Inhabiting the Archive

Tomorrow, I am heading down to Boston to participate in Console-ing Passions 2012. As part of the 'Opening the Archives' panel, I'll be speaking on behalf of NoMorePotlucks, Canadian journal of arts and politics, which I cofounded and maintain with Marie-Claire MacPhee. 

The main takeaway of my talk will be an attempt to shift ideals of ownership to ideas of inhabitation, of the archive. In other words, to stop controlling and possessing culture to instead offer up a definition of preservation that is embodied, creative, and in the present. This is my feminist proposal, which I offer up through a media archaeology of NoMorePotlucks.

Without giving away the punchline of my talk, this will connect to how the various iterations of the project have been documented, retreived and are circulated...

I will be showcasing early iterations of the site, coded in html in 2003, via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. For the second iteration, created using CMS Textpattern, I will navigate the site by way of backs up copies made onto CDs in 2004 and 2005. Following this, the site shifted to CMS Drupal, which is no longer available online, but for which I've exported the database for perusal (in PDF, SQL and XML versions). Finally, for the current version, I will show the site 'live' featuring issue 22: Record.

For more information on the conference, visit the conference website or read the write up on blog.commarts.wisc.edu.
Follow along on Twitter: @CPBoston2012 and #CPBoston2012