An artists’ self-archiving project
Banner Repeater is an artist-led archive of artists’ publishing, including a reading room and experimental project space founded by artist, writer and educator, Ami Clarke, in 2010.Footnote 2 The project is driven by its location, on platform one of Hackney Downs Overground train station, mobilising its footfall of over 11,000 daily passengers as a dedicated site for critical art. It's remarkable that this space has been held and sustained for fourteen years, considering how the ecology of the arts has changed in the UK. Doing more than surviving, the project has now expanded into the digital realm.
Digital Archive of Artists' Publishing. “About.” Screenshot. Accessed June 19, 2024. https://daap.network/about.
Ami Clarke is working with designer and researcher, Lozana Rossenova developing and building the Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing (DAAP). The DAAP uses open-source, linked data, to ethically share the artists’ work held in Banner Repeater's collection online. The DAAP works with other collections cross-organisationally,Footnote 3 unsettling singular institutional affiliation. Think of the architecture of academic research; it often begins with a library or a university; even Open Access research usually finds a home in an institutional repository. DAAP cuts across this model and proposes one of anti-competition, collaboration and networked communities.
The DAAP supports and invites self-archiving. Artists’ working in publishing can follow step-by-step tutorials to upload data to the site. Since the collection is built by and for communities of artists, publishers, librarians, archivists and designers, each record is custom built from scratch, and, therefore, holds the capacity to be wildly different. Free from standardisation and centralisation, the metadata can sing!
I've been recruited alongside a small team of archivists – Francis Whorrall-Campbell, Rose Nordin and Carl Gent – to work on the latest Heritage Lottery Funded project. We, archivists have been supporting The Women's Art Library and PSS imprint to build their own profiles on the DAAP.
Category is… the Women's Art Library
The landing page of the DAAP shows book cover tiles of recently added works; white, pink, orange, black; The virosexuals, The relentless search for joy in the endless hellscape of post-industrial capitalism: Posters for a queer anarchist future, etc. There is functionality to browse the archive, browse the collections or build a custom search. Here, under the ‘Browse by Category’ menu button, is where you could find the Women's Art Library Collection. I love how this accidental ballroom reference – ‘category is…’ – evokes collection records strutting, twirling, voguing for an audience of whooping, desiring ballroom goers. If ever there was a queer catalogue, DAAP has to be it. There are no central templates or blueprints. Each record is built by artists based entirely on fields they deem important to the work.
Digital Archive of Artists' Publishing. “Items from the Women's Art Library Collection.” Screenshot. Accessed June 19, 2024. https://daap.network/walindex.
Since last Summer, the DAAP has continued to develop; the Women's Art Library Collection can now be found under ‘Collections.’ There is also a collection of ‘Palestinian Artist's Publishing’ which is still to be populated. This is symptomatic of an archive that is in flux, unfinished, not fully catalogued. The materiality of the archive speaks to artists’ capacities; how unpaid labour occurs in snatches of time between work, commuting, eating and resting. The invitation is to come back, flesh records out, take time, return. Cruising the WAL records, some encompass fully documented projects, some are sparse. The only remaining ephemera of a short-run publication dispersed hand-to-hand among friends may be just its title. The DAAP is not a slick product, it's an ongoing process, reflective of the itinerant communities it holds.
Many of the records included in the WAL collection were made by artists supported to varying capacities through workshops, one-to-one online or in person tutorials, Saturday open drop-in archiving sessions at Banner Repeater and / or a glut of emails.
A gold wrestling suit and creased, DIY VHS inserts: Librarian's pet items
I am drawn to certain materials in the revolving stack. A slinking gold Mexican wrestling suit. Super Disidencias, lives in a spray-painted gold archive box in the Women's Art Library.Footnote 4 It is a toolkit for performance and holds: a wrestling suit (mask overall and gloves), a printed manifesto to be read aloud and a CD with a cover of a Cumbria song. The work by Nina Hoechtl in collaboration with Naomi Rincón-Gallardo, Jessy Bulbo & Leika Mochán, invites participants to invoke the queer superpowers of the social luchas to destabilise racialised, classed, gendered, sexualised oppressions – to be illegible! A project website includes a downloadable pattern to make your own outfit.
