Digitality and Creative Repurposing: Changing Values of Digital Archives
- Submitting institution
-
University of Sunderland
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 1451
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- -
- Brief description of type
- Programme of research
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2020
- URL
-
http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/13242/
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- This collaborative research project investigates how the online presence of digital archives, institutional and personal, and the possibilities for online interactivity and repurposing of content have introduced new methodologies and networks for artists and audiences to critically examine differing notions of identity.
Based on her research around the interface of digital photography and the Internet, Moschovi argues that it is the malleability and distributability of the ‘networked’, digital image that enables Southeast Asian artists Agan Harahap, Dow Wasiksiri and Yee I-Lann to take ownership of the representation of their histories and identity.
The chapter “Cultural Antinomies, Creative Complicities” explores how Harahap uses appropriation of archival/social media imagery to merge Indonesia’s colonial past with the postcolonial present and challenge stereotypes around class, gender, religion, nationess, and westernization. By disseminating his digitally repurposed photographs via online social media platforms, beyond the usual gallery contexts, and capitalizing on Indonesia being one of the largest social media markets in the world, Harahap, posits Moschovi, not only successfully engages wider audiences in conversations about national identity. He also alerts users to publicity and social media fictions and the deceptive veracity of digital imaging as evidence that may have a lasting impact on his over 100,000 Instagram followers.
Originally disseminated internationally as a research paper in academic fora (Europeana/Lieven Gevaert Centre for Photography, 2015 and ASEAS UK/SOAS, 2016), the journal article “Contesting Colonial (Hi)histories” situates this creative repurposing in wider developments in art, photography and media culture in Southeast Asia. The analysis focuses on how Harahap, Wasiksiri, and I-Lann digitally manipulate colonial archival material to reclaim colonial (hi)stories while proposing a democratic, open-ended postcolonial archive. Moschovi argues that the move from the archival photograph to the digitally manipulated picture further questions the function, truth value and power of the archive as a material entity and institution.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -