analysis of these “layers,” which has already been digitally archived on Vimeo, in addition to my own commentary on her recent discussion, now archived on WordPress. These various “layers” enliven my understanding of archival “provenance” as introduced in the Caswell reading assigned earlier this semester. They show how records and archives are far from static, but rather unfold over decades and in conversation with the past and present.

Works referenced / cited:

Bly, L., & Wooten, K. (Eds.). (2012). Make your own history: Documenting feminist and queer activism in the 21st century. Los Angeles, CA: Litwin Books.

Caswell, M. L. (2016). “’The Archive’ Is Not an Archives: On Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies.” Reconstruction, 16 (1), 1-12. Retrieved from: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7bn4v1fk.

Schwartz, J. M., & Cook, T. (2002). Archives, records, and power: The making of modern memory. Archival Science, 2(1–2), 1–19. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02435628

[1] Side note: DeClue mentioned during her introduction that she is currently working on a book titled “Visitation: Towards a Black Feminist Avant-Garde Cinema,” which focuses on black women filmmakers who use archival documents and avant-garde filmmaking techniques to encourage different ways of perceiving black women. This project brought to mind Alana Kumbier’s article “Inventing History: The Watermelon Woman and Archive Activism.” Kumbier’s article analyzes Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, in which Cheryl — represented as filmmaker but also a character in the film — traces a fictional persona named Fae Richards largely in order to “create a documentary heritage for black lesbian cultural production to enable future products” (Kumbier 103). Thus, both women use archival materials and the medium of film to encourage nuanced and feminist depictions of black women.

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Event in Review: NYC Media Lab Summit ‘19

Photo: Janet Liu 2019

My event in review is on the NYC Media Lab Summit that I attended on September 26, 2019. Organized by the NYC Media Lab, the summit brings together people from various industries and universities in NYC to discuss the emerging technologies of today and the future. The event was split into a morning and afternoon session that was held from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM at the New York City College of Technology (CUNY) and NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

Media 2030 panel led by Justin Hendrix, Executive Director of NYC Media Lab.
Photo: Janet Liu 2019

The morning session began with an innovation panel discussing the challenges and future vision for Media 2030. The list of speakers includes Yaël Eisenstat, R. Luke Duois, Desmond Upton Patton, and Tony Parisi. It was inspiring to hear different professionals’ takes on what they thought will be the most critical challenges facing institutions in 2030. Even though the speakers come from different industries, it was surprising to hear all of their responses towards AI and algorithm bias. This made me think about Posner’s discussion on the inefficiency in having a binary mindset to make sense of the world, and how binary groupings in digital humanities projects are causing further marginalization of groups (Posner, 2016). It is concerning to learn of all of the bias we have in our society today, and how it will remain a critical challenge ten years later.

Following the panel were two keynote presentations given on AI and storytelling. The first was from Amir Baradaranand, an artificial artist and art-based researcher at Columbia University. The second was from Heidi Boisvert, CEO & Founder of futurePerfect Lab and Director of Emerging Media Technology at CUNY. It was fascinating to see AI creating immersive storytelling experiences and artworks. This made me think about Norman’s argument of machines as ‘rigid, inflexible, and fixed’ (Norman, 2018). We can see these traditional views shifting, as innovators like Baradaranand and Boisvert show us a vision where artists, creatives, and AI technologies can work together. Perhaps, as Norman imagined, humans and machines will form a complementary team and take on both a human-centered and machine-centered approach to learning.

  • ‘Mapper’s Delight’ VR expereience. Photo: Janet Liu 2019.

The afternoon session began with a Demo Expo that included 100 student prototypes. I was looking forward to this event the most as I wanted to see what kind of emerging technologies students were currently working on and excited about. It was immediately evident that there was a big trend in VR. I saw many VR products used for prototypes such as designing an online retail store, an immersive travel experience, and a chemical lab. One project that really stood out to me was the Hip Hop data visualization project, ‘Mapper’s Delight’ designed by Rap Research Lab. Instead of showing a list of lyrics, the lab explores the “global distances traveled by the lyrics contained in each rap artist’s career while exploring the secret flows of Hip-hop’s spacetime through a panoptic interface.” (“Mappers Delight VR,” 2017). It was cool and clever to see over 2,000 lyrics connected by geography and transformed into a virtual platform, which also brought an emotional engagement as I was able to find lyrics connecting me to Hong Kong. Projects like these make us think about new possible ways to provide meaning and context to big chunks of data.

Stuart Trafford’s workshop, “Magic Leap in the Enterprise: How Spatial Computing is Revolutionizing Education, Media, Entertainment and More.”
Photo: Janet Liu 2019.

The last part of the summit included a hands-on workshop where attendees had the choice of picking one out of the fourteen to attend. I decided to go with Magic Leap, a leading VR company presenting on extended reality, spatial computing, and how it is transforming the industries. I wanted to attend this workshop to understand why there is such a big fascination with these types of products. Stuart Trafford, the Education Lead of Magic Leap introduced its newest product called Magic Leap One, a mixed reality product that creates immersive experiences. One point that stuck with me was when Trafford said the experience of information is changing as technology has allowed these online experiences to be personalized instead of appealing to the masses. It was fascinating to see how MR products can be applied to future industries such as in hospitals and construction sites. This workshop inspired me to write my research paper on VR and understand if there will be a demand for such a product in future museums, as I still find VR products to be very gimmicky.

Overall, I was very impressed with the structure of the summit. I expected more students to attend as tickets cost a hefty $200 but students can attend for $30. I loved the order of presentations. It started with broad topics discussing the challenges and future use of emerging technologies, to the current uses demonstrated by students, and then to workshops that show specific examples of how these types of technologies are used. Also, it is important to note that the event relied on the WHOVA conference app, which allowed you to keep track of the full agenda, learn more about sessions, take notes, chat, and most importantly, sign up for workshops. Even though the app was really convenient, it made me think about the accessibility of information. How will the experience change for people who don’t have the app downloaded and can’t sign up for workshops? Will their experience be different since the event heavily relied on the app to connect with other attendees and speakers?

I appreciated how the summit not only showcased all the fancy cool products but also emphasized on the downsides and challenges technology brings. By doing so, the summit did a good job of providing transparency. One thing that really stuck to me was when Boisvert spoke of her research findings at Limbic Lab that shows how technology is rewiring our brain. As Boisvert comments, it will be important for us to take a human-centered approach to reverse the harmful effects caused by technology. This seems to be a central theme in the summit as well as our discussions from class. As Norman, and what other speakers have repeated throughout the summit, future designers and technologists will not only need training as technicians but will also need to receive training to learn what it means to be ‘human’ (Norman, 2018).

References

Mappers Delight VR. (2017). Retrieved from: https://rapresearchlab.com/#portfolioModal2.

Norman, Don A. (1998). Being Analog. Retrieved from: http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/being_analog.html.

NYC Media Lab ’19. (n.d.). Retrieved from: https://summit.nycmedialab.org/

Posner, Miriam (2016). What’s next: The radical, unrealized potential of digial humanities. Retrieved from: http://miriamposner.com/blog/whats-next-the-radical-unrealized-potential-of-digital-humanities/.

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Race After Technology

“Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the worlds you cannot live within”

RUHA BENJAMIN

Ruha Benjamin, an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founder of the JUST DATA Lab, author of two books – People’s Science and Race after Technology, gave an eye-opening talk on the racist practices of technology. She began by giving a trailer of her latest book Race after Technology, moving on to provide some real-life examples of how racism in technology is exercised. She finally talks about the ‘New Jim Code’, also mentioning the various approaches undertaken in order to counter it. I was also able to identify correlations with the various readings done for the class, addressing it where relevant.

TRAILER OF THE BOOK “Race after Technology”

As Ruha Benjamin gives a brief of her book Race after Technology, she brought forth her three provocations. The provocations, as she puts it, are as follows:

1.           Racism is productive or is it?

She states that racism is productive, not in the sense of being good, but in the literal capacity of racism to produce things of value to some, even as it creates havoc on others.

2.          Social inputs make some inventions appear inevitable.

According to Ruha Benjamin, when we think about how racist technology shapes us, we tend to limit this thinking to the social and ethical impacts of technology, but we fail to remember, how all this existed prior to the birth of technology. So, it’s not just the impact of technology, but the social inputs that make some inventions appear inevitable and desirable.

3.          People are forced to live in someone else’s imagination.

As Benjamin declares, imagination is not the afterthought where we have the luxury to dismiss or fantasize, but it is a resource, a battleground that involves the input and output of tech and social order. In fact, she states that most of the people are forced to live inside someone else’s imagination. In other words, racism among other axes of dominance helps produce this fragmented imagination, misery for some and monopoly for others.

EXAMPLES OF RACIST TECHNOLOGY

•           Citizen app

Ruha Benjamin continues to talk about the real-life practices of racism in technology. She gives an example of a relatively new application called Citizen. This app sends real-time crime alerts based on a curated selection of 911 calls. It also offers a way to report, live-stream and comment on a reported crime act. It shows incidents as red dots on a map so you could avoid supposedly dangerous neighborhoods. According to Ruha Benjamin, the Citizen app gave people the privilege to avoid crimes, rather than stopping it. Likewise, Citizen and other tech fixes for social problems are not simply about technology’s impact on societies, but also about how racial norms and values shape what tools are imagined necessary in the first place.

•           Racist Robots

Further, Benjamin talks about Racist Robots another apt example of how racism works in technology. There were a series of waves that seemed shocked at the idea of how artifacts can have politics. In contrast, some declared, technology inherits its creator’s biases. According to Benjamin, one of the challenges we now face is how to meaningfully differentiate technologies that are used to differentiate us. This coded bias and imagined objectivity is what she termed the ‘New Jim Code’.

THE NEW JIM CODE

Michelle Alexander’s analysis of the New Jim Code considers how the reproduction of racist forms of social controls and successive institutional forms entails a crucial sociotechnical component, that not only hides the nature of domination but allows it to penetrate every facet of social life under the guides of progress. Benjamin provides an example of a targeted ad from the mid-20th century, which entices white families to purchase a home in the particular neighborhood of Los Angeles. Developers were trying to do this by promising them beneficial restrictions, that restricted someone from selling their property to Black people or other unwanted groups. Followed by the rise of the Black Power movement, Fair housing act of 1968, that thought to protect people from housing discrimination when renting or buying a home. She states the four conceptual offspring of the ‘New Jim Code’, around which the chapters are organized. The offsprings of the New Jim Code, as she declares are:

  • Engineered inequity
  • Default discrimination
  • Coded exposure
  • Techno benevolence

There have been some strong restrictions on the New Jim Code. One of the most heartening revelations is that tech industry insiders have recently been speaking out about the most outrageous forms of corporate collusion that involves racism and militarism. She elaborates by citing an example where thousands of Google employees condemn the company’s collaborations on a pentagon program that uses Artificial Intelligence to make drone strikes more effective. This kind of informed refusal is certainly necessary as we build a movement to counter the New Jim Code. However, according to Benjamin, we can’t wait for the workers’ sympathy to sway the industry. Initiatives like Data for Black Lives and the Detroit Community Technology Project offer a more far-reaching approach, the former brings together people working in a number of agencies and organizations in a proactive approach to tech justice, especially at the policy level. One of the concrete collaborations that has grown out of Data for Black Lives was last year when several government agencies, including the police department and public support system, formed a controversial joint power agreement called Innovation Project, giving agencies broad discretions to collect and share data on young people with the goal of developing predictive tools to identify drug use in the city. There was an immediate and broad-based backlash from the community with the support of Data for Black Lives. In 2017, a group of over 20 localizations formed what they called “Stop the cradle to prison algorithm”. This coalition asks for a better process moving forward, and structural input into advancing upstream interventions. In “Finding Augusta” Heidi talks about how people are getting accustomed to Google which in return of their free service, stores your data and history in order to track users’ preferences and interests to get targeted ads, as the one mentioned previously by Benjamin.

CONCLUSION

She concludes by talking about Harvard Professor Derick’s radical assessment of reality through creative methods and racial reversals insisting “To see things as they really are……you must imagine them as what they might be”.

All in all, the talk was a great one with enlightening thoughts about technology’s racist side, something I had usually overlooked. Her thoughts were strong and to the point with solid examples to back them.

Posted on by Divya Thomas Chuttiparavilayil 0

Event Review: The Evolution of the Black Queer Archive

On Thursday, October 17th, I attended several panels for the three-day conference Black Portraiture[s] V: Memory and the Archive Past. Present. Future. The stated purpose of the conference was to “explore the making of visual archives, the narratives they tell, and the parameters that define them as objects of study.” I listened to presentations and discussions about the particular difficulties of archiving when it comes to the records and materials of populations that have been historically oppressed, marginalized, and excluded from official archives.

I was especially interested in the panel I went to titled “Representation Matters — The Evolving Black LGBTQ Archive,” featuring speakers Jennifer DeVere Brody, Thomas Allen Harris, and Steven Fullwood, with moderator Katina Parker. All black, queer professionals with backgrounds in the arts, their particular experiences and expertises lent to a vibrant discussion about intersectionality and the importance of identity in archiving.

Identification badge with event information and logo on one side and a photograph of a black woman taken by Adama Delphine Fawundu on the other side.
The identification badge allowing access to Black Portraiture[s] V: Memory and the Archive Past. Present. Future. Photo taken by Shivani Ishwar. The photo on the back of the ID badge is “Pecola’s Blues #2: Blue Eyes, Cocoa Brown,” taken by Adama Delphine Fawundu in 2012.