One tickling aspect of the DAAP project, was getting to reach out to the artists responsible for making my favourate archive items in the Women's Art Library. Those things that tingle, charm and trouble me. Another favourite, two VHS compilation tapes. Tucked into the milky plastic cases, you'll find folded colourful A4 sheets with the participating artists' names and video titles. I will do anything to get women into my bedroom is the title of Emma Hedditch's ‘almost fully functioning video distribution network for women.’ Emma writes personal anecdotes to introduce each film – how they met the artist, first came across the work, or something about the video that moves them. The intimacy, generosity and warmth of these words are also carried by the diy photocopied pages, creased, dog-eared and supple from handling, passed between viewers. The tapes and notes work as a library that draws together a chorus, a community. I think of this gentle gathering as I make a video myself, for the first time. I tend to my pets as they tend to me. The DAAP project is a way to share the archival works that have carried me along, as a citational practice.Footnote 5
Generating chatty metadata through workshops
Helen Douglas, Symrath Patti, Sharon Kivland, Amy Tobin, Bella Milroy, Tahani Nadim, Liliane Lijn, Naomi Pearce, Sophie Seita, Felicity Allen, Anne Lydiat, Katharine Meynell, Sarah Carne, Sonia Lenzi, Susan Johanknecht, Nina Hoechtl, Maria de Lima and Shanzhai Lyric, are just some of the artists who participated in blended workshops held at the Women's Art Library, Goldsmiths, in May and July 2023. The publishing projects recorded are wildly varied: self-published pamphlets, a Phaidon published artist monograph, sheets of temporary tattoos, artist books, posters, t-shirts, archive files of photocopied press cuttings and exhibition ephemera.
The workshops had two functions: technical and dialogic. In terms of skill sharing, the workshops support collective learning where artists familiarise themselves with the Wikibase software, and directly shape it to their needs. Workshops were tailored to cater for varying technical skill. Some artists were hands-on building their own records and uploading material, while it was an information gathering exercise for others, discussing what should be recorded in collaboration with supporting archivists.
Secondly, the coming together of WAL artists, many meeting for the first time, was an opportunity to learn about each other's publishing practices, foregrounding the knowledge in the room, and generating ‘gossipy’ oral histories to be included on the publications’ records. Each artist introduced their archive materials, holding up publications to the laptop camera and fanning through the pages for those joining online to see. The chatty presentations held a space for digression, for tangents. We heard about the all-male design outfit for a feminist publication: the information that isn't dutifully printed on the back-of-book blurb.
Artists’ speaking to and with their publishing projects, along with interruptions, discussions, and embellishments, were audio-recorded and transcribed. Initial thinking was to provide transcripts to artists as catalysts to write from, building their catalogue entries based on dialoguing. In a tutorial with artist Shama Khanna who runs Flatness, they suggested including the audio itself in the records. Some artists have opted to do so. Some have also used the transcripts verbatim, including repetitions, hesitations and digressions. Some preferred the initial brief of writing the metadata based on the conversations they had. Many publications that are out of print, or only held in limited archival spaces, are now accessible on the DAAP and shared in the artists’ own voices.
A Slide Walk across Catalogue Records; Performing the Archive
Touching, smelling, licking the tips of your fingers to separate the pages is the best way to know an archive like the Women's Art Library. To translate this embodied knowing, this touching material, away from the page, Althea Greenan, curator of the Women's Art Library, has developed a practice of ‘slide walks’ that ‘perform’ the archive.Footnote 6 On such a walk, Althea shares a series of slides from the collection and talks through the material, overlaying images with vocality and memory. Let's take a slide walk across the catalogue entries for the WAL and see what the DAAP can do. Or rather, borrowing from Karen Di Franco's effervescent presentation at the Women in Revolt conference, let's see what the disobedient WAL materials can do with the digital archive.Footnote 7
A home for a PDF; Jasleen Kaur's Be like teflon
Be like teflon is a luminous publication by Turner Prize Nominee artist, Jasleen Kaur. It's a bright lime green little book that fits comfortably in one hand. The title is embossed in shining silver foil, and it wears a clear plastic jacket. It's full of conversations and recipes. The materiality of the book invites you to bring it with you into the kitchen. Splash with hot sauce, furrow pages with damp fingers. Read while making sure your mustard seeds don't burn.
It's a book that is now out of print. It is only accessible in collections in London and Glasgow. Jasleen had been fielding requests about how to access the publication. Finding a home for making Be like teflon available digitally for the first time, was useful. We talked about the different materialities of a PDF: thumb scrolling over cracked phone screen or leaning on the counter, hunched over a laptop. Should there be two separate records for the print book and the digital file that speak to how each bends the body in a different way? For Jasleen, sharing the work widely is the most important thing. She centres the reader by keeping all the material together in one place, in one record, so you can jump from book to file without barriers. This is a good example of what artists prioritise, and how in building records themselves, they get to make these decisions. It also shows how the archive moulds to fit the needs of artists.
