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=== Elodie Mugrefya, Femke Snelting ===
 
=== Elodie Mugrefya, Femke Snelting ===
  
DiVersions experiments with the potential of digital collections of specific cultural institutions as a site for decolonial and intersectional practice. DiVersions considers digital collections as locations that could and should expose normative curatorial processes, work with conflicts, allow collaboration and make space for other narratives.
+
DiVersions is inspired by the software-practice of ‘versioning’, as a way to experiment with online collections of cultural institutions. It approaches these collections as potential sites for decolonial and intersectional practice, that could and should allow for controversy, invite collaboration, and make space for other narratives.
  
DiVersions asks questions such as: How can different orders coexist in digital collections? In what way do we make room for material and immaterial heritage of the future, for material that is felt to be beyond the scope of museums and archives, or for material that is consciously being ignored? Do these digital environments allow us to crack open a discussion on relations between categorisation, colonisation and heritage? How can online collections accommodate radically different, and sometimes opposing perspectives?
+
DiVersions asks questions such as: 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 categorisation, colonisation and heritage? How can online collections accommodate radically different, and sometimes opposing perspectives?
  
The project is centered around seven artistic experiments that test out in practice how techniques and technologies of networked collaboration can support other imaginations of digital collections. The proposals are applied to several different e-collections such as Wikimedia, Museum for art and history and Werkplaats immaterieel erfgoed. The projects are collectively developed in dialogue with each other and with partner institutions, and presented twice. Each of the two versions is accompanied by a version of a catalog, a workshop and a public discussion.
+
We organised the project around seven artistic experiments that evolved in response to specific e-collections such as WikiMedia, the Carmentis database from the Museum for Art and History and the website of Werkplaats immaterieel erfgoed. Using a variety of artistic strategies, the projects test out in practice 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. DiVersions unfolds in two subsequent public installations, first in De Pianofabriek in Brussels and later in De Krook in Ghent. Each of the two versions is accompanied by a version of a publication, a workshop and a public discussion.
  
With the neologism 'DiVersions' we wanted to allude to the way 'versioning', an operation inscribed in most daily software-practices, might be a way to foreground divergent histories. Even if the conventional narrative of 'versioning' is one of streamlining collaboration and producing consensus, these techniques and technologies inherently pay attention to difference. In Dutch, this became 'di-versies' as a play on divergent or diverse versions. Translated to English and French, the title also evokes 'diversity', a term that especially in an institutional context started to be used to cover up issues of inequality and oppression with feel-good variability.<ref>AHMED on being included</ref>. It is for this reason that we decided to explicitly articulate the project as a decolonial and intersectional practice to reflect its political direction more clearly.
+
With the neologism 'DiVersions' we wanted to allude to the possibility that technologies of  'versioning' might foreground divergent histories.<ref>DiVersions started with a worksession in December 2016, organised in collaboration with the Museum for Arts and History. Documentation: http://constantvzw.org/w/?u=http://media.constantvzw.org/wefts/41/</ref> Version-control systems, Wikis, etherpads and other digital writing tools save log files and so-called ‘diffs’ routinely, potentially changing linear relations between original and copy, redefining questions of authorship and the archive. Meticulously logged workflows promise to make the process of shared editing transparent 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 inherently pay attention to difference. 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 especially in institutional contexts started to circulate as a blanket term for covering up issues of inequality and oppression.<ref>See: Sarah Ahmed, On being included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life</ref>. It is for this reason that we decided to explicitly articulate the project as a decolonial and intersectional practice.
  