Throughout their presentations, the speakers each emphasized the importance of maintaining a personal archive. When belonging to a community that has been suppressed from the “official” archive, especially when that community is a doubly-disadvantaged one like the black queer community, personal and “informal” archives are often the only way to preserve information about those communities. Something as simple as a family photo album can be a valuable resource in learning about the history of black queer people and communities, because when no one else is invested in the preservation and retelling of black queer stories, people in that community have to take charge of that preservation themselves.

The speakers presented many different examples of the way black queer people have been erased or understated in official histories: like Edmonia Lewis, a 19th-century sculptor brought up during Brody’s talk, “Out of the Future: A Black Queer-Femme Archive.” Lewis’ well-known aversion to dresses and probable affairs with women lead many to label her as a queer figure; but Wikipedia calls no attention to her preferred style of clothing, and simply describes her as having “never married.”

History is rife with these sorts of discrepancies, situations in which people’s identities aren’t fully acknowledged by formal archives. For people at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities—in this case race, sexuality, and sometimes gender—often the narrative prioritizes one identity over another. One might be a black historical figure, or a queer one, but rarely both. It’s in situations like these, Harris argued, that personal archives are most important. His presentation, “Queering the Family Album,” discussed how personal archives can be a powerful tool for families to better understand their pasts.

In black households in the U.S., Harris noted, homophobia and transphobia are common sentiments. But many family photo albums contain evidence of queer ancestors: an aunt who dressed like a man, a cousin in drag, a great-uncle who never married. These stories are suppressed on one level, but the physical evidence of a photograph is difficult to refute. In this way, personal, informal archives can provide an important link between the present generation and past ones; and, by extension, between future generations and the current one.

Harris’ discussion of the intersection of black and queer identity reminded me strongly of Sasha Costanza-Chock’s article “Design Justice” (2018). The importance of intersectionality is discussed in depth in Costanza-Chock’s article, where they argue that especially for people whose identities are marginalized on multiple levels, like those of race, gender, and sexuality, it’s important to recognize all of those identities as interlocking parts of the person. Without acknowledging the way that different identities interact with each other, one is left with an incomplete picture of an individual.  

Steven Fullwood presents black queer historical figures Joseph Beam, Raven Chanticleer, and Stormé DeLarverie.
Steven Fullwood’s presentation, “Notes on Archival Visual Representations of Black LGBTQ Life.” Photo taken by Shivani Ishwar.

Personal archives, though, are often difficult to access specifically because they’re so informal. Fullwood’s talk, “Notes on Archival Visual Representations of Black LGBTQ Life,” touched on this challenge, discussing the way that so many personal archives are “collections doomed to the waste bin of history.” Whether it’s the destruction of records, an incomprehensible system of organization, or the inevitable damages of time, these personal archives are more often lost than they are preserved.

The themes of Fullwood’s presentation reminded me of several readings, including Michelle Caswell’s “‘The Archive’ is not an Archives” (2016) and Marcia J. Bates’ “Fundamental Forms of Information” (2006). Fullwood’s discussion of how personal archives are often poorly preserved speaks to Caswell’s point on the power of the archivist. Because information degrades over time, the decision of what gets preserved is left to whomever has access to the personal archives in question. Even if those records won’t be included in an official narrative, their continued existence is a far better fate than total destruction.

Even when information has degraded, Bates’ discussion of “embedded” information can illuminate why those damaged records can still have value. A water-stained photograph, for example, may speak not only to the great-grandmother in the picture, but also the flooded house her descendants lived in. In this way, personal records continue to accumulate and communicate information even beyond the “recorded” information, in Bates’ terminology, that was initially intended. This is why Fullwood advocates for people to maintain catalogues of their own archives—photos, documents, home video, and so on—so that they may still be interpreted and shared generations later, with all the added information that comes with time.

Also related to Caswell’s discussions of the power of archiving was Parker’s short presentation on the communicative potential of archives. She talked about the way archives create community and identity for a collective group of people: whether it’s of a society, as in official archives, or of a family or a group of friends, as in personal archives. In being excluded from archives, marginalized groups are excluded from their communities, which is what makes their own personal archiving so powerful. It’s a way to reclaim their narratives, their lives, from those who would rather their stories not be shared with the broader consciousness.

Parker emphasized that archiving is an important way to communicate across time and space; whether a photo is sent to friends hundreds of miles away or discovered in a dusty attic after decades, this communication acts as a touchstone for black queer people to connect with one another. As Caswell acknowledges that the archivist has power over how the story is told for future generations, Parker’s discussion presented the potential of having marginalized people as the archivists, the tellers of their own stories.

