Tracing Shadows: A Case for Describing Missing Records Through Artist Collaboration
By Alanna Quan
Traditionally, objects in most western museums were displayed with a label that contained information of place and culture compiled by an ethnographer (usually a white male). Andrews does not do this. Instead, he attaches an enlarged wooden megaphone through a round hole that is cut into the glass of the museum cabinet. The skeleton is posed as if it is speaking into it.. It invites that which is objectified, unnamed, and silenced to have a voice. Yet, the subjects of the display do not speak, there is no sound… Andrew’s own postcard collection, which contains images of unnamed Indigenous/First Nations people globally… stare back at the viewer.
Aliza Levi, “The Colony Under Gaze”
The work of Wiradjuri artist Brook Andrew titled 52 Portraits & Vox: Beyond Tasmania, is a stunning example of how art can restore power to a colonized community without claiming to speak for that community.[1] I discovered this installation as it was described by Aliza Levi in her Master’s of Fine Arts thesis at Monash University.[2] It is not, as far as I can tell, the result of a collaboration with an archives, but it draws on archival material and makes a statement about that material, its context, and the viewer’s relationship to both the materials and their creators, as well as to the subjects of that material.
I find myself drawn to artist collaborations. Art has the ability to call upon aspects of the human psyche that are inaccessible through many forms of objective inquiry. An artist, by the very nature of their work, can access the subjective. They can convey affect and meaning without claiming authority over truth. They can force positionality. We understand, and expect, that an artist is interpreting or filtering reality and producing work that is intended to elicit a sub-textual response. An archivist, by contrast, especially one working from within an institutional or academic archives, must know that their work, by its very nature, will do the opposite. Even as the archival profession evolves to embrace the subjectivity of the archivist and acknowledge the inherent bias in individuals and institutions, resulting collections, as they are or may be accessed in perpetuity, carry the weight of historicity.
The archival record, then, is imbued with power. In an effort to harness that power- in this case, the power to collect and describe one’s own experience- and transfer it back to historically marginalized subjects or creator communities, archivists who endeavor to describe reparative collections often turn to partners who have the authority to represent that community. This collaboration decentralizes the archivist’s voice and situates the power and knowledge conveyed through the archives within the subject community.
However, it may not always be possible for oppressed or marginalized communities to represent themselves in an institutional context. There may be political conditions or practical concerns which make timely community input impossible. It may also be the case that material collections are no longer extant or should not be collected by the institution due to the community’s wishes. Any attempt to describe or collect records in these situations would undermine the important work of relocating the power to describe records within historically silenced communities. My concern is that in some of these situations, failure to acknowledge the absence of such records risks perpetuating the disempowerment of historically marginalized communities, and, in circumstances where records were intentionally omitted, allows institutions to obfuscate their responsibility in that erasure.
So what then? By recognizing the relationality of records and aiming to describe them by their context, there are circumstances where an institution can aim to build reparative collections that address intentional erasures or ignored records. Archivists can name and witness missing collections, without relocating power away from the subjects or creators of the records, by describing the gaps formed by their absence. Considering the relationality and context of archival gaps and applying an ethics of care to missing records holds space for indescribable material in archives and can serve to activate the immaterial affect in archival collections.
One framework for conceptualizing this process is that of a feminist ethics of care, described by Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor as a “shift [in] our thinking about archival ethics from an individual, rights-based model to a relational feminist ethics of care.”[3] By employing a relational model for understanding archival work, especially as it applies to the records of the oppressed, we recognize that all archives are socially located and culturally situated.[4] When we recognize archives as such, we also recognize that they are inherently relational within the institutional archives and open up the possibility of naming and describing collections according to their context. With regard to appraisal, a feminist standpoint, “explicitly and unapologetically gives epistemological weight (thereby assigning value to) records created, preserved by, and potentially activated in service to, those individuals and communities oppressed by capitalism, white supremacy, and heteropatriarchy.” [5] As archivists, we can utilize this same epistemology to bear witness to oppression in situations where material archives are not possible. By recognizing the gaps, or shadows, left by such records as also being socially located, culturally situated, and reflective of the ideology and intentions of those who ensured their erasure, we can trace these shadows in order to avoid assuming the authority and power inherent in describing.
To further access and activate the relationality and affect in missing records, archives can consider engaging with artist-collaborators whose work would serve the purpose of naming, describing, and holding space for unrepresented collections without relocating the power to represent within the archival institution. By collecting and describing such work as auxiliary collections, which can serve to contextualize absent materials, the artist can help users witness archival shadows and access the affective aspects of these records.
Brook Andrew’s work serves as a model for how such collaborations might achieve this goal by defining the relationships between material collections and the colonial archive, the creators and subjects of those records, and by situating the viewer as witness to those people and materials. The work, “invites that which is objectified, unnamed, and silenced to have a voice,” yet it acknowledges that they cannot speak, and, “restores dignity and power” to the subjects of the archive by making the viewer the subject of their gaze.[6] If the archives in this example were such that reparative practices could not sufficiently collect or describe materials without further disempowering oppressed communities, the soliciting, collecting, and describing of work like Brook Andrews’ could serve to name and hold space for missing or indescribable records.
When we witness immaterial archives, we are treating them with radical empathy. Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez defines radical empathy in the archives as a state in which, “we place less focus on the records themselves and centralize our relationships with the records’ creators, subjects, users, and communities, and each other as archivists.” [7] We can center the creators and subjects of immaterial records by refusing to describe them. By doing so explicitly, we situate the power of representation with the creators and the subjects and situate ourselves as witnesses. We can name the archival shadow by describing its context and invoking its affect and reduce the risk of continued erasure. In situations where it is deemed appropriate, archives can let the work of artist-collaborators name and define archival shadows by activating the silence of the oppressed.
[1] Andrew, Brook, 52 Portraits & Vox: Beyond Tasmania, July 2013, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.
At the time of this publication, images from this installation can be seen on Andrew’s website http://www.brookandrew.com/vox-beyond-tasmania
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