Collecting OtherwiseCollecting Otherwise

How can we provide not only an intellectual but also a practical space for different audiences – and consider change in our archival collections and historical legacies as a collective process? The Collecting Otherwise Tool Shed facilitates the testing and application of new archival tools and methodologies through case studies. The Tool Shed prioritises flexibility and practice over fixed outcomes, encouraging collective change in archival collections and historical legacies. This involves institutions and institutional archives engaging more openly with donors, researchers and archives, challenging traditional hierarchies of knowledge creation and collaboration.

At the time of writing, the Collecting Otherwise Tool Shed consists of the tools identified and developed so far: the Archival Care Rider, Asterisk*, Oral Histories/Herstories, Mapping Collective Memories, the Trans-Institutional Supra-Archive and the Network Archive, as well as process-oriented learning from the spin-off projects Dutch-Indonesian Design Exchanges, Resituating Colonial Archives, Sonneveld Paducah, and the Collecting Otherwise Working Group. Through the project, the Nieuwe Instituut has acquired and researched more than 10 (network) archives from a feminist, queer and decolonial perspective. We have held 12 public gatherings, contributed to five exhibitions, with many more international gatherings to share our work in progress. We have also applied restorative research methods to existing archives in the Collection Nieuwe Instituut through case study research. We are grateful for our collaborations, including those with Arsitektur Indonesia, Gudskul, DutchCulture, the gta Archive at ETH Zurich, the Creative Industries Fund NL, and many others.

The Collecting Otherwise Tool Shed starts from a core set of values related to the intersectional feminist, decolonial and just framework to which the programme is committed: collective care, solidarity, horizontality, openness, collaboration, flexibility, accessibility, experimentation and (labour) sustainability. This makes the Collecting Otherwise Tool Shed communicable with other tool sheds that promote the same value system, while encouraging the emergence of new tools that respond to different contexts.

This final edition seeks to extend three identified practices or attitudes of the Tool Shed: Neighbourly Borrowing, Maintaining and Shedding. These practices highlight the necessary adaptations to (institutional) ways of working that are required when constructing alternative instruments (‘tools’) to acquire, classify and present obscured histories ‘otherwise’. These practices understand tooling as cyclical. Reflecting on the Tool Shed exchange during our Public Gathering #12 (15 February 2024) with lumbung.space, the cyclical work is one of understanding needs, repairing, and moving forward: “Debug [apps], restart the apps, update the apps, harvest internally.”

Neighbourly Borrowing
How can we imagine our Tool Shed as foregrounding a different economy (of knowledge and relationships)? How can we ensure that the Tool Shed not only facilitates and supports the act of neighbourly borrowing, but also neighbourly connections and collaborations? Can we borrow our neighbour’s tools to dismantle shared oppressions? How can we learn from each other, and not needlessly reinvent the wheel?

Maintaining
Tool sheds and tools need regular care, maintenance, and updating. How can we be collective ‘caretakers’ of the Tool Shed? How can we share the support and troubleshooting needed, and lower the threshold for accessing each other’s skills?

Shedding
The Tool Shed makes room for more tools by shedding (removing, nurturing, renewing), following Alfred Marasigan’s concept. What can be left behind for others to develop? What needs to be shed, so that other ideas, connections and spaces can flourish?

At present, Collecting Otherwise is contributing to the lasting development of the acquisition process of the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning at the Nieuwe Instituut. Collecting Otherwise will also seek to propagate (access to) the Tool Shed by offering manuals as its latest proposition. Together with the Collection Nieuwe Instituut, the research results (from the Oral History trajectory, the Network Archive and Asterisk*, for example) will be implemented in the institute’s latest collection and acquisition policy, and summarised as results in the Disclosing Architecture trajectory. This is an incredible outcome and provides a fundamental basis for further research into under-represented perspectives in the Collection Nieuwe Instituut (leading to further potential new acquisitions).

The tools (and their manuals) developed in the Tool Shed, as well as the methodologies of the Tool Shed and the working group, will be shared and tested in other archival and heritage institutions, by archival communities (such as by architects and architectural practices, with particular attention to under-represented communities among them), and in the alternative spaces from which archives and collections emerge. An important project is, for example, Hidden Histories, initiated together with the Creative Industries Fund NL. In this way, the promise of maintaining and learning from the tools in a shared tool shed is secured.

If you are interested in collaborating with Collecting Otherwise, please contact us: collectingotherwise@nieuweinstituut.nl