The catalogue record includes a description of Be like teflon taken from the artists’ website:
Be like teflon was commissioned by Panel for Glasgow Women's Library. In a collection of conversations between women of Indian heritage living in the UK, arise themes of labour, duty, sustenance and loss. Here we find a place for their histories, experience and strength. Through the simple act of listening, over a hot tava or plate of food, begin acts of solidarity and self-nourishment. This publication received support from Creative Scotland and was produced by Panel. It is co-published by Glasgow Women's Library and Dent-De-Leone.Footnote 8
There's a section for ‘contributors’ under which writers, editors, artists, designers and printers all fall, webbed together speaking to the ecologies of artist publishing that often spring from communities of practice. The DAAP has the capacity to assign multiple roles to any one contributor, artists as writers, translators, curators etc., gesturing to the varied work artists inhabit. Contributors jostle, listed in alphabetical order, rather than traditional hierarchies delineating authors and editors at the top. New roles are constantly being added to acknowledge the ways that we are sustained and supported by each other in our creative practices.
Telling histories of the Women's Art Library
Each of the publications in the Women's Art Library Collection link back to a dedicated page for the archive itself. For now, there's a holding photograph of stacked acid-free grey archive boxes jutting off the revolving shelves. The description reads:
The Women's Art Library is a collection of photographic, ephemeral, personal and published art documentation initiated by women artists in the late 1970s. Thriving as an artists’ organisation and publishing a magazine until 2002, the collection was then gifted to Goldsmiths and forms part of its Special Collections. The Women's Art Library continues to be developed through artists’ contributions and acquisitions. It also supports a programme of artistic research including artists’ residencies. These are either instigated by artists or set up through partnerships. The WAL collection is accessible to all researchers along with many of the other Special Collections at Goldsmiths.Footnote 9
The DAAP is supported by Wikimedia, which works similarly to Wikipedia. Content can be edited by anyone who has set up a free account. The infrastructure is built on accountability and an element of trust. In practice, history logs allow earlier versions to be restored if necessary.
The profile for the WAL links to the Wikidata identifier; linked open data works against duplication of work and having multiple versions that require updating. The description of the WAL above is just one iteration, the most recent, of what the WAL is or can be. It is interesting to see how much the narrative elements of the WAL on DAAP and WAL on Wikidata differ. Wikidata describes the Women's Art Library as an ‘academic archive,’ ‘a university collection.’ [At this point in my presentation Althea audibly gasps!] These tags disregard the political rooting of the WAL within militant histories of diy feminist practices mobilised despite having no institutional backing. The nonchalant describers erase the vital history of the collection and demonstrates the importance of taking these tools back and speaking our histories as we know them to be.
Polyvocal annotation, tracing connections: Bella Milroy's File under female
An element of Bella Milroy's collaborative project File under female is a large black and white poster, made when she was artist-in-residence at the Women's Art Library.Footnote 10 On one side of the poster, there's a scan of an exhibition pamphlet from Symrath Patti's artist file. The splayed open publication shows an artist's portrait, scrawled with urgent annotations. On the other side of the poster is a handwritten response by The White Pube. The words: ‘MY GOD’, ‘canon’, ‘CHER CHER LA FEMME’ and ‘*archive*’ stand out. When Althea disperses copies of Bella Milroy's poster to busy lecture theatres, there's a wave of unfolding, the sound of quivering paper an apt qualifier of the feeling in the room, vibrational.
Digital Archive of Artists' Publishing. “File Under Female on the DAAP.” Screenshot. Accessed June 19, 2024. https://daap.network/artwork?id=Q5446.
The record for File under female has three different project descriptions on the DAAP: a snippet reproduced from Bella's artist website, a description of the project from the artist, Symrath Patti, to whose work it responds and the transcript from the workshop where Bella introduces her project; the archivists and participating artists chime in.
