Autonomous Archiving Workshop I-II
Videograms of Civil Disobedience on Non-linear Timelines
15-16 November 2019 @ 14:00 – 18:00
registration at : freieklasse@interflugs.de
@ Room 9, Hardenbergstrasse 33, 10623
Against the conventional way of producing images and distributing them, bak.ma is forming a new approach for critical archiving, streaming, and online-editing. Our aim is not to teach/learn from point A to B in a linear way. It is rather all together on an equal base to discuss ‘what to do/what could have been done’ concerning the politics of image, archiving, open-source, and their intersections. For instance, our practices of collecting videos, films, texts from various groups, people, organizations brought us to create an autonomous pool of images for communities to grab images digitally on an online archive. This collecting practice would also be applied in Berlin and/or in other places.
The workshop considers the participants as an extended part of our archive collective bak.ma. With the images brought by the participants, we intend to create a category/location/time/tag/content/description on bak.ma. In this manner, regardless of raw material or already edited video, we will upload images to bak.ma to share the completed work. The aim is to expand bak.ma through regions and think about the notion of ‘autonomy of images.’ Within the workshop, we would like to create a network for future collaborations. The group members should see themselves as ‘social movement archivers.’
The workshop is designed in two parts/two days: 4/4 hours. In general, we will focus on the aspiration, motivation, and necessity of a counter-archiving practice from the perspective of bak.ma digital media archive of social movements. We intend to provoke engagement to a collective consideration of the practices of an open, accessible, and a non-hierarchical archive. On the first day/part of the workshop, we will focus on the surveillance mechanisms on the Internet, counter-image production under collective labor conditions, and distribution tactics. To discuss the visual tactics of video activist practices in a more collective format, we ask the participant to bring the video recordings that they made at political actions and would then be available to upload on the online archive. The workshop targets to exchange knowledge and experience through discussions and screenings. On the second day, we will focus on pan.do/ra software and how to use it. pan.do/ra software is a free, open-source media archive platform that allows managing large and decentralized collections of videos by allowing collaborative creation of metadata and time-based annotations.
About bak.ma
bak.ma reveals the near political history of Turkey and in several other regions with audio-visual recordings, documentation, and testimonies such as the Gezi Park uprising in 2013, TEKEL (tobacco) workers’ resistance in 2009-2010, May Day marches and various other protests from the 1960s until today. Specific political movements from other parts of the world, such as immigrant solidarity movements or the autonomous movement in Northern Syria, are accessible. The members of the archive collective gather visual recordings and documents made by various media activists, groups, and actors of incidents.
Workshop-I Coordinators
Elif Çiğdem Artan submitted her doctoral research in humanities at TU Berlin-Center for Metropolitan Studies. Her dissertation is entitled “The Future of the Present: Autonomous Archiving of Activist Videos.” She is currently scholar researcher at DaMigra e.V. and curator and coordinator of Federal German Migrant Women Association’s Bibliothek der Generationen project at Historical Museum Frankfurt. She is a co-founder of the Museum Professionals Association in Turkey. Her research interests span the fields of museology, urban, and digital culture.
Ömer Şamlı lives and works in Berlin. Studied political sciences and involved in video art and activist collectives such as Artıkişler (Istanbul), Leftvision (Berlin), bak.ma (Istanbul, Berlin) and producing images, texts, actions, videos, documentaries, archives, screenings with other members.
Özge Çelikaslan member of Artıkişler and bak.ma archive collectives, she has been involved in artistic, academic, political projects focus on forced migration, displacement, urban labor, commoning practices, and archiving social movements. She pursues her academic research on the politics of image through counter-archive practices at Braunschweig University of Art (HBK).
Workshop-II Coordinators
Jan Gerber and Sebastian Lütgert, both from Berlin, are the creators of the pan.do/ra video archive framework. Since 2000, they have initiated a variety of collaborative projects – laboratories, screenings, conferences, websites and software platforms – usually at the intersections of art, politics and technology. Examples are Bootlab, Pirate Cinema Berlin, Dictionary of War, The Oil of the 21st Century, 0xDB, Pad.ma, Indiancine.ma and Open Media Library.