Introduction

DiVersions: an introduction

Élodie Mugrefya, Femke Snelting

DiVersions engaged with the potential of on-linedigital cultural heritage to experiment with its potential for welcoming various forms of collaboration, for conflicts to show up, and to make space for other narratives. In dialogue with cultural institutions and their e-collections, DiVersions experimented with digitized and digital heritage to opened up metadata, databases, catalogs and digital infrastructures for other imaginations.

The four year project was organized around seven artistic experiments that evolved in response to specific digital and digitized collections such as WikiMedia, the Carmentis database from the Museum for Art & History and the website of Werkplaats immaterieel erfgoed.

DiVersions committed to decolonial and intersectional perspectives so to extend our imaginations for e-collections. We saw that e-collections and other digital cultural heritage manifestations hold possibilities for marginalized and non-normative narratives; that they can and should be self-reflexive and aware of the colonial violence that powers them and keeps them in place. Even if we consider e-collections as potential tools for resistance against oppression and annihilation, the institutional and technological practice of constructing them is deeply entrenched in efforts to sort out and categorize the world. If we do not pay attention, normative and invisibilizing modes such as the application of seemingly neutral criteria, templates, standards, and so on will continue and intensify the epistemic and sometimes physical colonial violence that brought these collections together in the first place. For example, database technologies routinely affirm the authority of certain kinds of experts and not others; algorithms corroborate gender cliches and Wikipedia has surprisingly little space for deviating world views. By omitting to question the many complex layers that hold e-collections together, digitization will contribute to keeping representation, conservation and conditions for access firmly in the hands of colonial and institutional powers. DiVersions therefore not only attended to which items are brought together in e-collections, but also to the way metadata, software packages and web technologies prevent or provide space for “Di-Versions”.

When we initiated DiVersions in 2016, we intuitively felt that the potential in on-line collections might be activated if crossed with the software-practice of “versioning”. Versioning is a method for dealing with divergence in networked collaborations. While originally developed to track software production, it is implemented in Wikis, etherpads and other digital writing tools. Log files and so-called “diffs” are automatically saved to make the incremental process of shared editing transparent, or at least to machines, since any action can be reversed or repeated at any time; errors or unwanted inputs can be later corrected. Even if the conventional narrative of “versioning” is one of streamlining collaboration and producing consensus, these techniques and technologies do pay attention to difference.

Four years later, we are starting to see the possibilities and limitations of what versioning might do for e-collections. Beyond being a technocratic solution for large-scale software production, versioning helps to insist that the framing of any cultural object is processual and never finite. It supports reflexive modes of doing by making processes interrogable and creates openings for intervention and response; if only because it allows for a comparison between different phases in a project and provides the means to take a step back if needed. But the mechanics of versioning are only a small part of the puzzle. One of the limitations of conventional versioning practice for example, is the assumption of linearity which too easily confirms a sense of progressive evolution, especially when latest counts as best. The awkwardness of numbering versions becomes apparent when considering the various elements they interact with: time, urgencies, geographies, (un)welcome shifts between digital and physical, sociopolitical climates, etc. How to express versions as stops, u-turns, parallel tracks, bumps and slips that happen throughout a process?

It is here that the decolonial and intersectional potential of versioning starts to emerge. By providing different points of intervention, versioning can support a culture of critique that contributes to the flourishing of politically urgent practices for re-doing, re-thinking, re-stituting and re-orienting. Decolonial and intersectional modes of versioning seek polyphony and demand read-write access to histories. They make sure various versions not only co-exist but also interact in ways that can take the complexities related to heritage into account. This potential is linked to the fact that digital collections can technically be copied, repeated, downloaded, and used in many contexts at once. In contrast with some of the arguments against restitution for example, it means that the physical vulnerability, material and historical value of objects is no reason for keeping them in place. This opens up possibilities for other accounts of heritage, provenance and ownership and even makes it imaginable that Western institutions could let go of physical objects that were not theirs to begin with.

To consider other narratives means to open up digital collections and their stories as collective authorship, an understanding of heritage that is neither individually owned nor arranged along linear lines. Some institutions apply Open Content licenses to give diverse audiences permission to use and re-use e-collections, others deploy digitization to communicate and assert their authority over the presentation and representation of objects. In both cases, relations to digital objects are framed by the Western approach to intellectual property which equates ownership with authorship. Developing other relations with digital cultural heritage objects therefore is not a simple matter of releasing digital doubles under open licenses, but involves an opening up of the conceptual, legal and technical frameworks they operate in.

