The Arab Archive: Mediated Memories and Digital Flows

Della Ratta, D., Dickinson, K. and Haugbolle, S. (Eds.) (2020) The Arab Archive: Mediated Memories and Digital Flows. Series: Theory on demand. Institute of Network Cultures: Amsterdam. ISBN 9789492302564

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Abstract

As the revolutions across the Arab world that came to a head in 2011 devolved into civil war and military coup, representation and history acquired a renewed and contested urgency. The capacities of the internet have enabled sharing and archiving in an unprecedented fashion. Yet, at the same time, these facilities institute a globally dispersed reinforcement and recalibration of power, turning memory and knowledge into commodified and copyrighted goods. In The Arab Archive: Mediated Memories and Digital Flows, activists, artists, filmmakers, producers, and scholars examine which images of struggle have been created, bought, sold, repurposed, denounced, and expunged. As a whole, these cultural productions constitute an archive whose formats are as diverse as digital repositories looked after by activists, found footage art documentaries, Facebook archive pages, art exhibits, doctoral research projects, and ‘controversial’ or ‘violent’ protest videos that are abruptly removed from YouTube at the click of a mouse by sub-contracted employees thousands of kilometers from where they were uploaded. The Arab Archive investigates the local, regional, and international forces that determine what materials, and therefore which pasts, we can access and remember, and, conversely, which pasts get erased and forgotten.

Item Type:Edited Books
Status:Published
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Dickinson, Dr Kay
Authors:
College/School:College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts
Publisher:Institute of Network Cultures
ISBN:9789492302564
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2020 The Authors
Publisher Policy:Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

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