The Archive in a Post-Media Age: Taking Care of Things

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picBetween 15th and 18th the Post Media Lab (a collaboration between Leuphana University and Mute Magazine) are concluding the first phase of their collaboration with a workshop designed to address fundamental changes in processes of archiving and the care of objects… The workshop is testing the limits or archival practice, sometimes seeking to extend (or sometimes end) the life-cycle of objects not by simply preserving them (this usually guarantees they will be forgotten), but rather through acts that respond, react, and/or reuse. This event will mark the conclusion of this first phase of the Post-Media Lab by bringing together former fellows and new participants.

The Post Media Lab is focused on the potential for ‘post-media’ practice, drawing upon Felix Guattari’s concept of social and medial assemblages which unleash new forms of collective expression and experience. It is centred around a supported programme of visiting fellows – artists, technologists, film-makers, theorists, post-media operators – and the production of a series of associated, international public events and publishing projects.RTEmagicC_taking_care_of_things

‘Taking Care of Things!’ will be based at and operating from the Stadtarchiv Lüneburg, the city’s rich and still to-be-further-explored archive, headed by Danny Kolbe.

Taking Care of Things!’ will create multiple interweavings not only with the rich repository of the Stadtarchiv, but also with the multiple potentials of existing and new collaborations around the Center for Digital Cultures – possibly starting some repositories that will carry on into a future, where the Post-Media Lab will have been supplanted by other, new life-cycles.​

From the perspective of current theoretical approaches the figure of the archive seems to have lost its central status and its fever. In our medial and cultural set-up new (kinds of) archives seem to crop up everywhere, accelerated by new means of production and distribution.521056267948C3F_big
Cultural repertoires are being remixed alongside technological repositories – often giving new life to almost forgotten relics. Ever  what are the complex dynamics and contexts of these new (non-)archives? Do they really make sense? And if so, by and for whom? To address these questions, ‘Taking Care of Things!’ focuses on the transformation of things – analog and digital – into life-cycles and specific practices of care.more things, valuables, processes, projects, constituencies, even movements, need to be taken care of. It is not only cultural and critical theory that is being challenged, but also law, the natural sciences and design, alongside other applied sciences. But what are the complex dynamics and contexts of these new (non-)archives? Do they really make sense? And if so, by and for whom?
To address these questions, ‘Taking Care of Things!’ focuses on the transformation of things – analog and digital – into life-cycles and specific practices of care. This will be done in different thematic groups dealing with topics, like Mesh Media!, Civil Archaeology, Measure Drones, Unearthing the Archive, Translating Ontologies and Extinction in Context.
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