Framing DiVersions as both 'decolonial' and 'intersectional' could appear as a contradictory gesture, if we consider that the practice of constructing a (digital) collection has been deeply entrenched in colonial efforts of sorting out and categorizing the world, including humans. DiVersions is consciously making this paradoxical move because it seems more than necessary to imagine, without attempting to repair, e-collections that can become self-reflexive on and aware of the physical and epistemic violence that powers them and keeps them in place. Starting from software processes that make the muliplicity of versions visible in the workings of a project, DiVersions links with an intersectional perspective as a framework in an attempt to not ignore the persistent complexities of human-to-human and human-to-machine relationships and the underlaying tensions and conflicts that result from it.
+
Framing DiVersions as both 'decolonial' and 'intersectional' could appear as a contradictory gesture, if we consider that the practice of constructing a (digital) collection is deeply entrenched in colonial efforts to sort out and categorize the world, including humans. DiVersions is consciously making this paradoxical move because it seems more than necessary to imagine, without attempting to repair, e-collections that can become self-reflexive and aware of the physical and epistemic violence that powers them and keeps them in place. Starting from software processes that make the multiplicity of versions visible in the workings of a project or a process, DiVersions is an attempt to take into account the persistent complexities of human-to-human and human-to-machine relationships and the underlying tensions and conflicts that result from it.
  
In December 2016, when the first phase of DiVersions took place, the Museum of Tervuren was already closed for several years for renovation.<ref>There is a deeply interesting historicity just in the name of the museum which was originally called Palace of the colonies to pass by various names until today's “Africa Museum”. This evolution transpires as an attempt to further away the institution from its colonial roots and transform it into a museum of Africa, the land and its people. The succession of those names works as an meaningful archive of the museum’s slow evolution struggling to respond to its environment.</ref> Three years later, just before relaunching the second phase of the project, the museum finally re-opened. The renovation was claimed to be a pivotal moment for the decolonisation of the institution, a fundamental symbol of the Belgian colonial entreprise. The re-opening prompted many heated debates on whether the museum did or did not succeed in this endeavour but also on whether such an institution, considering its inherent links with Belgian coloniality, could ever claim such a process. Not that the decolonial discourse was ever absent in Belgium, but it has not enjoyed the same mainstream platforms as it had during these debates.  
+
In December 2016, when the first phase of DiVersions took place, the Museum of Tervuren was already closed for several years.<ref>There is a interesting historicity just in the name of the museum which was originally called Palace of the colonies to pass by various names until today's “Africa Museum”. This evolution transpires as an attempt to further away the institution from its colonial roots and transform it into a museum of Africa, the land and its people. The succession of those names works as an meaningful archive of the museum’s slow evolution struggling to respond to its environment.</ref> Three years later, just before relaunching the second phase of DiVersions, the museum had finally re-opened. The renovation was claimed to be a pivotal moment for the decolonisation of this institution, a fundamental symbol of the Belgian colonial enterprise. The re-opening prompted many heated debates on whether the museum did or did not succeed in its  endeavor but also on whether such an institution, considering its inherent links with Belgian coloniality could ever claim such a process. Not that the decolonial discourse was ever absent in Belgium, but it has not enjoyed the same mainstream platforms as it had during these debates.
  
The discussions surrounding the re-opening of the Museum of Tervuren made clear that DiVersions brings together many related urgent questions. While working on and with digital collections of cultural institutions, we ran into large questions, such as the implications of digital technologies on representation, collaboration and access; the inherent problems of archiving and collecting; the troubles of institutional normativity and the assumptions of homogeneous identity that slip into cultural heritage policy.
+
The discussions surrounding the re-opening of the Museum of Tervuren made us realise that the work of DiVersions might be more urgent than we originally thought. Three years into the project, we are only at the beginning of addressing large questions, such as the implications of digital technologies on representation, collaboration and access; the inherent problems of archiving and collecting; the troubles of institutional normativity and the assumptions of homogeneous identity that slip into cultural heritage policy and above all, how all this plays out in the complex Belgian environment and its specific colonial history.
  
