{"id":1906,"date":"2018-06-14T09:01:17","date_gmt":"2018-06-14T09:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/?page_id=1906"},"modified":"2021-08-10T19:59:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-10T19:59:20","slug":"the-archive","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/?page_id=1906","title":{"rendered":"‘The Camera In The Archive’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The idea of the ‘camera in the archive<\/strong>‘ is the idea of having the means of making\/producing\/devising\/creating archival objects (film prints) within\/through the structure or framework of their organisational principle which in this case is an archive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This could differ from an artist who makes works on film and simply collects them together because what is implicit here is their devising and creation strategies in the presence of the archive and the knowledge of their artifactual materialities.\u00a0 So even though its possible to conceive of screening works in contexts such as festivals, meetings or in cinema programmes, its an intrinsic part of the ‘whole context’ of any individual piece that it forms part of a project that is attempting to order them, arrange them, account for them and preserve them, in the service of a greater project which is the archive itself including the instruments of creation and also sometimes including the public release of film prints in controlled experiments such as ‘objects on ebay’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Basically the idea is an engine methodology that has a strict overall shape or series of informing principles but allows many different kinds of expression within it.\u00a0 In another sense its an attempt to re-purpose the lab\/archive as a production mode or platform including working on ‘selected<\/strong>‘ objects both in terms of appraising their cultural or artistic worth AS WELL AS attempting conventional forms of restoration and preservation on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Art of the Bowman<\/strong> is an example of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The idea here is to carry out operations upon this film as a technique to extend\/explore\/ascertain and refresh its value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These might include digitising its soundtrack and making multiple copies including smpte code. Carrying out tests by copying it to 35mm colour stock with colour correction tests. Digitising portions of the image and carrying out software based restorations. Researching its production and personnel, its history, other references to it on\/off line. Making new B\/W works using its imagery which might include other films with the same subject matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this case, the thing that interests me is the parrallel between the persistance of the film during and after these operations and the persistance of ‘archery’ in folk memory, these things likely to inform the development of the new B\/W works mentioned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Below is a selection of films ‘rescued’ from an online digital network (sales orientated platform ‘ebay’). Being cleared from someone’s loft or basement, being sold to raise money or perhaps being offered lovingly into the care of just about anyone willing to pay a  few quid, its hard to know the full story behind each individual reel of film. Even though, through sales transaction details I will endeavour to make source information (seller) part of the objects archival record and keep data on price, location, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The archive activates the necessity to make new archival records, ie shoot on film, store on film and arrange as for any serious film archive. It does this in several connected ways. It is free to respond to acquisitions made for the collection by re-photographing images in order to understand and examine them thus creating new records. Both these productive impulses being informed by the spectral and oneric nature of selections, albeit personal and autoethnographic. It allows collected films to inform present moment observations, ie revisiting a place or subject, held so far in time in the form of extant records in order to extend their range and leave a mark on them to represent the ‘now’, ie it references concrete images from a new perspective. Lastly it attempts to transform the nature and status (perhaps the most ambitious idea) of the films into artefacts that find a natural context in the Art landscape. And I am toying with the notion here of ‘art’ in the old sense of the word to mean technique. Does\/can ‘Art’ transform anything itself? Is Art the ‘technique’ actually of ‘transformation’, the precise moment when a thing moves from one state\/status to another?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In another sense although I’m fond of the idea of the camera IN the archive, I am also suggesting that the camera itself,  as an ‘elemental’  (simple and made of metal)  machine is also OUTSIDE of the archive because it is OUTSIDE of time.  The camera is always ‘writing’ to the past, present and future. It is engraving images of the present that become the past and are retrievable in any future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This endeavor of activating the archival camera is not opposed to this (below) more traditional model of academic study and research but rather finds a tension with it,  at times, when expanding how we look at machines and their relation to the things they produced. The further ones travels through time, bringing the artefacts with them, the further the historical camera recedes into the past and the more we lose contact with any original impetus or experiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The idea of the ‘camera in the archive‘ is the idea of having the means of making\/producing\/devising\/creating archival objects (film prints) within\/through the structure or framework of their organisational principle which in this case is an archive. This could differ from an artist who makes works on film and simply collects them together because what is implicit here is their …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2090,"parent":0,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1906","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lab-activity","archive-loop-container"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1906"}],"version-history":[{"count":65,"href":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3234,"href":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1906\/revisions\/3234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nachleben.org.uk\/skomer\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}