Browsing the inventory of the Museum for Art & History with curator Emiel Van Binnebeke, DiVersions worksession (2016)

DiVersions started with a worksession organized by Constant in 2016 in the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels. With the neologism “DiVersions” we wanted to allude to the possibility that technologies of “versioning” might foreground divergent histories. In Dutch, this became “di-versies” as a play on divergent or diverse versions. Translated to English and French, DiVersions also evokes “diversity”, a term that we increasingly struggled with as it started to circulate as a blanket term for covering up issues of inequality and oppression, especially in institutional contexts. When the worksession took place, the Museum was in the final stages of digitizing its eclectic collection: some 330,000 objects including clay tablets, tapestries, mummies, ancient jewelry, vases, coins had been inventoried. Our presence at this moment in time allowed us to put the concrete practices of art-history, cataloging and digitization technologies in relation with performances, reflections, prototypes and other types of experiments.

The project revived a few years later, in 2019, to pursue and deepen the interrogations we touched upon during the worksession. This restart happened in a social-political context that was already very different than the one in 2016. By then, many discussions about museums and their archives were taking place as the former Museum of Central Africa reopened its doors after 5 years of renovation. Along extensive and expensive renovation works, the museum claimed to be going through a decolonial process. This assertion attracted critiques, but also much discussion regarding whether such institution, which is thought and created as an agent of the Belgian colonial enterprise, was in a position to even attend to such a critical process. As a result, the problematization of Belgium's colonial heritage in relation to its symbols and institutions, such as museums, became a point of attention and contention in national debates to a degree and visibility that was rather unusual in Belgium so far. Following these debates, the potential of DiVersions to work with and through these concerns appeared to be even more evident, though it required us to articulate the politics of the project more explicitly.

DiVersions organized around seven artistic experiments which each deploy their own artistic strategies to test out how techniques and technologies of networked collaboration might generate other imaginations. The projects are collectively developed in dialogue with each other and in conversation with partner institutions. How can different orders coexist in online collections? In what way do we make room for material and immaterial heritage of the future, for things that are felt to be beyond the scope of museums and archives, or for other things that are consciously being ignored? How can these digital environments allow us to open up a discussion on relations between categorization, colonization and heritage? How can online collections accommodate radically different, and sometimes opposing perspectives?

For the first materialization in October 2019, seven installations were activated in De Pianofabriek (Brussels), accompanied by a first version of this publication. Brought together in a sensitive and humorous scenography proposed by Mia Melvaer and Cristina Cochior, the installations formed a context for multiple meetings, discussions and guided tours which invited participants, project partners and visitors to consider e-collections with a decolonial and intersectional perspective.

The second unfolding of DiVersions was prepared in collaboration with De Krook (Ghent) and UGent. It would have been an exciting occasion to share our findings with the many visitors passing every day through the library but due to pandemic conditions, this final event transformed into a digital exhibition that was launched in June 2020. While the shift on-line came first from constraint, it brought also another dimension to the installations that foregrounded and questioned the technologies which surround e-collections. For some projects such as The Weight of things, the digital shift felt as a logic extension to their research. Other projects such as A new fire ceremony and Material Journeys Through Other Realities had to radically rethink the tools and interfaces by which they were addressing e-collections. For again others such as Sketchy Recognition, Diff3r3ntVversionsArePOSSIBLE?!. and Collection of uncertainties, the on-line exhibition provided an occasion to extend and document the ongoing process and When organic trees meet the data tree decided to propose an entirely new project.

The contributions to this second publication, project documentation included, each in their own way resist simplification and homogenization. They pay attention to the historicity and performativity of digital archives and work with their contradictions rather than against them. This book is an attempt to articulate interconnected threads such as authorship, ownership, revision and restitution that emerged over time, and to make explicit things that were sometimes latent. The generative potential of the artist propositions is activated through their multi-layered documentation and by additional ‘prosms’ such as the intervention of Anne Laforet who took a close look at each of the artistic propositions to render them for us in the publication.