Learning about the project directly from the artist, Bella, in their own words, full of affectation, is thrilling –the audio is attached to the record. The workshop transcripts document some of this off-the-cuff, precarious warmth for readers and listeners who weren't in the room. Bella's records speak to how we can preserve liveness, vocality, and improvised chat within the way we archive our work. In Bella's words:
There was a really striking, example of ephemera in Symrath's collection, which is a catalogue from an exhibition that her work was featured in. […] it has a photograph of of Symrath, which underneath says ‘self-portrait.’ And then alongside that is this very visceral, very… The impact of this kind of handwritten text that edits this titling of it being a self portrait. And it reads… and there's different kind of reading to it because it is quite a jumble of text, but it's very… it reads: ‘it's not a self portrait. I did not take the photo or press photography. File under postcolonial female arts and all the other isms.’ And that was enough to carry me away… how inspiring and powerful, that kind of rejection of this mis archiving almost of her, as an artist and her work in general.Footnote 11
The spokeness of this project description roots it in conversation, in relationality, tangential and emphatic. Bella's words carry us as she is carried by Symrath's jotted notes.
It was hairs-prickling-up-on-your-arms poignant to get to speak with Symrath Patti, who also participated in the workshops, about her experience of Bella's work. Here are Symrath's words on Bella's catalogue record:
A portrait was used in the catalogue and labelled ‘self portrait.’ I then added to it commenting on self portraiture and selling identity as ethnicity as self portraiture. Tearing away at one's own image; how we fitted in culturally and how that was being monitored in the 80s and 90s. I wrote ‘file under post-colonial female’ since I was exploring and questioning the dominant gaze in a patriarchal society as well as police cultural surveillance.Footnote 12
Much like Symrath's original exhibition catalogue annotation, she now annotates Bella's project record, bringing new vibrant meaning and building cartographies between works and worlds.
The workshop transcript unfolds from Bella's project introduction to the group into a conversation. Althea Greenan connects Bella's work to Nina Hoechtl's (of gold wrestling suit fame). Both artists join the workshop remotely; Bella from East Midlands and Nina from Mexico. This moment beautifully visibilises the tireless exuberant work that Althea does daily in the archive, acting as a node, tracing connections.
The material flutters as Althea holds up Symrath Patti's annotated catalogue to the laptop camera. Next she holds up Bella's poster, and unfolds it to full size, climbing out of her chair to get enough distance from the screen for it to be pictured in full for artists joining online. Now she picks up and unfolds a third publication. She's literally mapping material ancestries, talking to the thinness of the paper of Nina's poster EINLANDUNG ZUR RECHERCHE / INVITATION TO RESEARCH, which inspired Bella's project.Footnote 13 Nina's project is a collaboration with Julia Wieger and presents a group photo of the Austrian Association of Women Artists in Vienna, founded in 1910, inviting researchers to engage with the complex and contradictory history of such a body operating in cahoots with Nazi power. Nina interjects ‘I liked a lot that you [Althea] said now the thinness, the thinness of the poster but also the thinness of histories and who is telling histories.’
File under female is a brilliant example of how networked communities can be traced by the DAAP archive. The DAAP has capacity for multiple descriptions, for anecdotal histories where polyvocality builds a gossipy archive. An artist's statement, rubs up against an institution's version, rubs up against the press release, rubs up against a conversation or another artist chipping in. The different material modes of writing generate a thick knotty translation of the work, like static. This dialoguing is carried by the metadata. As well as holding multiple project descriptions, there's a ‘related works’ field. Here, on Bella Milroy's File under female, you'll find Symrath Patti's The complete promise and Nina Hoechtel's Invitation to research. A rhizomatic web of responsibilities shows up how we hold and carry each other in our practices. This is citation as practice; metadata as poetry.
Vocality as affect: Sharon Kivland's La forme-valeur/The value-form
To introduce Sharon Kivland's delightful publication, La forme-valeur Footnote 14 I'll reproduce the description from domobaal editions’, the publisher's website, alongside snippets from the workshop transcript.
La forme-valeur/The value-form is a sixteen-page book, following the exhibition of the same title at Galerie de Cloître, Rennes in 2005. The commodity from Chapter 3 of Capital by Karl Marx, in both French and English translations, finds a voice as a woman, on a Chanel-pink ground. The edge of the cover is gilded, recalling the packaging of ‘Allure’.Footnote 15
And in Sharon's words excerpted from the transcript:
I'll describe it: I am trying to find a woman speaking in Marx's Capital. Yet all I find is an object speaking, the charming voice of a commodity and the chorus of goods going to market (which is of course, from Luce Irigaray)[…] – it's simply when the commodity (happily) is feminine in French: ‘la marchandise.’ So actually it was pretty easy to find ‘elle’ speaking in the translation. It was the first in a number of works that followed in my re-readings and rewritings of Marx.
