Autonomous Archiving
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AUTONOMOUS ARCHIVING Title: Autonomous Archiving Editors: Artikişler Collective (Özge Çelikaslan, Alper Şen, Pelin Tan) Contributors: Thomas Keenan, Eyal Weizman, Murat Deha Boduroğlu, Oktay İnce, Shaina Anand, Lawrence Liang, Ege Berensel, Pelin Tan, Lara Baladi, Eric Kluitenberg, Sevgi Ortaç, Burak Arıkan, bak.ma, pad.ma, Artikişler Collective, İnadına Haber, Seyr-i Sokak, Videoccupy, vidyo kolektif Design: Yelta Köm Language: English Proofreading: Braxton Hood, Pauline Yao Cover: Soft cover ISBN: 978-84-944873-1-6 Publisher: dpr-barcelona dpr-barcelona Viladomat 59, 4o 4a 08015, Barcelona Spain www.dpr-barcelona.com t: +34 931 623 528 w: www.dpr-barcelona.com twitter: @dpr_barcelona In collaboration with Koza Visual Culture and Arts Association and Artıkişler Collective Book cover: Video still, Imagining-III Tekel workers resistance by Artıkişler Collective https://bak.ma/ April 2016 Autonomous Archiving 2 Autonomous Archiving 3 7...............................................Editorial, Artıkişler Collective 13...................................................Chapter I - Haunting Image Counter-forensics and Photography Thomas Keenan 39........................Drone Warfare at the Threshold of Detectability Eyal Weizman 51...............The Need for Objective Photos and Videos as Evidence Murat Deha Boduroğlu 57.................................................................Law and Images-II Oktay İnce Chapter II – Archive Fever 79.........................................................10 Thesis on the Archive Shaina Anand 97....................................................The Dominant, the residual and the emergent in archival imagination Lawrence Liang 115..........................................................Archiving the Garbage Ege Berensel 121.........................On the Necropolitics - Decolonizing Archiving Pelin Tan Chapter III – Autonomy of Commons 129..............When Seeing is Belonging: The Photography of Tahrir Lara Baladi 141......................................................Vitality and Atemporality Eric Kluitenberg 159..............................................Commons and digging tunnels Sevgi Ortaç 167.............................................................Creative and Critical Use of Complex Networks and Graph Commons Burak Arıkan 175........................................Interviews with Activist Collectives: İnadına Haber, Seyr-i Sokak, Videoccupy and vidyo kolektif Autonomous Archiving 4 Autonomous Archiving 5 Editorial by Artıkişler Collective As an institutional practice, archival practices often tend to serve the colonized, surveillance and discipline society of the modern world. However, during the last ten years, with [an upswing in] digital technology and the detection of social movements, the recording and accumulation of images has become a civil activity. Thus, actions of archiving videos and other types of visual images bring about non-institutional practices as well contemporary discussions surrounding the production of images, open source databases, collectivity, and forensics. The term “archiving” in digital video production and dissemination designates not only a process of open source memory-making that reveals hidden disobedient practices, but also, an autonomous structure that leads to tactics in montage, uploading and leaking of images to rebuild a collective memory of political disobedience. This book aims to discuss the notion of “autonomy” in the practice of “archiving” as well as views on videogram montage through comparative perspectives from different geographically based practitioners. Artıkişler Collective established “bak.ma”, a practice of video archiving focused on social and political movements in Turkey. This archive not only aims to contain videos of the Gezi Park upheaval but also several other videograms that were stored in hidden parts of computers by media activists. In the process of building this archive, Artıkişler Collective aims to discuss archiving practices and urban movements, visual data collection, videograms of civil disobedience and the possible montage of revolution in a metaphoric sense. Archives and archiving practices relate to many issues including the categorization of knowledge and images by legal register, practices of communing and the layering of complex social representations. Therefore, the book aims to widen the discussion on visual archival practices from three Autonomous Archiving 6 Autonomous Archiving 7 angles. This edited volume features republished articles as films in the garbage while discussing the militant view on well as several new texts commissioned for this book. The archiving and referencing the “10 Theses on Archives”: first chapter, “Haunting Image” is comprised of four articles. “The