According to the Society of American Archivists (SAA), archives are “permanently valuable records. . . These records are kept because they have continuing value to the creating agency and to other potential users. They are the documentary evidence of past events. They are the facts we use to interpret and understand history” (SAA website; emphasis added).
An archive can be used by any individual or organization, and can be used to provide a window into the past or understanding how we move through the present and into the future. However, it is important to note that U.S.-based archives have traditionally privileged writing, English language, and institutions and people in power; in some cases, they have created a skewed version of history. “Traditional” archives have presented structural and cultural obstacles for marginalized communities. Some of these obstacles can range from linguistic (English dominant histories), institutional (low educational access and literacy rates) and or place-based since “history” is often “kept” and “held” in private or privatized spaces.
The ReImagining Archives Project reimagines digital timelines and archives as radical public history tools. The goal for this project is to inspire the creation of digital timelines as modes of activism and resistance and offer insight as to why this is important. The information presented here will be geared towards recording the histories of marginalized communities that have either not been recorded or that have been recorded from a top-down perspective. The project will focus on archives’ capacity for exclusion and for accessibility as two crucial characteristics: Exclusion from social protections and political policies, and at the same time, their own histories, knowledge, and practices; uneven accessibility for “othered” communities that have faced significant obstacles to accessing their own histories.
The ReImagining Archives Project dismantles some of these obstacles, via creating a rudimentary template (or inspiration) that helps build a format of a multi-sited “archive” of community histories, ethnographies and oral history, with participant collaboration, and public access design.
The Re-Imagining Archives Project is meant to open the door for production and preservation of histories with different avenues and resources. With the resources offered here, the project also highlights the choice and agency in creation. Below are the pictures used for this project (featured image and thumbnails). These collages were created by me, Miren Neyra Alcántara. As I built this project, I could not find images that depicted how I understood or saw the possibilities of archival practices, resistance and having the tools to preserve our own histories. I made the decision to create these collages. The specific imagery chosen for them doesn’t have an attributed meaning, rather, my message behind them is to further highlight how we can take media and our own understanding of our stories and create something out of that. The Re-Imagining Archives project opens up the (historical) space again. What does it mean to record your own history? What does a (your) reimagined archive look like?