There is also a careful weaving work at play in between the two versions of this publication. Republished contributions are challenged by extensions and new additions; there are explicit reworkings and corrections; others are addressed with direct responses. Together with the designers from Open Source Publishing we brought these materials together in a multi-track book and interconnected wiki that invites the reader to explore different temporalities and non-linear versions.

Our commitment to intersectional and decolonial perspectives made us pay attention to an understanding of histories in plural and to efforts that try to grasp how they entangle with one another. If we consider decolonial work as a proposal for generative gestures of thinking and doing, starting elsewhere than at the ongoing historical and neo-colonial regimes, versioning might be a way for considering different interfering patterns. By accounting for the inclusions and exclusions that are acting on the digital archive, the violence of these archives effectively emerges from the obscurity preserved by cultural institutions’ operations, but also opens up tracks for imagining the agency of collections and their items outside of normalized frameworks of authority and ownership.

This publication marks the last iteration of DiVersions, but it is not an ending. DiVersions provided an environment to engage together with some of the complexities and urgencies around e-collections, over several rounds and in different constellations. It is this temporary context that we close off now, but the intricacies of working through all those scales collectively, is something that we will stay with and come back to.

DiVersions: une introduction

Élodie Mugrefya, Femke Snelting

DiVersions engaged with the potential of on-linedigital cultural heritage forto experiment with its potential for welcoming various forms of collaboration, for conflicts to show up, and to make space for other narratives. In dialogue with cultural institutions and their e-collections, DiVersions experimented with digitized and digital heritage to opened up metadata, databases, catalogs and digital infrastructures for other imaginations.

The four year project was organized around seven artistic experiments that evolved in response to specific digital and digitized collections such as WikiMedia, the Carmentis database from the Museum for Art & History and the website of Werkplaats immaterieel erfgoed.

DiVersions committed to decolonial and intersectional perspectives. We felt that e-collections and other digital cultural heritage manifestations hold possibilities for marginalized and non-normative narratives; that they can and should be self-reflexive and aware of the colonial violence that powers them and keeps them in place. Even if we consider e-collections as potential tools for resistance against oppression and annihilation, the institutional and technological practice of constructing them is deeply entrenched in efforts to sort out and categorize the world. If we do not pay attention, normative and invisibilizing modes such as the application of seemingly neutral criteria, templates, standards, and so on will continue and intensify the epistemic and sometimes physical colonial violence that brought these collections together in the first place. For example, database technologies routinely affirm the authority of certain kinds of experts and not others; algorithms corroborate gender cliches and Wikipedia has surprisingly little space for deviating world views. By omitting to question the many complex layers that hold e-collections together, digitization will contribute to keeping representation, conservation and conditions for access firmly in the hands of colonial and institutional powers. DiVersions therefore not only attended to which items are brought together in e-collections, but also to the way metadata, software packages and web technologies prevent or provide space for “Di-Versions”.

When we initiated DiVersions in 2016, we intuitively felt that the potential in on-line collections might be activated if crossed with the software-practice of “versioning”. Versioning is a method for dealing with divergence in networked collaborations. While originally developed to track software production, it is implemented in Wikis, etherpads and other digital writing tools. Log files and so-called “diffs” are automatically saved to make the incremental process of shared editing transparent, or at least to machines, since any action can be reversed or repeated at any time; errors or unwanted inputs can be later corrected. Even if the conventional narrative of “versioning” is one of streamlining collaboration and producing consensus, these techniques and technologies do pay attention to difference.

Four years later, we are starting to see the possibilities and limitations of what versioning might do for e-collections. Beyond being a technocratic solution for large-scale software production, versioning helps to insist that the framing of any cultural object is processual and never finite. It supports reflexive modes of doing by making processes interrogable and creates openings for intervention and response; if only because it allows for a comparison between different phases in a project and provides the means to take a step back if needed. But the mechanics of versioning are only a small part of the puzzle. One of the limitations of conventional versioning practice for example, is the assumption of linearity which too easily confirms a sense of progressive evolution, especially when latest counts as best. The awkwardness of numbering versions becomes apparent when considering the various elements they interact with: time, urgencies, geographies, (un)welcome shifts between digital and physical, sociopolitical climates, etc. How to express versions as stops, u-turns, parallel tracks, bumps and slips that happen throughout a process?