Cultural heritage functions mostly in the context of national or regional governments. It is sometimes considered to be a category that brings economic benefits, but above all it operates as a source of social and symbolic capital that is supposed to contribute to a sense of belonging. This complex set of expectations projected on cultural heritage leaves little room for a critical approach to what counts as heritage and what not. The construction of cultural heritage calls for the collection of archives which serve as repository for what is considered as representative of this heritage. Institutionalized archives, as collections of digital and/or physical documents, are generated through codified practices hence allowing institutions to keep authority on the archives. The institutions' authoritative position has enabled them to shape and construct specific narratives echooing their position of power. However, DiVersions sees potential in experimentating with digital collections by looking at how archiving has also become a tool and practice of resistance against oppresion and annihilation. By looking at the historicity of archive, their processes of construction, their gaps, the project discerns possibilities for  turning around, digressing from, questioning, opposing the narrative built-in and opens-up the possibilities for archiving and its performativity with an emphasis on collaborativity.
+
The construction of physical and digital repositories is a consequence of the social and symbolic capital that cultural heritage represents.<ref>UNESCO defines Cultural heritage as "the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations."<ref>http://www.unesco.org/new/en/cairo/culture/tangible-cultural-heritage/</ref> </ref> This value necessitates institutionalized archives, the keeping of digital/physical documents, and the establishment of codified practices that allow institutions to maintain their authority through classification and mediation. This mutual confirmation of what counts as heritage, as identity, as history and as beneficial future, constructs specific narratives that usually leave little room for a critique. But especially in a digital context, the practice of archiving cultural artifacts might also become a tool of resistance against oppression and annihilation.
  
These practices connect to Constant's long interest in relations between archives, institutions and memory and our conviction that it is possible and important to develop feminist practices within technological and institutional spaces. It lead to multi-year projects and investigations such as Active Archives [LINK], Mondotheque [LINK] and Scandinavian Institute for Computational Vandalism [LINK]. These projects provided different constellations to try to come to terms with the power-relations, oppressions and projections at work in the (digital) archive. DiVersions could in some way be seen as a continuation of these threads, taking inspiration from the fact that such work is never finished and continues to invite reflection, critique and new work.
+
To arrive at this potential is easier said than done because digital spaces themselves are permeated by seemingly neutral criteria, templates, standards, and so on. For example, database technologies routinely affirm the authority of certain kind of experts and not others; algorithms corroborate gender cliches and Wikipedia has surprisingly little space for deviating world views. DiVersions therefore not only attends to the digital items brought together in e-collections, but also to the way metadata, software packages and web technologies prevent or provide space for Di-Versions.
  
Digital spaces themselves are permeated by seemingly neutral criteria, templates standards, and so on. For example, database technologies xxxxxx are used to affirm the authority of certain kind of experts and not others; algorithms corroborate gender clichés and Wikipedia leaves surprisingly (and unnecessarily?) little space for deviating world views. DiVersions therefore not only attends to the content of the e-collections, but also with the way metadata, software packages and web technologies prevent or provide space for Di-Versions.
+
Digital collections can technically be copied, repeated, downloaded, and used in many contexts at once. It means that the inertia of conventional arrangements operates differently; the physical vulnerability, material and historical value of heritage objects can not be used as an argument. DiVersions actively refuses to accept this inertia because it blocks a lively decolonial and intersectional discourse and it is at the expense of the opening up of categories. DiVersions therefore experiments with digitized and digital heritage as a way to try out divergent forms of historiography, for telling untold stories and to open up wide the possibilities of conceptual de- and reconstruction. Even if these experiments do not definitively transform the symbolic order, it at least makes space for fantasies of it.
Versioning and its specific understanding of conflict and collaboration.
 
  
'versioning' is one of the core operations in xxxx and became central to the way collaboration is fostered.... Free, Libre and Open Source software (FLOSS) and more widely Free Culture (through the mechanism of Open Content licensing). Constant has been committed to  Free Culture because whe think it is a way to acknowledge that culture is a collective effort that deserves to be shared. When it comes to technology, we think Free Software can make a difference because we do not need to ask for permission if we want to consider, interrogate and discuss the technical details of software and hardware, or when we want to engage with its concepts, politics and histories. However, in the context of archive and cultural heritage, such a commitment to radical access is tragically lacking. This inaccesibility functions as a way to protect institutions's authority against [...]. But while Constant would like to see a more promiscuous approach to the often proprietary behaviour around cultural heritage, we also become increasingly aware of the need to rethink our relation to permission and access. As the selection of stills xxxx shows, there are many questions to be asked about the aliance of Free Culture and the Western privilege of assumption of full access/permission/properties.
+
DiVersions continues some of the threads in Constant's long commitment to the exploration of institutional and archival technologies from a feminist perspective. Multi-year investigations such as [http://activearchives.org/ Active Archives], [https://www.mondotheque.be/ Mondotheque] and [Scandinavian Institute for Computational Vandalism http://sicv.activearchives.org] provided platforms for different constellations of artist-researchers to come to terms with the power-relations, oppressions and projections at work in the (digital) archive. As DiVersions shows, such work is never finished and continues to invite reflection, critique and new attempts. We need to try again and try better.
  
