MEANWHILE COLLABORATION
value bestowed upon the act of collecting, and the associations established with authority and power when a collection is formalized. In particular, they mentioned the use value of archives, referring to a book project in Northern Ireland: contactsheets from a Belfast photographic archive documenting all kinds of events are “intervened” by the public, which is given absolute freedom to mark them (scratch or cross them out) any way they want to. Some people choose to “erase and mask” certain elements of a picture, or emphasize a detail by using stickers and stamps, or by painting circles, lines or other marks in ink that remain visible on the surface of the contact sheet. This process reveals how a single archive is read and reread over time by different people through active, constant censorship, lending a different value to the archive as a resource. Cases like this one, in which an archive is made accessible—when others, as can be the case of national archives, are impossible to even consult—are examples of initiatives that evinced the possibility of a space for multiple voices and discourses. However, these types of presentations throughout the symposium raised more questions than they answered, some of which had already been discussed in other forums. Nonetheless, in the work sessions, individual participants formulated their queries based on their
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De noche en El Cairo Foto: Eugene Joo New Museum, Nueva York
own relationship with—and intention in using—a specific archive. A subject like this one of such global interest definitively brings up an endless series of issues, and it is perhaps best that we not attempt to answer them now, but rather leave them open to further consideration: • What would happen if the responsibility of the archive and the work it involves was shared with the viewing public, with visitors? • What is the purpose of creating new archives if no one uses them? • Where do we set limits between private and public? What images or materials can we or can’t we, should we or shouldn’t we make public? • What does “perpetually” mean in terms of the life or wishes of an artist, an institution, an organization, an agreement or a work of art?