It is here that the decolonial and intersectional potential of versioning starts to emerge. By providing different points of intervention, versioning can support a culture of critique that contributes to the flourishing of politically urgent practices for re-doing, re-thinking, re-stituting and re-orienting. Decolonial and intersectional modes of versioning seek polyphony and demand read-write access to histories. They make sure various versions not only co-exist but also interact in ways that can take the complexities related to heritage into account. This potential is linked to the fact that digital collections can technically be copied, repeated, downloaded, and used in many contexts at once. In contrast with some of the arguments against restitution for example, it means that the physical vulnerability, material and historical value of objects is no reason for keeping them in place. This opens up possibilities for other accounts of heritage, provenance and ownership and even makes it imaginable that Western institutions could let go of physical objects that were not theirs to begin with.

To consider other narratives means to open up digital collections and their stories as collective authorship, an understanding of heritage that is neither individually owned nor arranged along linear lines. Some institutions apply Open Content licenses to give diverse audiences permission to use and re-use e-collections, others deploy digitization to communicate and assert their authority over the presentation and representation of objects. In both cases, relations to digital objects are framed by the Western approach to intellectual property which equates ownership with authorship. Developing other relations with digital cultural heritage objects therefore is not a simple matter of releasing digital doubles under open licenses, but involves an opening up of the conceptual, legal and technical frameworks they operate in.

Browsing the inventory of the Museum for Art & History with curator Emiel Van Binnebeke, DiVersions worksession (2016)

DiVersions started with a worksession organized by Constant in 2016 in the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels. With the neologism “DiVersions” we wanted to allude to the possibility that technologies of “versioning” might foreground divergent histories. In Dutch, this became “di-versies” as a play on divergent or diverse versions. Translated to English and French, DiVersions also evokes “diversity”, a term that we increasingly struggled with as it started to circulate as a blanket term for covering up issues of inequality and oppression, especially in institutional contexts. When the worksession took place, the Museum was in the final stages of digitizing its eclectic collection: some 330,000 objects including clay tablets, tapestries, mummies, ancient jewelry, vases, coins had been inventoried. Our presence at this moment in time allowed us to put the concrete practices of art-history, cataloging and digitization technologies in relation with performances, reflections, prototypes and other types of experiments.

The project revived a few years later, in 2019, to pursue and deepen the interrogations we touched upon during the worksession. This restart happened in a social-political context that was already very different than the one in 2016. By then, many discussions about museums and their archives were taking place as the former Museum of Central Africa reopened its doors after 5 years of renovation. Along extensive and expensive renovation works, the museum claimed to be going through a decolonial process. This assertion attracted critiques, but also much discussion regarding whether such institution, which is thought and created as an agent of the Belgian colonial enterprise, was in a position to even attend to such a critical process. As a result, the problematization of Belgium's colonial heritage in relation to its symbols and institutions, such as museums, became a point of attention and contention in national debates to a degree and visibility that was rather unusual in Belgium so far. Following these debates, the potential of DiVersions to work with and through these concerns appeared to be even more evident, though it required us to articulate the politics of the project more explicitly.

DiVersions organized around seven artistic experiments which each deploy their own artistic strategies to test out how techniques and technologies of networked collaboration might generate other imaginations. The projects are collectively developed in dialogue with each other and in conversation with partner institutions. How can different orders coexist in online collections? In what way do we make room for material and immaterial heritage of the future, for things that are felt to be beyond the scope of museums and archives, or for other things that are consciously being ignored? How can these digital environments allow us to open up a discussion on relations between categorization, colonization and heritage? How can online collections accommodate radically different, and sometimes opposing perspectives?

For the first materialization in October 2019, seven installations were activated in De Pianofabriek (Brussels), accompanied by a first version of this publication. Brought together in a sensitive and humorous scenography proposed by Mia Melvaer and Cristina Cochior, the installations formed a context for multiple meetings, discussions and guided tours which invited participants, project partners and visitors to consider e-collections with a decolonial and intersectional perspective.

The second unfolding of DiVersions was prepared in collaboration with De Krook (Ghent) and UGent. It would have been an exciting occasion to share our findings with the many visitors passing every day through the library but due to pandemic conditions, this final event transformed into a digital exhibition that was launched in June 2020. While the shift on-line came first from constraint, it brought also another dimension to the installations that foregrounded and questioned the technologies which surround e-collections. For some projects such as The Weight of things, the digital shift felt as a logic extension to their research. Other projects such as A new fire ceremony and Material Journeys Through Other Realities had to radically rethink the tools and interfaces by which they were addressing e-collections. For again others such as Sketchy Recognition, Diff3r3ntVversionsArePOSSIBLE?!. and Collection of uncertainties, the on-line exhibition provided an occasion to extend and document the ongoing process and When organic trees meet the data tree decided to propose an entirely new project.