To work with digital collections also means that the physical vulnerability, material and historical value of heritage objects can not be used as an argument for maintaining conventional arrangements. Such inertia is at the expense of a lively decolonial and intersectional discourse and blocks the opening up/deconstruction of categories. DiVersions is experimenting with digitized and digital heritage so to bring opportunities of trying out divergent forms of historiography, for telling untold stories and to open wide the possibilities of conceptual deconstruction. Even if it does not definitively transform the symbolic order, it at least makes space for fantasies of it.
+
This publication accompanies the first public unfolding of DiVersions. The texts included in this volume, and the documented projects each in their way resist simplification and homogenization. They pay attention to the historicity and performativity of archives and work with their contradictions rather than against them. DiVersions is a persistent attempt to collaboratively rework the narratives built-in to digital collections, and to play together in and with their gaps.
 
 
Artistic practices and imagination. Entering the concerns of DiVersions through artistic practices solves everything!
 
 
 
[conclusion ...] Versioning ... With two subsequent moments of making the research public, DiVersions itself becomes an environment for collective testing and trying, vulnerability xxxxx. On every level we try to resist simplification and homogenization, xxxxx that make the contradictions of digital collections visible.
 

Revision as of 10:42, 8 September 2019

DiVersions: an introduction

Elodie Mugrefya, Femke Snelting

DiVersions is inspired by the software-practice of ‘versioning’, as a way to experiment with online collections of cultural institutions. It approaches these collections as potential sites for decolonial and intersectional practice, that could and should allow for controversy, invite collaboration, and make space for other narratives.

DiVersions asks questions such as: 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 categorisation, colonisation and heritage? How can online collections accommodate radically different, and sometimes opposing perspectives?

We organised the project around seven artistic experiments that evolved in response to specific e-collections such as WikiMedia, the Carmentis database from the Museum for Art and History and the website of Werkplaats immaterieel erfgoed. Using a variety of artistic strategies, the projects test out in practice 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. DiVersions unfolds in two subsequent public installations, first in De Pianofabriek in Brussels and later in De Krook in Ghent. Each of the two versions is accompanied by a version of a publication, a workshop and a public discussion.

With the neologism 'DiVersions' we wanted to allude to the possibility that technologies of 'versioning' might foreground divergent histories.[1] Version-control systems, Wikis, etherpads and other digital writing tools save log files and so-called ‘diffs’ routinely, potentially changing linear relations between original and copy, redefining questions of authorship and the archive. Meticulously logged workflows promise to make the process of shared editing transparent 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 inherently pay attention to difference. 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 especially in institutional contexts started to circulate as a blanket term for covering up issues of inequality and oppression.[2]. It is for this reason that we decided to explicitly articulate the project as a decolonial and intersectional practice.

Framing DiVersions as both 'decolonial' and 'intersectional' could appear as a contradictory gesture, if we consider that the practice of constructing a (digital) collection is deeply entrenched in colonial efforts to sort out and categorize the world, including humans. DiVersions is consciously making this paradoxical move because it seems more than necessary to imagine, without attempting to repair, e-collections that can become self-reflexive and aware of the physical and epistemic violence that powers them and keeps them in place. Starting from software processes that make the multiplicity of versions visible in the workings of a project or a process, DiVersions is an attempt to take into account the persistent complexities of human-to-human and human-to-machine relationships and the underlying tensions and conflicts that result from it.

