CHAIR: Dominique Trudel (Audencia Business School)

Zoom: https://uqam.zoom.us/s/89746760061  

Speakers:

Rebecca Ohene-Asah

Revisiting Osofo Dadzie: Egalitarian Archival Practices and Access to a Nation’s Most Cherished Television Content in Ghana

A 1985 fire outbreak at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation’s audio-visual archives succeeded in robbing the nation of key television contents including Osofo Dadzie television drama series which aired nationally from the early 1970’s to the mid 1980’s. At its peak, Osofo Dadzie defined popular culture and captured the attention of audiences in Ghana and beyond. Regardless, the show is currently a faint memory to current television audiences and for those who saw it, a sentimental memory they wish to see again. Relying strongly on a conscious collection strategy where audiences, crew and cast of the show donated personal copies on video formats, this study examines the contents of what is collected supported by interviews where crew, cast and audiences memorialize their experiences. We ride on key concepts of heritage to examine storage and collection practices of the state broadcaster, and private collectors through whose actions current audiences may have a chance to glimpse Osofo Dadzie. I argue that egalitarian archival practices led by audiences could drive the preservation and access to important audio-visual content such as Osofo Dadzie television drama.

Najat Alsheridah

Media Archives in the Context of Decolonization: The Destruction and Recovery of Film Archives in Kuwait

The Kuwaiti film industry is one that has a long and distinguished history. However, much of the country’s film archives were destroyed in the 1990 Iraqi invasion and a significant number of historical materials were destroyed. Consequently, Kuwaiti researchers have had to piece together the nations contributions to the film industry in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from fragmented and incomplete archives. It is important to understand how periods of conflict and colonialization have limited the legacy of Kuwaiti filmmakers contributions to film and cinema in the MENA region. I argue that archival methods can be used to examine the remanets of the partially destroyed archives and recognize the distinguished history of Kuwaiti filmmaking and cinematic exhibition. This presentation brings together the remaining archival materials to tell the story of how the discovery of oil, subsequent periods of colonialization and conflict, and ongoing media regulation have shaped Kuwait’s contributions to film and cinema in the MENA region. Throughout this discussion of history, methodological challenges associated with researching archives in post-colonial periods are addressed and the first-hand experiences of the researcher are shared to explore how cultural memory is constrained by the loss of a nation’s archives.

Magdalena Heruday-Kiełczewska

Archives of help. How the war in Ukraine gave a boost for the archival project

At the beginning of March 2022 I started to be the coordinator of the electronic archives under the title “Archives of help”. This project is managed at the University Adam Mickiewicz in Poznań. After the Russian attack on Ukraine, Polish society began to organize material aid and showed its solidarity for those who stayed in Ukraine and those who came to Poland. There were many initiatives, such as transports with humanitarian supplies, which left their mark on the Internet. Knowing how the internet works, I realized that after a while all this information would be hard to find. It seemed important to me to keep these traces. I decided to create “The Archives of help” at the University in Poznań, where I work. The project aims to collect photographs, screenshots of web pages (university website, university Facebook page) that relate to the involvement of students, PhD students, professors, doctors and other employees as librarians, in favor of Ukrainians. I also collect messages from university authorities or reports made by the people involved. Sources are electronic only. I hope they will testify to the involvement of the academic society against aggression in Ukraine and perhaps they will be useful for those who are going to deal with research on Poland's reaction to the recent events in the western Europe.

This bilingual panel brings together three papers questioning the future of archives in difficult contexts, marked by the urgency to "make" or "save" the archive. In this sense, they offer new perspectives on the processes through which archives are constituted, on the complex articulation between the constitution of archives and those of nations, and on some of the most important threats to archives, whether war or fire. In their own way and in different national contexts,
each of these presentations question the paradoxical temporalities specific to the archive, constantly torn between the temps long of conservation and the irruption of the event. It is in this temporal constellation, and in the singular contexts – geographical, institutional, technological – through which it is embodied, that the challenges of the archives of the future are posed, which will be approached both in their conceptual and prospective dimensions as well as in a practical
manner.