A public platform for archiving online content from Berlin’s art & culture scene.
For many years, websites and social media feeds have been a central form of publication of artists and cultural professionals’ own work. Self-representation on the web since the 1990s represents an important untapped archive of Berlin scenes, documenting works, spaces, events, and exhibitions. However, these important sources of Berlin’s recent history are mostly precarious and in danger of disappearing due to the lack of long-term strategies to secure them. For this often publicly funded cultural heritage, practicable structures for sustainable archiving have been lacking until now.
“Art Doc Archive” consists of open-source prototypes for archiving and visualizing websites and socia media feeds, which was developed community-based in the first phase with a small data sample of Berlin artists and cultural workers. In addition to facilitating resources, tools and research, the aim is also to raise awareness of the need to free one’s own documentation from the data silos of social media: “Reclaim your archive!” is the motto of the “Art Doc Archive” blog, which also publishes the thoughts of numerous experts on the surrent situation of digital data and the potentials of such a public platform.
With a great team, in which I had the pleasure to supervise the blog and text contributions, this prototype was developed, which is primarily intended to create awareness of the fact that most archives in which we document our artistic or creative work are NOT secure. Project and text contributions also want to highlight pending issues in the context of web archiving and digital data, in order to create more sensitivity for the handling of digital media and data.
https://reclaim.hypotheses.org/
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Funded by Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa in Berlin