Direction of Archiving will be Outward, not Inward”. This chapter contains articles that discuss the forensic role of Researcher and writer Pelin Tan of “bak.ma” revisits the the image, anti-images, and poor-images that search for the concept of necropolitics by Achilles Mbembe and questions political image. Practitioners and lawyers’ texts discuss the how necropolitics can be avoided in the practice of archiving relation between the image as a testimony and political act. if our aim is decolonization. Human rights researcher Thomas Keenan, who has written and researched extensively on the photographic image The third chapter “Autonomy of Commons” brings together and forensics, discusses the approach of counter-forensics the practice of commoning of images of social urban by artist Alan Sekula. Architect and activist Eyal Weizman, movements, collective actions and the temporality of whose research interest is based on the spatial production disobedience events. Lara Baladi, an activist and researcher and detectability of images, researches the evicted Bedevil from Cairo analyses Tahrir Square through images [it settlement in Palestine through visual images. Lawyer Murat produced]. Eric Kluitenberg of “Tactical Media Files”, writes Deha Boduroğlu writes about his experience after the Gezi on affect of space while providing many examples of spatial struggle and the need for visual archives of disobedience social movements, and relating to the notion of archives while for the advocacy of human rights. Video activist Oktay İnce questioning a “living archive”. Artist and activist Sevgi Ortaç provides an activist view, which complements Boduroglu’s writes about the commons of the image of urban gardening article, as he questions the video camera as a civil initiatives and its struggle in Istanbul. Artist and activist disobedience testimony. Burak Arıkan, founder of “Graph Commons” and co-founder of the network of “Dispossessions,” writes on open source What are the roles of open digital archives and the disobedience databases and the autonomy of commons. contemporary meaning of archive/archiving through experiences such as “bak.ma” and “Pad.ma”? What does The book also includes interviews with the activist collectives’ a methodology of participatory assemblage mean in this members: İnadına Haber, an Ankara based digital media context? What is the new role of an independent researcher activist platform; Seyr-i Sokak, a video activist collective; and or academic researcher? Can we produce collective images Videoccupy and vidyo kolektif from Istanbul. The interviews and is it possible to recreate a political collective memory by focus on the experiences of video activists, the Gezi visually recording political acts? The second chapter “Archive resistance, from early days to the present, as well as social Fever” is about expanding the discussions on archives and political movements and actions of solidarity in Turkey. with several archival practices centered on disobedience. Shaina Anand of Bombay-based “Pad.ma”, introduces “10 Theses on Archives” and tries to answer the question: “How do we imagine archival practices as the little practical, experimental and strategic measures that we pursue to expand our sensibilities?” and thereby digs into the affective potential of archives. Lawyer and activist Lawrence Liang, co-initiator of “Pad.ma”, focuses his article on the residual image in the context of archives. Media artist Ege Berensel describes his research experience of digging through 8mm Autonomous Archiving 8 Autonomous Archiving 9 CHAPTER I HAUNTING IMAGE Autonomous Archiving 10 Autonomous Archiving 11 Counter-forensics and Photography by Thomas Keenan 1. From the Instrumental to the Operational Image As a rule, Allan Sekula does not often let images go unexamined. And, as with all rules, exceptions can be found. One exception occurs about half an hour into the film he made with Noël Burch, The Forgotten Space (2010), in the course of a sequence at the Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach that opens the section called “Mud and Sun.”[1] The sequence is designed to take the film to the motif of the container as Pandora’s Box and the scene from Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955) to which Sekula and Burch return at the conclusion of the film. But on the way through the interstices of the port, The Forgotten Space shows us some unusual images: not simply images of the port but images produced by it as part of its everyday operation. Allan Sekula and Noël Burch, dirs. The Forgotten Space, 2010. Video stills. Within the scene are two short sequences that appear to come from stock footage. They show U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers operating an X-ray or gamma-ray scanning machine, part of what is called a “non-intrusive