What the Archive?
Words: Connie Mangumbu
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then, where lies the novelty of motion? A rightful discussion that has set the Arts ablaze for eons. Never before has this discussion divided a people more than today, as data exceeded all expectations and metamorphosed into capital. Again, we give thanks and dread to all at Cambridge Analytica. Ulrich Obrist emphasised these talking points at Art Basel in 2017; where the decision is made, what to digitise and how one acquires the archive in the digital age where documentation is expansive and the preservation essentially exists on the web. The conclusion of that summit: we can dwell in the gloom of the constant fear of rapidly changing preservation platforms like the Cloud but, if the fear is sustainability, humans are well equipped to shift and change as we always have done, to accommodate those needs.
It’s always quite laughable being both at the fringes and central to the arts as black people and see how obtuse the industry can be in tackling some of the most pressing of conversations. Preservation perhaps is the most eye roll inducing of them all because it fails to consider the preserver. Where European artists fuss and fight over the importance of whether digital or physical archives best enhance the gravity of their legacy, black people and black art are merely searching to the ends of the Earth to retrieve theirs.
With thanks to the contemporary age, visibility today is a fast track inauguration into the institution’s eternal archive, praise be! From the meme-makers, Tik-Tokers and unbeknownst coders of the millennia (hold tight Tom), have cultivated and curated an entire wave of untraditional archivists. Where new platforms sprout every two years and current networking sites scramble to sustain traction and engagement by introducing new (not improved) features in addition to their original USPs and from a generation that conjured the term Throwback Thursday, these Insta-archivists are here quenching our nostalgic thirst.
Whether they're Brits or stateside, these people are setting a precedent for what we know past and present @BlvckVrchives run by Renat Charlise @howtobearuckinglady run by Rashida Reneé and Christofe @idealblackfemale run by Amanda Mandy @Bronze_Bombshell also known as Shelbey Ivey Christie, fashion historian and retriever of black history Be it archiving forgotten black moments, fashion, art or more importantly today, thanks to Amanda Mandy, Black memes. Now, I get it. Black memes? Hear me out? Where accounts like @imjustbait are making fortunes by repurposing the memes of Black British Twitter, it is imperative to note just how lucrative blackness is regarding language, fashion, music, humour and just how damaging the co-opting of content by larger, more established corporations over an influx of accessible content that’s lauded over passive tweeters by Twitter.
I’m sure we all remember where we were and how we felt when the clip surfaced of a teenaged Natalie Stewart of Floetry at the 1994 Notting Hill Carnival arguing her case for the preservation of the momentous cultural event. Not only are there dedicated accounts but, in a climate of great political and social instability, we all participate in the practice of archiving... Who knew?!
Words: Connie Mangumbu