All of the speakers, in their discussions of intersectionality and power, time and space, came around to the same concept: that of legacy. Ultimately, being able to preserve and share personal archives is a way for marginalized groups to share their own legacies with the world. In times when official archives would exclude black queer stories, causing future generations of black queer people to doubt their own existence and history, the offering of an alternative archive allows the black queer legacy to live on.

References

Bates, M. J. (2006). Fundamental forms of information. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(8), 1033–1045. doi: 10.1002/asi.20369

Black Portraiture[s] V: Memory and the Archive: Past. Present. Future. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.blackportraitures.info/.

Caswell, M. (2016). ‘The Archive’ is Not An Archives: Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies. Reconstruction, 16(1).

Costanza-Chock, S. (2018). Design Justice: towards an intersectional feminist framework for design theory and practice. Proceedings of the Design Research Society 2018. doi: 10.21606/drs.2018.679

Edmonia Lewis. (2019, October 16). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonia_Lewis.

Henderson, A. (2012, February 17). Edmonia ‘Wildfire’ Lewis: A black lesbian who sculpted freedom and independence. Retrieved from http://gayhistoryproject.epgn.com/historical-profiles/mary-edmonia-wildfire-lewis-a-black-lesbian-who-sculpted-freedom-and-independence-read-more-pgn-the-philadelphia-gay-news-phila-gay-news-philly-news-mary-edmonia-wi/.

Intersectionality. (2019, October 18). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality.

Jackson, N. (2010, November 12). Taking Care of Your Personal Archives. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/11/taking-care-of-your-personal-archives/66425/.

Posted on by Shivani Ishwar 0

Blog: Person, Place, and Thing

Heidi Klise

Cultural Heritage Preservation

Cultural heritage and heritage preservation are significant components of information studies. A beautiful line from the movie The Monuments Men does a good job of explaining why it is important to preserve heritage. George Clooney’s character Frank Stokes declared, “You can wipe out an entire generation, you can burn their homes to the ground and somehow they’ll still find their way back. But if you destroy their history, you destroy their achievements and it’s as if they never existed. That’s what Hitler wants and that’s exactly what we are fighting for.” (1) The protection of heritage has been tasked to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). UNESCO divides heritage into two categories, tangible (physical items, monuments, geography, etc.) and intangible (oral stories, traditions, events, etc.). My research paper will delve into examples of heritage preservation by refugees in new communities. For this assignment I want to highlight non-refugee related examples of tangible heritage: the Hawaiian mountain Mauna Kea, the journal of a WWII prisoner of war, and Swiss archaeologist Paul Collart.

Person: Paul Collart 

This coming Wednesday at NYU there is a talk called, “Heritage in Peril: Digital Approaches to Preservation.” I will be unable to attend due to class but I wish I could as it is a topic of particular interest. The keynote talk will be presented by a professor from the University of Lausanne (Unil), which, according the the event invite, “is home to the Collart Collection, the world’s most comprehensive archaeological archive of the Temple of Baalshamin in Palmyra, Syria.” (2) The temple was destroyed in 2015 by ISIS. The collection is named in honor of Paul Collart, a Swiss architect and professor at Unil, who UNESCO entrusted with the inventory of the cultural property of Syria and Lebanon. (3) Collart also led the excavation of the Baal Shamin temple in the 1950s, which was classified as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1980. It’s a mark of the 50s that a Swiss man and not a Syrian was entrusted with the cultural property of two Middle Eastern countries. However, the photographs that he took during the excavation are even more important now that the real temple has been destroyed. In a video from Khan Academy, Dr. Salaam al-Kuntar and Dr. Steven Zucker discuss Palmyra. Dr. al-Kuntar says, “[A]nd then we start asking ourselves, what is the meaning of a world heritage site if that site cannot be protected?” (4) This brings up an interesting point about heritage sites, they are protected from development but what resources does UNESCO have when sites are at risk? And if militaries are entrusted to protect sites, that leads to a larger conversation that is somewhat addressed in The Monuments Men, is a life worth sacrificing for art or architecture?

The image of Collart is from archnet.org. (5)

Place: Mauna Kea

Mauna Kea is the peak of a dormant volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii. From base to top, it is the highest mountain in the world at 32,696 feet, of which 4,205 rise above sea level. (6) The summit is sacred to native Hawaiians and is believed to be a home to the gods. There has been a long-standing struggle between builders and locals since the first telescope was built by the University of Hawaii in 1970. (7) This past summer, protests stopped construction of the proposed Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT), which would be the 14th built on the summit. 

