Bazin, André, and Hugh Gray. “The Ontology of the Photographic Image.” Film Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 4, University of California Press, 1960, pp. 4–9, https://doi.org/10.2307/1210183.
This essay introduces the concept of the Mummy Complex to describe the human intrinsic need to preserve their corporeal existence as a defense against the death and the passage of time. Bazin states that paintings and sculptures were primordially made for the purpose of preserving life through representing life. This concept serves as a base stone for my study of preservation as a basic psychological need. (Psychology)
author, et al. “A Study of Hoarding Behavior and Attachment to Material Possessions.” Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 13, no. 1, Jan. 2010, pp. 8–23. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1108/13522751011013945.
This essay is a study of people's mental behavior of collecting and hoarding objects, including a video-ethnography of eight individuals who consider themselves as hoarders. It also specifies the difference between functional hoarders, non-functional hoarders and collectors, which helps me get a closer look at the human psychology of collecting as a method of preservation. (Psychology)
Picard, Andréa. “Camille Henrot: A Hunter-Gatherer during a Time of Collective ‘Grosse Fatigue.’” Cinema Scope, vol. 56, 2013, pp. 63–66.
This article is an analysis on Camille Henrot's short film "Grosse Fatigue", including an interview with the artist discussing her research practice and conceptual reference behind her project. The project partakes in the desire for totalizing cosmological knowledge in the state of saturation and even exhaustion. Henrot wanted to approach this subject by criticizing this compulsion, without removing its beauty. A point she made that particularly inspires me is that human preservation and conservation are paradoxically acts of destruction, as Henrot mentions, our collection of knowledge and other species indeed anticipate our own destruction. Moreover, collecting as a human intrinsic compulsion uncovers our fetish towards origin and authenticity.(Anthropology)
Lubar, Steven D, et al. “History from Things : Essays on Material Culture”. Washington D.C. ; London, Smithsonian Institution, 1995.
The author speaks of objects in three ways — power, continuity of self and relationships. He mentions in the chapter “Why we need things” that objects or tools that humans produce does not arise out of merely a need. There are many factors which cause this — other than need, it also a want, desire, media, or advertisements, marketing, profits, artificial economy, artificial needs, and so on, which points out the role of capitalism and consumerism in shaping our collection and ownership of objects. (Material culture)
Dragan Espenschied, “The Storage is You”, March 2015
This essay presents the difficulty of digital preservation and writing a history of the current networked times. It reminds me of the concept of the digital dark age, which describes a lack of historical information in the digital age. Outdated file formats, software, or hardware that becomes corrupt, scarce, or inaccessible as technologies evolve and data decay. I would like to address this issue in my project as a challenge of preserving our present. (Cultural property/archive)
This article introduces the natural process of decay in the field of biophilosophy as the transitory state in which “life becomes non-life, an other-than-life, a becoming-nonliving.” In this sense, decay is a force of resistance and decomposition against human power especially in this anthropocentrism and mono-accelerationist capitalist world. The discussion on decay offers an alternative perspective to my project, for it is the counter power to the human obsession of preserving everything on the earth. (Anthropology)
Pamuk, Orhan, “Museum of Innocence” and “Collectors,” Museum of Innocence”, (New York: Random House, 2009), pp. 494-511.
Pamluk Orhan, in Museum of Innocence explores both the cultural necessity of, and responsibility to, preserve objects, and what legitimizes an object, especially what’s seen as a “personal” or biographical one. Orhan articulates his perception of the difference between a hoarder and a collector-- to collect is to legitimize a hoarder’s cache. Orhan's idea also shifts my notion towards a museum artifact. In his visits to museums that have a specialty in their collections, most of which appears to be personal belongings. So I wonder what are the causes that shift a personal possession into a museum collection? How do we draw a line in between? Or is it even necessary to do so? (Anthropology&Literature)
Bastian, Jeannette A., and Andrew Flinn. Community Archives, Community Spaces : Heritage, Memory and Identity. Facet Publishing, 2020. EBSCOhost, search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.pratt.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat06956a&AN=prt.b1251128&site=eds-live&scope=site.
This book traces the trajectory of the community archives movement, expanding the definition of community archives to include sites such as historical societies, social movement organisations and community centres. It also explores new definitions of what community archives might encompass, particularly in relation to disciplines outside the archives. Over ten years have passed since the first volume of Community Archives, and inspired by continued research as well as by the formal recognition of community archives in the UK, the community archives movement has become an important area of research, recognition and appreciation by archivists, archival scholars and others worldwide. Increasingly the subject of papers and conferences, community archives are now seen as being in the vanguard of social concerns, markers of community-based activism, a participatory approach exemplifying the on-going evolution of 'professional' archival (and heritage) practice and integral to the ability of people to articulate and assert their identity. Community Archives, Community Spaces reflects the latest research and includes practical case studies on the challenges of building and sustaining community archives. This new book will appeal to practitioners, researchers, and academics in the archives and records community as well as to historians and other scholars concerned with community building and social issues.
Foster, Hal. “An Archival Impulse.” October, vol. 110, The MIT Press, 2004, pp. 3–22, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3397555.
As pointed out by Hal Foster in his seminal essay "An Archival Impulse," artists since the 1970s have attempted to recuperate archive as a volatile process imbued with multi-layered temporalities, subjectivities, and enactments.
Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics,” Duke University Press Books (2019).
. Achille Mbembe ‘s concept of necropower and “death world” claims that death is derived from an excess of life as opposed to a lack of life. This means that when too many beings exist in conditions that maximize their suffering, it allows for them to constantly be in a state moving towards their deaths. Mbembe calls these the “State of exception”, and these states exist in what he calls “Death worlds” , which is a place in which death is very much cultivated.