The Zoom Archive and Repertoire
Remember to mute yourselves.
Can you see my screen?
I’m going to make you a host.
If you have questions, please add them to the chat.
Sorry, my cat keeps walking across the screen.
We lost you.
Barry, you’re on mute.
Jonathan can you please mute?
Okay, I’m hitting record.
Caroline, you forgot to hit record.
Such are the most popular utterances in the millions and millions of hours of Zoom meetings, presentations, project proposals, symposiums, not to mention the more personal types of Zoom meetings.
Rare archives sit in boxes and under temperature controlled storage warehouses of documents that are never read but can never been thrown away because they say something about culture. These masuscripts sheets, typed meeting minutes, are all digitized, but somehow saving the objects is a fact of life- we save to remember.
In the past year, we’ve created a digitized archive, natively digital, never meant to be on paper. But is it an archive worth saving? Do we need Zoom librarians? Creating a new system, as in work meetings, personal meetings, performance appraisals…then there is the performance aspect of it. Can they be categorized by performance aesthetic? Passive aggressive meetings? Reluctant members? Temporality?
Diana Taylor has an intriguing performance theory about the arhive and the repetoire. On the surface, it is not so mind-blowing- the repetoire of the performance of something is different from just the physical archives. But when you get into it,you may start to realize that the repetoire is often forgotten in favor of archives. There’s records and records of city planning and zoning, but how was that performed? What performances of living and neighbor-ism?
What is the repetoire of zoom meetings? Several libraries have been calling out for archives of the pandemic. Does this include a server with all Zoom meetings? Isn’t that the ACTUAL repetoire of the pandemic?
Do we need a Zoom museum?
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In other news, I’ve developed a full blown phobia of Zoom meetings with more than one other person. I thought it was just Zoom fatigue, and I would get a feeling in the middle of my chest as if it were trying to turn itself inside out, and I felt like I was on the verge of tears if I had to speak over Zoom to a group of people. Turns out it’s just a new way of experiencing a panic attack!
I dropped out of a very prestigious and interesting institute because I was asked to present a three minute synposis article to the group. I have turned down offers of networking and important symposiums on my research topic. This is gonna be great!