Archiving the world in the internet age

The course is for those who want to learn how an artist can be a critical archivist. And how to engage with radically just futures through animating, engaging with and learning from traces of the past like a necromancer who evokes forgotten stories from the EARTH. The course includes archives, archiving, knowledge and power from both a historical and contemporary perspective.

In the course we discuss questions like these:

  • How are you going to cope with the ocean of data in your daily life?
  • What practice(s) can challenge the uncertain archive(s) of the online multiverse?
  • How would we define performance? Who would define it? How can we think about performance in historical terms, when the archive cannot capture and store the live event?
  • How does expressive behaviour (performance) transmit cultural memory and identity?
  • How to do memory work that is liberatory and restorative?

You are going to learn about the diversity of memory keeping practices, also called archival multiverse, within historical and contemporary contexts. You are going to learn why the artist Penelope Umbrico collects images of the sun posted on Flickr.com and also the reasons why Batia Suter, an artist from the Netherlands, creates parallel encyclopedias based on archival images. You are also going to learn what is internet native art and why it matters. We engage and visit an exhibition called “I was Raised on the Internet”, we learn from and practice re-enactments.

You are going to learn about the relations between archive, power and knowledge while reading a few essential essays that are going to be discussed collectively. We are going to discuss contemporary archival practices related to restorative justice. We are going to use our body, perform and discuss choreography in relation to archive and the repertoire. You are going to become an active agent of this course and start your own archive. If the past is a foreign country, how can we understand it, from which perspectives, whose voice, whose future?

Information

Study period: 13 November 2023–17 December 2023

Education scope: 7,5 credits

Teaching language: English

Study location: Stockholm

Study pace: 100 %

Subject area: Film and Media

Course syllabus/programme syllabus:Download

Head teacher Marc Johnson

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