This week I mused on the purpose of an archive and the invisible hand of the curator. To me, archives are where the dusty truths of history are housed. Whether or not you can find the book or the artifact that adds a needed angle to the truth you’re excavating, the assumption is that it’s there. I think of them as relatively neutral repositories, from which information can be curated in a variety of ways.
I had the most trouble accepting the Democracy pieces as an “archive.” While the author acknowledges deep down in his biography that this is a personal project that in no way seeks to be neutral, the presentation of the project suggests otherwise. He commissioned theorists and artists to respond to the themes in the videos, to frame his subject. He offers up hundreds of videos as testimony, but it is not clear who they are, or how he knows these people.
I would not have been triggered by this project if it hadn’t presented itself in a semi-neutral way, as a simple conveyer of stories. If there had been more up front disclosure by the artist of his purpose, I would have felt less uncomfortable consuming the stories of people who I am almost certain do not know their voices are part of this final piece. This experience made me realize that I hold the idea of a database or an archive in high esteem –and that I consider it something that is truly neutral.
What do folks think about the issue of neutrality and curation when it comes to database information? How can we avoid misrepresenting our material or our subjects? What are some guidelines?
I know you really liked the Triangle Fire Archive –would you consider that the designers were careful with it as a neutral space for collectionn and memory?
I too have been thinking about this idea of neutrality in curation on a lot of these sites. There’s doesn’t seem to ever be any disclosure as to whether curated editing is occurring on sites composed of user-generated content. Although I’m not one to suggest that ‘trolling’ is a beneficial or necessary part of any project, it does seem like it’s an inevitable thing to occur. I’m glad you were able to dig in and find the author’s comments about the project not being neutral, but I agree – why is that something that he needs to hide? By not being upfront about your bias, it seems like you’re trying to potentially manipulate the audience’s viewpoint.
This is something I deal with on my own music blog. I’ve been fortunate enough to have created a site that people like to engage with, but when comments first began rolling in I contemplated deleting the not-so-favorable ones. Luckily, I decided against that move. I felt it would only discredit my own words if I only had complimentary feedback up there. By allowing all feedback to be published, (sans spam promotions for genitalia enlargements,) I was able to create an environment of creative discourse – one that wouldn’t have existed if I had only one side to have their voice presented.
It seems to me that any degree of censorship, be it with feedback, viewer uploaded content, or absence of unfavorable opinions, creates an environment of isolation and in the long run will only harm a projects’ ability to expand.
Ironically, when I first tried to post this comment, instead of the word genitalia I had used the male p-word. Apparently this site is set up to not allow that word on here! My commentary on full disclosure was not allowed to be disclosed!
Adam…not the “site set-up” but the “UO blogs” ™ set-up… I just learned something new from your disclosure! And I wonder what other blocks are set up to keep college students from creating UO blogs with other kinds of non-PG materials.
True neutrality might be an illusion. There’s always some kind of an angle involved in any kind of information worth considering. The best we can do is provide a balanced view of things. That’s why I think that archives work best the more contributors there are and the more angles are explored, and I agree with you that there might be some issues about accepting “La Buena Vida” as an archive. Can the author perhaps enlighten us on how he chose his subjects for the video? How random was the selection? We live in a information-saturated world and the least we can do is to try to be a bit discriminating about the data we put out there as facts.
Yeah I wonder what “true neutrality” would look like. Would it just be facts? The interviews given by people are definitely not “facts” because they seem to deal more with what people remember and how they think about something, which is much more subjective. Even the title of the project makes a non-neutral value judgement by calling itself “The Good Life.” I guess from the get go we could see that he is making a statement of some kind that indicates an opinion.
Helen et al: I think the different with the Triangle Archive and the democracy piece this week, is that the Triangle archive is based upon an historical event. That is the lynchpin that all responses have to come back to. Also, the information curated was not human people, but rather inanimate objects and stories. There’s something less invasive about that, whereas the democracy pieces has less of an overt litmas test for neutrality –again, who are these people? They’re presented as a variety of voices, but they’re only the people the artist talked to. I think that is my main issue with it. I agree that “neutrality” might be impossible/overrated, but my main concern is misconstruing information. I felt like this was a particularly possiblity/concern with the democracy project’s scope.