Since mid-July, native Hawaiians, transplants, celebrities such as Jason Momoa, and others have set up camp and blocked the access road to the telescope area. Organized largely on social media, the “we are Mauna Kea” protests have even taken place in cities such as Las Vegas and New York City. I read an instagram post from actor, local, surfer, and business owner Kala Alexander that said something to the effect of, ‘we’re not anti-science or against learning more about the stars, what we’re against is the further desecration of our sacred Mauna Kea.’ What’s interesting is that the University of Hawaii has largely been at the forefront of observatory construction. Information about a lawsuit by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs explained, “the state and the University of Hawaiʻi have continuously neglected their legal duties to adequately manage the mountain. Instead, they have prioritized astronomical development at the expense of properly caring for Mauna Kea’s natural and cultural resources.” There have been rumors of another equally appeasing TMT location in the Canary Islands of Spain, but not much has been reported. 

(image from Kala Alexander’s instagram page)

What is also interesting, is that two of the other volcanoes and sacred locations on the Big Island, Kilauea and Mauna Loa, lie in Volcanoes National Park and are under protection due to their dedication as UNESCO world heritage sites. Why was Mauna Kea not included? Remember the ‘S’ in UNESCO stands for ‘scientific.’ Mauna Kea Observatory is listed in the category of astronomical heritage, “The smooth shape of the isolated mountain, along with its high altitude, produces astronomical image quality that is among the best of any location on Earth.” (8) So, who decides for what purpose something should be preserved? In this case it was the UN, but in other cases it could be information professionals and archivists. I am reminded of Shwartz and Cook’s article about archives and power, “records are also about power,” they wrote, “They are about imposing control and order on transactions, events, people, and societies[…]” (9) The discrepancy between the Hawaiian volcanoes’ protection is an example of the potential bias within preservation, and how the bias can be directed by the controlling body that funds preservation. The “We are Mauna Kea” movement 

Thing: Secret Journal

            During research for my undergraduate thesis about my grandpa’s WWII story, I found a unique and rare book: a collection of journal entries and sketches by a man who was in the same prison camp as my grandpa. I use the word rare because the only new copy on amazon.com is selling for $860 (there’s also a copy for sale on Etsy.com). In the archives of the Air Force Museum on Warner Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, I also found scans of the pages, and other drawings and handwriting, in a folder about my grandpa. 

            Prisoner of War: My Secret Journal, (10) was written by Squadron Leader B. Arct from 1944-45, during his time as a POW at Stalag Luft I in Barth, Germany. It is a compilation of artifacts including handwritten journal entries by Polish Air Force Officer Bohdan Arct, hand-drawn maps, a detailed list of the contents of Red Cross parcels, weekly rations from the German guards, and an illustrated chart of how those rations and parcels depleted towards the end of the war. There are also lines written by the other men in Arct’s bunk room that include poems, journal entries, songs, and notes much like those at the end of a school yearbook. The many instances of cartoons and different men’s handwriting alone make this book a precious source for preservation. Sure, this book exists but who knows how many copies were made, those that I’ve found are difficult to acquire, and as the 90-year old former POW’s pass on it becomes harder to find more information. For example, one man wrote his Canada address for Arct to find him later, it’s doubtful if the man or his family still live there. There’s also a note from a New Zealand soldier named Kai Ora, all of the time I’ve spent researching WWII over the years and I had forgotten that New Zealand was involved. 

The image seen here is from my Grandpa’s folder in the archives and is similar to the drawings in Arct’s book.

I feel the heavy sense of information overload from this one book alone. It is such a unique and precious resource, but I don’t know what to do with it. In the spirit of information sharing, I’ve wanted to create a website to upload research from my thesis and bits of my interview with my grandpa so that others searching for information about their ancestor might find a little more. However, the copyright for this book is strict and I don’t know how to contact the rights holders-Arct’s descendents. The following poem is from the book and was also written in a small notebook that my Grandpa made while at Stalag Luft I (covers from butter tins and pages from cigarette packages). I remember that he became choked up when he read it to me during our interview. 

High Flight by John Gillespie Magee Jr., 1922-1941

“Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings, Sunward I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sunsplit clouds and done a hundred things you have Not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and spun high in the sunlit silence. Up, up the long, delirious burning blue I’ve topped the windswept heights with ease Where never larks or even eagles flew, Hovering there I’ve chased the shouting winds Along the footless halls of air, And while with silent lifted mind I’ve trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God.”