Sharon also tells us the dusky matte pink of the book cover is ‘not quite the right pink.’ She goes on to speak about offset printing, the necessity to do larger print runs and gifting over 500 copies until there are none left, reflecting the importance of someone else archiving your history, ‘because history takes up far too much room.’
Sharon Kivland: Oh God, I feared it might be me first because of course I've completely forgotten which publication, Jessa, you suggested. Quick, a quick reminder.
Jessa Mockridge: [laughing] There are a few of yours in there (the WAL). It's ‘the Value one’ that's in French and English. Do you know which one I mean?
SK: No idea!
Lozana Rossenova: So Sharon should we come back to you or do you need a bit more time?
SK: No, no, I found it but it does rather demonstrate the importance of archives when one can't remember one's own history. [laughter]. I have to say I have very little interest in my own history. As a Trotskyist, of course, I'm a keeper of history, just not my own.
I am interested, very interested, in being a keeper of Sharon's proliferations. As an artist, writer, curator, translator and editor, Sharon is so prolific – in her own writing as well as with her publishing house MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE – that neither of us can recall which of her gorgeous unruly publications we are speaking to. I played the audio of Sharon speaking in full during my conference presentation. Now shared as a YouTube video – I am captured listening, displaying a choreography of gestures – laughing, grinning, open palm to chest reeling, head jerks back, the eyes flit up to the audience saying ‘right?’, baring teeth. The recording shows the immediate, real time embodied effect of Sharon's words on me, even as I listen again.
Mockridge, Jessa. “Category Is…The Women's Art Library on the DAAP:ARLIS Conference Presentation.” December 1, 2023. YouTube Screenshot. https://youtu.be/9WyryRqbueI?si=zAdyrau4GjWkiid5.
Sharon shows up a pitfall of self-archiving. Due to diminished capacities, and being pulled in different directions, it may be the case that sustaining the practices of others’ takes priority over attending to our own. Collaborative, relational ways of archiving are necessary.
Haptic metadata, accessing materiality: Charlotte Procter's poetic descriptions
The DAAP WAL project has generated delicious new materials speaking to contemporary practices and histories of artists’ publishing. Another strand of the project I found tucked away in a working document buried deep in Goldsmiths library's staff shared drive. In this spreadsheet are the most beautiful ‘binding descriptions’ of the Artists’ Books Collection written by Charlotte Procter. Now the Collection & Archive Director at LUX and member of the Cinenova Working Group, Charlotte wrote these descriptions in 2019, during a volunteer placement at the Women's Art Library when she was a student at LCC in the Book Arts programme (which no longer exists). Tender, endearing, erotic: these descriptions far surpass book cataloguing standards which detail: pagination, dimensions, illustrations, etc.
The press release for Anne Lydiat's exhibition catalogue, Without, describes the publication offering rich, generous insights into the context and inspiration behind the work. Before building this record on the DAAP, there was no trace of the publication online. While the exhibition text is put to work, the digitally reproduced book cover on the catalogue record is sorely flat. Here, Charlotte's material descriptions step in:
A black hardback book, cloth bound, rectangular (landscape orientation) approx 26 x 21.5 cm. The book is covered with a fairly fine weave canvas (or coarse weave cotton) with the title “Without” impressed into the cover, and into the spine, along with the artist's name. Inside, the book is held together with shiny brass screws, the pages are white and plain except for the identical maple leaf design cut out of the centre of each one, leaving a deep hole through the book. They are also perforated along the inside edge. The material is textured but feels soft to touch, the screws are cold and hard and the pages are smooth (apart from the edges of the cut-outs which are sharp). Open the book, turn pages carefully (though they are all the same), or tear off a sheet at a time along the perforations. Sharp edges of the cut outs would be ruined by too much handling. Contrast between the white pages and the black of the covers and leaf cut-out.Footnote 16
Charlotte's writing for the online catalogue allows you to access the materiality of the book, remotely. The material descriptions speak directly to precarious research ecologies, where for many of us, reading a catalogue entry is as close as we will get to the thing. Whether that's due to disability, sickness, proximity, wherewithal, time or feeling comfortable in the kinds of spaces, often institutional, these publications circulate. The material descriptions animate the weight, temperature, texture and life of the thing. It's force. For another item, Noelle Griffiths’ Intimate land, Charlotte writes, ‘Pages feel like fine grained watercolour paper, & will warm to body temperature when held.’ This writing is bodily.
