Open Archive: Three New Media Works in DevelopmentOpen Archive: Three New Media Works in Development

Jessica de Abreu, Femke Dekker and Michiel Huijben were selected from more than 190 makers who responded to an open call. All three have a strong multidisciplinary vision for the creative reuse of archival materials. The jury was particularly impressed by their original research questions and their contemporary and critical visions of the archive in relation to current social developments. They have been given the opportunity to create a new work of art based on the three institutions' open archives, within a working period of five months.

Jessica de Abreu, an anthropologist and co-founder of The Black Archives, is making a documentary film based on her personal archive and archival materials from the open collections of the participating institutions. She emphasises the representation of Black people in history and the current debate about racism and discrimination.

Femke Dekker's project with the working title RE: ACTIVATE focuses on the relationship between media and activism and exposes the strategies used to strengthen and exploit their mechanisms.

How can a city contribute to inclusivity and diversity if there is nowhere to make your voice heard? This is the question posed by Michiel Huijben, who is exploring various democratic spaces in cities and how they were designed and conceived within an urban environment.

The three makers' individual research has been supported by several joint activities, including an Input Party and Re:Use Clinics.

The Input Party, an initiative of Rachel Sellem and Elki Boerdam, arose from their need to talk about institutional and private archives from a non-academic perspective. It is a party for and by artists, who share a conversation about archival materials that they brought along themselves. The aim is to guide each other further in their artistic process, and their personal narratives surrounding archival materials. Femke Dekker, Jessica Abreu and Michiel Huijben came together digitally during the Input Party on 5 March to share their findings for the first time.

After personal introductions based on images of their work, they presented their research and the archival materials they have found. It quickly became clear that they all had issues with the complexity of the various collections and the digital search options. Because the three artists work intuitively, searching within a system structured around dates, names and inventory numbers can pose a challenge. At the end of the research period, the three makers hope to present not just a new work, but also their insights into how heritage institutions collect, and how accessible collections can be when they are searched for social themes.

On 25 February, we organised the first of two Re:Use Clinics. This online event, devoted to the theme of Copyright, was attended by around 60 people. The clinics are intended to bring heritage institutions and makers together to shared ideas about creative reuse, based on a specific theme. The guest speakers were Arlette Bekink from Pictoright and Open GLAM advocate Douglas McCarthy. The moderator, Brigitte Jansen, was tasked with encouraging the speakers and guests to ask questions and participate in the discussion.

Pictoright represents image makers and their (collective) rights and collects fees for borrowing, copying and distributing their images. Since from a practical point of view, these rights cannot be collected individually; they are collected collectively, after which they are distributed by Pictoright to those who are entitled to them. Collective rights will soon have a legal basis in Dutch law. Arlette Bekink introduced the Appropriation Art guideline recently drawn up by Pictoright. This makes it possible to test the extent to which it is acceptable to use an existing work in another work, something not currently permitted under copyright law. In this way, Pictoright acknowledges that, for many artists, referring to the work of others is inextricably linked to the creative process.

As an advocate of Open GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archive and Museums) Douglas McCarthy first wanted to emphasise that the age of digital cultural heritage has arrived. He focused on works in the public domain, in other words works that are no longer copyrighted. He believes that such works should always be as accessible as possible online. McCarthy showed how the status quo is maintained by limited access to the public domain even though there are opportunities for making a collection available online. Makers themselves also influence the degree of access. For example, how do makers license their works? What happens to the work if it is posted on social media? Can heritage institutions play an active role in this debate, and ensure that collections remain open?

In the coming months, the artists will continue their research in the various collections and develop their media work. Each month, one of the artists writes about how their research is progressing on the research blog on the Open Archive website. The three new works will be presented in the exhibition Open Archive 2021, which opens at Het Nieuwe Instituut on 3 June. In addition, Open Archive is organising an international digital symposium on copyright and other issues. In line with the socially relevant themes the artists are addressing this year - racism, discrimination, activism and democracy - it is essential that heritage institutions open up their collections to facilitate precisely these research questions. This will take place during the second Re:Use Clinic in April, which will discuss the ethics of reuse.

Het Nieuwe Instituut has been a heritage institution since 1 January 2021. Networking and partnerships are essential for making the collection accessible. Different forms of research - speculative, academic, design, public - facilitate the development of new approaches, methodologies and narratives for looking at the collection and assigning value and meanings to it. An important question in this respect is how heritage institutions can foster new forms of diversity and accessibility through their organisation, their collections and associated acquisition and accessibility policies.

For the latest updates visit www.openarchief.com. If you have questions, please email them to openarchief@beeldengeluid.nl.