1. Clooney, George (Producer & Director). (2014). The Monuments Men [Motion Picture]. United States: 20th Century Fox. 
2.  Heritage in Peril: Digital Approaches to Preservation. (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2019, from http://as.nyu.edu/ancientstudies/events/fall-2019/heritage-in-peril–digital-approaches-to-preservation.html
3.  Paul Collart. (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2019, from https://archnet.org/authorities/8232
4.  Palmyra: the modern destruction of an ancient city. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/palmyra/v/palmyra-destruction
5.  Exhibition from the Archive of Paul Collart Includes Previously Unpublished Images of Palmyra | Aga Khan Documentation Center. (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2019, from https://libraries.mit.edu/akdc/2018/02/07/exhibition-from-the-archive-of-paul-collart-includes-previously-unpublished-images-of-palmyra/
6.  Society, National Geographic. (2013, April 8). Mauna Kea. Retrieved October 19, 2019, from http://www.nationalgeographic.org/media/mauna-kea/
7.  Mauna Kea. (n.d.) Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Retrieved October 19, 2019, from https://www.oha.org/maunakea/
8.  UNESCO Astronomy and World Heritage Webportal – Show entity. (n.d.). Retrieved October 19, 2019, from https://www3.astronomicalheritage.net/index.php/show-entity?identity=44&idsubentity=1
9.  Schwartz, Joan M. & Terry Cook. (2002). “Archives, records, and power: the making of modern memory,” Archival Science 2: 1–19.
10.  Arct, B. (1988). Secret Journal: Life In A World War II Prison Camp. Great Britain: Webb & Bower.


Posted on by Heidi Klise 0

Event: Art/Museum Salary Transparency Project

Art/Museum Salary Transparency Project (2019) [Screenshot from spread sheet]

The event I attend for this blog post was hosted by The Center for Humanities Graduate Center, CUNY. The Center aims to create cross-departmental collaboration and encourage creative work between the humanities at CUNY. Through free exhibition and public programming, the Center also aims to engage with a “diverse intellectual community” across the city (“About,” n.d.). The event was the first in a semester long working-group in conjunction with an exhibition titled, Institutional Apparatuses, or, Museum as Form. The working-group aims to focus discussions on how “museums reflexively grappled with their ethical obligations” and the growing movement within the field to shed light on and critique these political and ethical dynamics (“About,” n.d.). Each bi-weekly discussion will feature guests from various cultural institutions, from the Artist Director of Rhizome to a curator at The Studio Museum.  Institutional Apparatuses, or, Museum as Form is organized by two fellows at CUNY, Kirsten Gill and Lauren Rosenblum. 

I attended a discussion between main speaker Michelle Millar Fisher, Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at MFA Boston and Nikki Columbus, a curator who’s known in the art world for having sued MoMa PS1 over discrimination. The title for the working-group was, Michelle Millar Fisher and the Art/Museum Salary Transparency Project: Administration and Wage Labor in the Contemporary Museum.

In line with themes of transparency, it should be noted that Fisher and I worked in separate divisions at the same time at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) before both leaving this past summer, her for MFA Boston and me to attend Pratt. We were both still employed at the PMA in May when she co-organized the Art/Museum Salary Transparency Project, an open-source spreadsheet for art workers to anonymously post their institution of employment, salaries, and demographic details. Since the release and sharing of the spreadsheet there has been continual momentum in the museum–and I believe the cultural heritage field at large–to hold institutions accountable for how they manage internal structures and their staffing. The event and discussion applies to the information field thematically, as information professionals, art handlers, and curatorial assistants, to name a few, all play behind-the-scenes roles within their institutions of employment. The information mechanisms that Michelle and her collaborators used to disseminate their call to arms are also examples of how information tools like Google Sheets and platforms like Twitter can impact social networks. 

Fisher FaceTimed from her office in Boston to participate. The discussion began with a brief backstory on what motivated her to create and share a public spreadsheet of museum positions and salaries. Anyone that has worked in a large museum (though not limited to museums) has experienced the “economic inequalities manifest[ed] in cultural institutions,” as well as the lack of transparency in salary distribution and demographic diversity (Small, 2019). The goal of the open-source spreadsheet was and is to encourage salary transparency in the cultural heritage sector while also “contribute to further diversifying the field across socioeconomic categories” (Small, 2019).

The Art/Museum Salary Transparency Project is not the first example of a collective push for salary transparency. POWArt released a Salary Survey in 2018 and published their results as an info graphic in 2019.  Nor is it the first Google Sheet to be used within an industry to address issues of concern. The “Shitty Men in Media” list from the #metoo movement was a Google spreadsheet, collating isolated events by victims and shared to warn others. Beyond my conceptual interest in these conversations, I’m also intrigued by how the ease of access to collaborative document editors like Google Sheets has empowered users to make and share databases. The past few week’s readings on UX and HCI also beg the question, what were the original design intentions of Google Docs and Sheets? Did the designers at Google predict these political examples of use?