Writing that does the picking up for and with you. Touching by proxy through languaging. Access as material. These material descriptions act as poetic entry points. I've been thinking about access adjustments as art practice, following artists’ Carolyn Lazard,Footnote 17 Bella Milroy,Footnote 18 Bojana Coklyat and Finnegan Shannon'sFootnote 19 vital work. An image description of a picture makes visual content accessible to people who are blind, live with low vision or have cognitive disabilities. Alt text might also kick in with an unstable internet connection. Like image descriptions, Charlotte's material descriptions offer another way in. Cinenova's ongoing public programme, The work we share, invites artists and writers to respond to archival films from the collection that have been digitised and captioned by Collective Text. This is what the stuff of archiving is–sharing work, making it accessible.
The sharp edges of the cut-outs being softened by handling speaks to the ecologies of archives, split and pulled between preservation and access. Where access is more urgent within a climate of austerity where libraries and archives are at risk of being closed, or opening hours slashed, due to being underutilised.
The snatched temporality of the material descriptions feels important. Charlotte's writing occurs in dedicated but unpaid time with the materials. Volunteering, work placements and fixed term traineeships are widespread entry-level working conditions within libraries and archives. This means to gain experience in library work, one must be able to afford to study or work unpaid, or low-paid, precarious jobs. These conditions present financial barriers, gatekeeping library work as a largely white middle class profession.
Charlotte's material descriptions document hours of care, of holding, of pouring over the artists books collection. These paragraphs are included in the archive back catalogue, which is only visible to members of staff on two licenced machines. Essentially, they remain unpublished, albeit for the single description reproduced above on Anne Lydiat's DAAP record. The spreadsheet has been incorrectly formatted and chops off the material descriptions prematurely, a snag exporting from the troublesome archive catalogue. The descriptions hold their own precarity. They require editing, due to the truncation, and being fifteen years old, which demands dedicated, unpaid time for which there is no capacity. If and when these descriptions are published on the DAAP, it will be a labour of love. Significantly, Cinenova's collection is volunteer run.
Charlotte's descriptions offer multiple ways in and centre dialogue and relationality. Like watching an unboxing video online where the ‘unboxer’ narrates what is happening on screen in real time. Or a cooking show, like Julia Child making an omlette in Carolyn Lazard's A recipe for disaster,Footnote 20 she breaks an egg into the hot pan while describing breaking an egg into the hot pan. The material descriptions of the WAL Artists’ Books Collection describe what it feels like to hold the book in your hands, when you're not able to.
Queer use: A call to action
The aim of the DAAP is to share artists’ publishing broadly, therefore access is a core component. We have foregrounded access by including transcripts and audio media, hybrid workshops for both online and in-person participation, and including material descriptions of items as ways to touch or feel these objects in their absence. It's important to note that the software, while ethical in some regards, is imperfect. Bella Milroy has flagged that Wikibase has no inbuilt access features. There are no image description fields, for example. It will require care and creativity to carve out ways to insist on equitable practices going forward. Artists have engineered workarounds such as including image descriptions in the free text fields of the projects.
Another short-coming of Wikibase software is while it is open source and ostensibly free; it's made by developers, and often for developers, and isn't intuitive to use. There are a number of idiosyncrasies to understand when engaging with the platform. The step-by-step tutorials and supporting materials detail the fussiness of these self-archiving tools.
DAAP is developing as a critical response to ‘extractive relations of digital neo-colonialisms, as well as historical colonialisms.’Footnote 21 As a project advocating for ethical practices, it is imperative to stress that ethical cataloguing for libraries and archives extends to joining the boycott and divestment from companies complicit with Israel's ongoing genocidal razing of Palestine. Librarians & Archivists with Palestine highlight that many prevalent library systems globally are invested in occupation and Apartheid.Footnote 22 As library and archive workers it is our responsibility to map the tools we work with towards ethical practices. Our struggles are connected.
The materials I've drawn on have impressed their desires and demands upon the database itself, melding it to their purposes. Jasleen Kaur finds a home for a PDF, where a catalogue record often points to something, somewhere else; here, the record becomes the thing, the place to find your recipes. I think of Sara Ahmed's ‘queer use’; pigeons nesting in a post-box with a post-it note stuck to the box reading ‘Birds Nesting. Please do not use.’ Ahmed gestures towards things that are in use despite their design. Where metadata has colonial, administrative legacies, we shape it to our own ends, relationally. Each record expands what a catalogue can do and shares artists’ publishing in new wild ways. While the Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing takes up the call to build something new, these innovative artists’ strategies can be used widely to trouble the infrastructures library workers have inherited, to expand the intended use of the thorny software available.Footnote 23
