ARTchivist's Notebook: Sometimes the work is not the work
Sometimes the work is not the work
Or, why can't I just catalog something?
Recently, I've been doing a lot of work that requires "research." I'm currently engaged in two research projects, one in the archives field, and one in art writing, that require a lot of planning, communication, and asking people for things—interviews, survey responses, help distributing surveys, resources, contacts, etc. Often my day goes by without having "created" anything, without any tangible evidence that I worked. While I know that this feeling is tangled up with Protestant, white supremacist, patriarchal notions of "productivity," it still feels bad. Sometimes I miss being a cataloger and having a continual stream of "output" to show for my efforts every day: so many linear feet, or boxes, or folders of stuff that I arranged, rehoused, described, and stored away.
I know that cataloging itself is part of imperial and colonial projects to control, to quantify, to dispossess people of their cultural heritage—that is what "collecting" and "preserving" things is rooted in. It separates artifacts from their original, activating contexts and puts them into an archive where they might get used again, but more likely will just sit around taking up space. As I've moved into different types of work around these issues, I've had to adjust my expectations. Sometimes the work is not the work.
I may not receive the same feeling of satisfaction from doing research, but I remind myself that although the means are different, I'm still producing knowledge and information, and hopefully it's knowledge that will circulate far beyond the confines of a library or museum database. In that sense, it's more like my practice as an art writer, where my "outputs" may circulate on the Internet or in print beyond what I can envision.
Here's what I'm working on:
Community-Centered Archives Practice: Transforming Education, Archives, and Community History (C-CAP TEACH) invites community-based archives and community-based organizations doing archival work to participate in Community-Centered Archives Survey: Sharing Your Content Online. These organizations document the lives of underrepresented, marginalized, or disenfranchised people. The survey seeks to understand how they currently share content online in order to create a guide to collaboration between community-based organizations and other institutions. I'm working on this with colleagues at the University of California Irvine and the California Digital Library. Please take the survey if you represent a community-based organization. And if you don't, I hope you'll share it with folks you know.
Critical Minded is funding a landscape analysis of conditions and challenges facing cultural critics of color in the U.S. We are embarking on a literature review and a series of interviews with theater critics of color. More to come!
In doing this work, I just keep reminding myself that the real work is creating and sharing knowledge that makes our world a little bit more equitable, responsible and humane.
Another place where we might connect:
I'll be presenting with the C-CAP TEACH team at DLF Forum in St. Louis, Nov. 13 - 15. Another client, Curationist, has organized an Inclusive Metadata Meet-Up, for folks interested in creating more respectful and accurate metadata. It's Tuesday, Nov. 14 at 7pm at The Pitch Athletic Club & Tavern. Please let me know if you plan to attend!
If you're wondering why there's no picture in this newsletter:
You can say I was influenced by reading about the work of artist stanley brouwn, even though most everything I do is diametrically opposed to his stance on documentation.
Thanks for reading! If you have any comments or questions about this issue, please feel free to get in touch. Or follow me on LinkedIn.
ARTchivist's Notebook is an occasional newsletter musing on the intersection of archives, art, and social justice by me, Sharon Mizota, inclusive metadata consultant and art writer.
I help museums, archives, libraries, and media organizations transform and share their metadata to achieve greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. Contact me to discuss your metadata project today.