In December 2016, when the first phase of DiVersions took place, the Museum of Tervuren was already closed for several years.[3] Three years later, just before relaunching the second phase of DiVersions, the museum had finally re-opened. The renovation was claimed to be a pivotal moment for the decolonisation of this institution, a fundamental symbol of the Belgian colonial enterprise. The re-opening prompted many heated debates on whether the museum did or did not succeed in its endeavor but also on whether such an institution, considering its inherent links with Belgian coloniality could ever claim such a process. Not that the decolonial discourse was ever absent in Belgium, but it has not enjoyed the same mainstream platforms as it had during these debates.

The discussions surrounding the re-opening of the Museum of Tervuren made us realise that the work of DiVersions might be more urgent than we originally thought. Three years into the project, we are only at the beginning of addressing large questions, such as the implications of digital technologies on representation, collaboration and access; the inherent problems of archiving and collecting; the troubles of institutional normativity and the assumptions of homogeneous identity that slip into cultural heritage policy and above all, how all this plays out in the complex Belgian environment and its specific colonial history.

The construction of physical and digital repositories is a consequence of the social and symbolic capital that cultural heritage represents.Cite error: Closing </ref> missing for <ref> tag </ref> This value necessitates institutionalized archives, the keeping of digital/physical documents, and the establishment of codified practices that allow institutions to maintain their authority through classification and mediation. This mutual confirmation of what counts as heritage, as identity, as history and as beneficial future, constructs specific narratives that usually leave little room for a critique. But especially in a digital context, the practice of archiving cultural artifacts might also become a tool of resistance against oppression and annihilation.

To arrive at this potential is easier said than done because digital spaces themselves are permeated by seemingly neutral criteria, templates, standards, and so on. For example, database technologies routinely affirm the authority of certain kind of experts and not others; algorithms corroborate gender cliches and Wikipedia has surprisingly little space for deviating world views. DiVersions therefore not only attends to the digital items brought together in e-collections, but also to the way metadata, software packages and web technologies prevent or provide space for Di-Versions.

Digital collections can technically be copied, repeated, downloaded, and used in many contexts at once. It means that the inertia of conventional arrangements operates differently; the physical vulnerability, material and historical value of heritage objects can not be used as an argument. DiVersions actively refuses to accept this inertia because it blocks a lively decolonial and intersectional discourse and it is at the expense of the opening up of categories. DiVersions therefore experiments with digitized and digital heritage as a way to try out divergent forms of historiography, for telling untold stories and to open up wide the possibilities of conceptual de- and reconstruction. Even if these experiments do not definitively transform the symbolic order, it at least makes space for fantasies of it.

DiVersions continues some of the threads in Constant's long commitment to the exploration of institutional and archival technologies from a feminist perspective. Multi-year investigations such as Active Archives, Mondotheque and [Scandinavian Institute for Computational Vandalism http://sicv.activearchives.org] provided platforms for different constellations of artist-researchers to come to terms with the power-relations, oppressions and projections at work in the (digital) archive. As DiVersions shows, such work is never finished and continues to invite reflection, critique and new attempts. We need to try again and try better.

This publication accompanies the first public unfolding of DiVersions. The texts included in this volume, and the documented projects each in their way resist simplification and homogenization. They pay attention to the historicity and performativity of archives and work with their contradictions rather than against them. DiVersions is a persistent attempt to collaboratively rework the narratives built-in to digital collections, and to play together in and with their gaps.

  1. DiVersions started with a worksession in December 2016, organised in collaboration with the Museum for Arts and History. Documentation: http://constantvzw.org/w/?u=http://media.constantvzw.org/wefts/41/
  2. See: Sarah Ahmed, On being included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life
  3. There is a interesting historicity just in the name of the museum which was originally called Palace of the colonies to pass by various names until today's “Africa Museum”. This evolution transpires as an attempt to further away the institution from its colonial roots and transform it into a museum of Africa, the land and its people. The succession of those names works as an meaningful archive of the museum’s slow evolution struggling to respond to its environment.