Collaborative document editors like GoogleDocs and open-source text editors like Etherpad in a way embody the founding essence of the World Wide Web. These collaborative documents are situated in a linked network of users. Granted, like most database systems, an information system needs to be put in place to ensure consistency. When the Art/Museum Salary Transparency Project came out any anonymous user could edit and add to the document. It was exciting to see the rows of anonymous animal avatars grow and new fields of information multiply.  But it also served as an example of collective chaos when every user is also an editor. Eventually the co-founders created a separate submission form for entries and suggestions, and the original Google spreadsheet is public for viewing only.  Note: the submission form mitigates the need for having a Gmail account to participate.

The evolution of Fisher’s and her co-creators’ document is an apt example demonstrating a knowledge organization system trying to democratize salary, benefits, and demographic statistics. It focuses on a survey-based method to create a bottom-up approach to distributing analytical data. However, considering Sasha Costanza-Chock’s article on Design Justice, it should be acknowledged that with any designed system there are still flaws. Context can be lost when trying to make data conform to a set format. Employees from museums may worry that their employers might react negatively to participation. Fisher noted herself that she was lucky to have secured a position already at the MFA Boston, when the spreadsheet was posted—some her co-creators at the time and even now are still anonymous for fear of employment retaliation. 

Further broadening the scope and range of their project, the co-creators started a Twitter account @AMTransparency that has become a centralized informal museum job posting watchdog. A few months ago, the account called attention to The Morgan Library for “replacing essential roles that should be good paying jobs” with volunteer job postings, one requiring a Phd in medieval art history (@AMTranpsarency, 2019). The Morgan Library later removed these postings from their website. Art+Museum Transparency is pushing for museums and the cultural heritage sector at large to be held accountable for the labor their institutions are built on.

Another facet of the evenings discussion focused on internships for credit, which some consider as a loophole for labor under NY State Labor Standards. We touched on this briefly during our class exercise discussion on a code of ethics for students at Pratt. Should the Pratt listserv repost unpaid internships and volunteer work? Does circulating these postings help to encourage institutions to continue to function on unpaid labor? Personally, my biggest hesitation from completing an advanced certificate is the required practicum and internship for credit. For the Archives track, I understand that this is a larger conversation with SAA certificate qualifications, however paying to intern in any context is a financial barrier for many students. 

In conclusion, though the event was focused on art museums, the topics discussed apply to many facets in the information field. Museums also include archives and libraries, and make up a large portion of the cultural heritage sector. The discussion also acted as an informal case study of how users can adapt designed tools like Google Sheets as new forms of community building and methods of disseminating knowledge. Yet there are still important questions about who will be responsible for documenting and preserving the open-sourced used of spreadsheets like the Art/Museum Salary Transparency Project.  Will collective documents like this live in an archive? What will the metadata look like for a document with so many co-creators built on anonymity?

Sources

About. (n.d.). Retrieved October 12, 2019, from The Center for the Humanities website: https://www.centerforthehumanities.org/about

GPAS Curriculum | Society of American Archivists. (n.d.). Retrieved October 12, 2019, from https://www2.archivists.org/prof-education/graduate/gpas/curriculum

Michelle Millar Fisher and the Art/Museum Salary Transparency Project: Administration and Wage Labor in the Contemporary Museum. (n.d.). Retrieved October 12, 2019, from The Center for the Humanities website: https://www.centerforthehumanities.org/programming/michelle-millar-fisher-and-the-art-museum-salary-transparency-project-administration-and-wage-labor-in-the-contemporary-museum

Small, Zachary (2019, June 3). Museum workers share their salaries and urge industry-wide reform. Retrieved October 12, 2019, from https://hyperallergic.com/503089/museum-workers-share-their-salaries-and-urge-industry-wide-reform/

Transparency, A. + M. (2019, August 11). A volunteer departmental research assistant for the manuscripts department. Phd required. Reading knowledge of French and German. Accruing that experience takes time and debt. You’re a major NYC museum. What’s going on @MorganLibrary, are you hurting for money?? Let’s see… /2pic.twitter.com/zEIzXpNTAX [Tweet]. Retrieved October 12, 2019, from @AMTransparency website: https://twitter.com/AMTransparency/status/1160592964374212608


Posted on by Hilary Wang 0