The contributions to this second publication, project documentation included, each in their own way resist simplification and homogenization. They pay attention to the historicity and performativity of digital archives and work with their contradictions rather than against them. This book is an attempt to articulate interconnected threads such as authorship, ownership, revision and restitution that emerged over time, and to make explicit things that were sometimes latent. The generative potential of the artist propositions is activated through their multi-layered documentation and by additional ‘prosms’ such as the intervention of Anne Laforet who took a close look at each of the artistic propositions to render them for us in the publication.

There is also a careful weaving work at play in between the two versions of this publication. Republished contributions are challenged by extensions and new additions; there are explicit reworkings and corrections; others are addressed with direct responses. Together with the designers from Open Source Publishing we brought these materials together in a multi-track book and interconnected wiki that invites the reader to explore different temporalities and non-linear versions.

Our commitment to intersectional and decolonial perspectives made us pay attention to an understanding of histories in plural and to efforts that try to grasp how they entangle with one another. If we consider decolonial work as a proposal for generative gestures of thinking and doing, starting elsewhere than at the ongoing historical and neo-colonial regimes, versioning might be a way for considering different interfering patterns. By accounting for the inclusions and exclusions that are acting on the digital archive, the violence of these archives effectively emerges from the obscurity preserved by cultural institutions’ operations, but also opens up tracks for imagining the agency of collections and their items outside of normalized frameworks of authority and ownership.

This publication marks the last iteration of DiVersions, but it is not an ending. DiVersions provided an environment to together engage with some of the complexities and urgencies around e-collections, over several rounds and in different constellations. It is this temporary context that we close off now, but the intricacies of working through all those scales collectively, is something that we will stay with and come back to.

DiVersies: een inleiding

Élodie Mugrefya, Femke Snelting

DiVersies hield zich bezig met het potentieel van on-line digitaal Cultureel erfgoed om te experimenteren met het potentieel ervan om verschillende vormen van samenwerking te verwelkomen, om conflicten te laten opduiken en om ruimte te maken voor andere verhalen. In dialoog met culturele instituten en hun e-collecties experimenteerde DiVersies met gedigitaliseerd en digitaal erfgoed om metadata, databases, catalogi en digitale infrastructuren voor andere ideeën open te stellen.

Het vier jaar durende project werd georganiseerd rond zeven artistieke experimenten die zich ontwikkelden naar aanleiding van specifieke digitale en gedigitaliseerde collecties zoals WikiMedia, de Carmentis-databank van het Museum voor Kunst & Geschiedenis en de website van Werkplaats Immaterieel Erfgoed.

DiVersies zette zich in voor dekoloniale en intersectionele perspectieven op erfgoed om zo onze verbeeldingskracht voor e-collecties op te rekken. We vonden dat e-collecties en andere manifestaties van digitaal cultureel erfgoed mogelijkheden bieden voor gemarginaliseerde en niet-normatieve verhalen; dat ze zelfreflexief kunnen en moeten zijn over het koloniale geweld dat hen drijft en op zijn plaats houdt. Zelfs als we e-collecties beschouwen als potentiële instrumenten voor verzet tegen onderdrukking en vernietiging, is de institutionele en technologische praktijk om ze te construeren diep geworteld in pogingen om de wereld te ordenen en te categoriseren. Als we niet opletten, zullen normatieve en invisibiliserende modi zoals de toepassing van schijnbaar neutrale criteria, sjablonen, standaarden, enzovoort, het epistemisch en soms fysiek koloniaal geweld dat deze collecties in de eerste plaats bijeenbracht, voortzetten en intensiveren. Zo versterken databasetechnologieën routinematig het gezag van bepaalde soorten deskundigheid en niet van andere; algoritmen bevestigen gender clichés en heeft Wikipedia verrassend weinig ruimte voor afwijkende wereldvisies. Als we de vele complexe lagen die e-collecties bij elkaar houden niet ter discussie stellen, zal digitalisering ertoe bijdragen dat representatie, conservering en de voorwaarden voor toegang stevig in handen blijven van de koloniale en institutionele machten. Di-Versions heeft dus niet alleen gekeken naar welke items in e-collecties worden samengebracht, maar ook naar de manier waarop metadata, softwarepakketten en webtechnologieën "Di-Versies" voorkomen of er ruimte voor bieden.

