Misplaced Commas and Cannibalistic Tendencies: Necessary Contingencies in Archival Practice

Confronted with the slippery medium of film, in the form of inaccessible 16mm, Super 8 or fuzzy VHS tapes and the limitations of time, an index that supplies more questions than answers and an archivist whose methodology demands a ring-fencing of research to geographical or temporal articulation – What will the archive give up? What will I take away with me? What will this produce? To speak of archival practices is to acknowledge the role of contingency and indeterminacy within the structuring of archives and the meaning or value placed on the archival object. This presentation will focus on my personal encounters with the archival, both specific and in principle. Key Note: Misplaced Commas and Cannibalistic Tendencies, in Symposium Reframing the Archive: The Reuse of Film and Photographic Images in Postcolonial Southeast Asia, SOAS, Londo