Toen we in 2016 met DiVersions begonnen, voelden we intuïtief dat het potentieel in onlinecollecties zou kunnen worden geactiveerd als we hen zouden combineren met de software-praktijk van "versiebeheer". Versiebeheer is een methode om om te gaan met divergentie in genetwerkte samenwerkingen. Hoewel het oorspronkelijk ontwikkeld werd om de productie van software te kunnen opvolgen, is het ook geïmplementeerd in Wiki's, etherpads en andere digitale tools. Logbestanden en zogenaamde "diffs" worden automatisch opgeslagen om het incrementele proces van gedeelde bewerkingen transparant te maken, of op zijn minst dan voor machines, aangezien elke actie op elk moment kan worden teruggedraaid of herhaald; fouten of ongewenste bijdragen kunnen later worden gecorrigeerd. Zelfs als het conventionele verhaal van "versioning" er een is van het stroomlijnen van de samenwerking en het produceren van consensus, dan nog besteden deze technieken en technologieën aandacht aan het verschil.

Vier jaar later beginnen we de mogelijkheden en beperkingen te zien van wat versioning kan doen voor e-collecties. Naast het feit dat het een technocratische oplossing is voor grootschalige softwareproductie, helpt versioning om te benadrukken dat de constructie van elk cultureel object procesmatig is en nooit eindig. Het ondersteunt reflexieve manieren van doen door processen bespreekbaar te maken en creëert openingen voor interventie en respons; al was het maar omdat het een vergelijking tussen verschillende fasen in een project mogelijk maakt en de mogelijkheid biedt om een stapje terug te doen als dat nodig is. Maar de mechanica van versioning is slechts een klein deel van de puzzel. Een van de beperkingen van de conventionele versiepraktijk is bijvoorbeeld de veronderstelling van lineariteit, die te gemakkelijk een gevoel van progressieve evolutie bevestigt, vooral wanneer de laatste versie als beste geldt. De ongemakkelijkheid van genummerde versies wordt duidelijk als we kijken naar de verschillende elementen waarmee ze in verband staan: tijd, urgenties, geografieën, (on)welkome verschuivingen tussen digitale en fysieke, sociopolitieke klimaten, enz. Hoe kunnen versies worden uitgedrukt inclusief de haltes, u-bochten, parallelle sporen, hobbels en uitglijders die zich tijdens een proces voordoen?

Het is hier dat het dekoloniaal en intersectioneel potentieel van versioning zichtbaar wordt. Door verschillende interventiepunten aan te reiken, kan versioning een cultuur van kritiek ondersteunen die bijdraagt aan de bloei van politiek urgente praktijken gebaseerd op herdoen, herdenken, herpositioneren en heroriënteren. De dekoloniale en intersectionele modus van versioning zoekt naar polyfonie en vraagt om lees-schrijf toegang tot geschiedenissen.

Ze zorgen ervoor dat verschillende versies niet alleen naast elkaar bestaan, maar ook met elkaar interageren op een manier die rekening houdt met de complexiteit van erfgoed. Dit potentieel hangt samen met het feit dat digitale collecties technisch gezien in vele contexten tegelijk gekopieerd, herhaald, gedownload en gebruikt kunnen worden. In tegenstelling tot sommige argumenten tegen bijvoorbeeld restitutie betekent het dat de fysieke kwetsbaarheid, materiële en historische waarde van objecten geen reden is om ze op hun plaats te houden. Dit opent mogelijkheden voor andere verhalen over erfgoed, herkomst en eigendom en maakt het zelfs denkbaar dat westerse instellingen fysieke objecten zouden kunnen loslaten die om te beginnen al niet van hen waren.

Het overwegen van andere verhalen betekent het ontsluiten van digitale collecties en hun verhalen als collectief auteurschap, een opvatting over erfgoed die niet volgens individueel bezit en ook niet lineair is geordend. Sommige instellingen passen Open Content licenties toe om een divers publiek toestemming te geven e-collecties te hergebruiken, terwijl andere instellingen digitalisering inzetten om hun autoriteit over de presentatie en representatie van objecten te communiceren en te laten gelden. In beide gevallen worden relaties met digitale objecten gekaderd door de westerse benadering van intellectueel eigendom die eigendom gelijkstelt aan auteurschap. Het ontwikkelen van andere relaties met digitale cultuurhistorische objecten is dus niet eenvoudig om digitale dubbels onder open licenties vrij te geven, maar betekent dat de conceptuele, juridische en technische kaders waarin ze opereren, moeten worden opengebroken.

Browsen van de inventaris van het Museum voor Kunst & Geschiedenis met curator Emiel Van Binnebeke, DiVersions worksession (2016)

.

DiVersions begon met een werksessie die Constant in 2016 organiseerde in de Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis in Brussel. Met het neologisme "DiVersies" wilden we een toespeling maken op de mogelijkheid dat technologieën van "versioning" uiteenlopende geschiedenissen op de voorgrond zouden kunnen plaatsen. In het Nederlands werd dit "di-versies" als een spel met uiteenlopende of uiteenlopende versies. Vertaald naar het Engels en het Frans roept DiVersions ook "Diversiteit" op, een term waarmee we steeds meer moeite kregen omdat hij begon te circuleren als een verzamelnaam om kwesties van ongelijkheid en onderdrukking te verdoezelen, vooral in institutionele contexten. Toen de werksessie plaatsvond, was het museum in de laatste fase van de digitalisering van zijn eclectische collectie: zo'n 330.000 objecten, waaronder kleitabletten, wandtapijten, mummies, oude juwelen, vazen en munten waren al geïnventariseerd. Onze aanwezigheid op dat moment stelde ons in staat om de concrete praktijken van kunstgeschiedenis, catalogisering en digitaliseringstechnologieën in relatie te brengen met performances, reflecties, prototypes en andere soorten experimenten.

Het project werd enkele jaren later, in 2019, nieuw leven ingeblazen om de vragen die we tijdens de werksessie aan de orde stelden, verder te verdiepen. Deze heropstart vond plaats in een sociaal-politieke context die al heel anders was dan die van 2016. Tegen die tijd vonden veel discussies plaats over musea en hun archieven, omdat het voormalige Museum voor Midden-Afrika na 5 jaar renovatie zijn deuren weer opende. Het museum claimde naast omvangrijke en dure renovatiewerken ook een dekoloniaal proces te doorlopen. Deze bewering lokte kritiek uit, maar ook veel discussie over de vraag of een dergelijke instelling, die als een agent van de Belgische koloniale onderneming wordt bedacht en opgericht, in staat was om zelfs maar een dergelijk kritisch proces in goede banen te leiden. Als gevolg daarvan werd de problematisering van het Belgische koloniale erfgoed in relatie tot zijn symbolen en instellingen, zoals musea, een aandachtspunt en een twistpunt in de landelijke debatten, in een mate en een zichtbaarheid die tot nu toe in België vrij ongebruikelijk was. Na deze debatten bleek het potentieel van DiVersies nog duidelijker, hoewel het ons ertoe aanzette de politiek van het project explicieter te articuleren.

DiVersies speelde zich af rond zeven artistieke experimenten die elk hun eigen artistieke strategieën inzetten om te testen hoe technieken en technologieën van genetwerkte samenwerking andere verbeeldingskracht zouden kunnen genereren. De projecten werden gezamenlijk ontwikkeld in dialoog met elkaar en in gesprek met partnerinstellingen. Hoe kunnen verschillende ordes naast elkaar bestaan in online collecties? Op welke manier maken we ruimte voor materieel en immaterieel erfgoed van de toekomst, voor zaken die buiten het bereik van musea en archieven worden ervaren, of voor andere zaken die bewust worden genegeerd? Hoe kunnen we in deze digitale omgevingen een discussie op gang brengen over de relaties tussen categorisering, kolonisatie en erfgoed? Hoe kunnen online collecties ruimte bieden aan radicaal verschillende, soms tegengestelde perspectieven?

Voor de eerste materialisatie in oktober 2019 werden de zeven installaties geactiveerd in De Pianofabriek (Brussel), vergezeld van een eerste versie van deze publicatie. Samengebracht in een gevoelige en humoristische scenografie voorgesteld door Mia Melvaer en Cristina Cochior, vormden de installaties een context voor verscheidene ontmoetingen, discussies en rondleidingen die de deelnemers, projectpartners en bezoekers uitnodigden om e-collecties te bekijken vanuit een decoloniaal en intersectieperspectief.

De tweede ontvouwing van DiVersies werd voorbereid in samenwerking met De Krook (Gent) en UGent. Het zou een geweldige kans zijn geweest om onze bevindingen te kunnen delen met de vele bezoekers die dagelijks door de bibliotheek passeren, maar door de pandemische situatie werd dit laatste evenement omgevormd tot een digitale tentoonstelling die in juni 2020 van start ging. De online verschuiving vloeide in de eerste plaats voort uit de externe beperkingen, maar bracht uiteindelijk ook een andere dimensie die de technologieën rond e-collecties op de voorgrond plaatste en in vraag stelde. Voor sommige projecten zoals [[Het gewicht der dingen] voelde de digitale verschuiving als een logisch verlengstuk van hun onderzoek. Andere projecten zoals Projecten:Zoumana_Meïte:_Een_nieuwe_vuurceremonie en Material Journeys Through Other Realities moesten de instrumenten en interfaces waarmee ze de e-collecties aanpakten radicaal heroverwegen. Voor weer anderen zoals Projects: schetsmatige_herkenning, Diff3r3ntVversionsArePOSSIBLE?!. en Collection of uncertainties, bood de online tentoonstelling de gelegenheid om het lopende proces uit te breiden en te documenteren of zelfs een heel nieuw voorstel te doen, zoals When organic trees meet the data tree.

De bijdragen aan deze tweede publicatie, inclusief de projectdocumentatie, verzetten zich elk op hun eigen manier tegen simplificatie en homogenisering. Ze besteden aandacht aan de historiciteit en performativiteit van digitale archieven en werken met hun tegenstrijdigheden in plaats van ze tegen te werken. Dit boek is een poging om de met elkaar verbonden themas zoals auteurschap, eigendom, revisie en restitutie te articuleren, om dingen expliciet te maken die zich soms tussen de regels afspeelden. Het generatieve potentieel van de kunstenaarsproposities wordt geactiveerd door hun gelaagde documentatie zelf en door aanvullende 'prosms', zoals de interventie van Anne Laforet die elk van de artistieke proposities onder de loep nam om ze voor ons inzichtelijk te maken in de publicatie.

Tussen de twee versies van deze publicatie is ook een nauwgezette verweving gaande. Heruitgegeven bijdragen worden uitgedaagd door uitbreidingen en nieuwe toevoegingen; er zijn expliciete bewerkingen en correcties; andere worden met directe reacties aangesproken. Samen met de ontwerpers van Open Source Publishing hebben we dit materiaal samengebracht in een meersporig boek en een onderling verbonden wiki die de lezer uitnodigt om verschillende temporele en niet-lineaire versies te verkennen.

Ons engagement om intersectie- en dekoloniale perspectieven te hanteren, deed ons aandacht schenken aan een meervoudig begrip van geschiedenissen en aan inspanningen die proberen te begrijpen hoe ze met elkaar verstrengeld raken. Als we dekoloniaal werk beschouwen als een voorstel voor generatieve gebaren om te denken en te doen, die elders beginnen dan bij de huidige historische en neokoloniale regimes, dan kan versioning misschien een manier zijn om verschillende interfererende patronen te overwegen. Door rekening te houden met de insluitsels en uitsluitingen die op het digitale archief inwerken, komt het geweld van deze archieven uit de obscuriteit die door de activiteiten van culturele instellingen wordt bewaard naar voren, maar opent het ook de weg naar een verbeelding van het agentschap van collecties en hun objecten buiten de genormaliseerde kaders van autoriteit en eigenaarschap om.

Deze publicatie markeert de laatste iteratie van DiVersions, maar het is geen eindpunt. DiVersions bood een omgeving om samen aan de slag te gaan met een aantal van de complexiteiten en urgenties rond e-collecties, in verschillende rondes en in uiteenlopende constellaties. Het is deze tijdelijke context die we nu afsluiten, maar de nauwgezette manier waarop we door al die schalen heen konden werken, is iets waar we bij zullen blijven en naar terug zullen komen.