Koby Rogers Hall and Frédéric Biron Carmel’s
[p(re)]occupations: The “Living” archives of Occupy Montreal

This summer, the [p(re)]occupations: The “Living” archives of Occupy Montreal research residency at Centre des arts actuels Skol will create a people’s history…of sorts. Marked by the spontaneous, non-hierarchical self-organising that distinguished last falls’ Occupy movement, residents Koby Rogers Hall and Frédéric Biron Carmel are applying that same spirit to the creation of a living record of the movement.

Their first steps were to transform the Skol environment into a place conducive to exchange. Articles, scrawled testimonials and brainstorms and are tacked to the walls. A rough diagram of the Victoria Square encampment faces two perpendicular sofa chairs. From lengths of string stretched mid air between a wall and a post hang different sized notes. A row of chairs nearby awaits an ad-hoc presentation. At a round table, amidst a pile of pens, pencils and blank paper, I sit with the artists to conduct interview that ends, quite literally, in a round-table discussion. Our conversation touches on power, resistance, cyber networks, information, people’s histories, accessibility and ephemerality.

The collaborative aspects of community art, as well as the emancipatory characteristic of (well done) social documentary emerge as the foundations upon which the project aims to build a participatory, bottom- up archive. Hopefully, by the time Koby and Fred present the work in October, the strategies of the living archive will have developed sufficiently to provide a challenge the systemic biases of dominant archiving institutions.

[original post by Yaniya Lee]

In a small, light filled room at the back of Centre des arts actuels Skol, summer residents Charles-Antoine Blais Métivier and Serge-Olivier Rondeau are exploring the ever expanding mass of photographs on Facebook, where over 300 million new photos are posted everyday. For the 8 week duration of their research project, After Faceb00k, they have access to the centre’s space, resources and networks.

Like documentary photographers of the past, Charles-Antoine and Serge-Olivier are searching for images, but only within the strange, virtual landscape of Facebook photos, where people share the most intimate and banal moments freely. As the pair categorizes and takes stock of their findings, they also think through the many implications of this giant, shifting archive. What kind of platform is Facebook, anyway?  Although it is privately owned, and all uploaded images can be used by the corporation, we treat it as though it was our own, public commons.

Through their sifting, they are discovering surprising amounts of repetition in the content of photos posted. Could it be that we are all just terrible, unoriginal photographers? If Facebook photos were one day looked at as an archive of how we see ourselves, what would they say about us as a culture?

While they aren’t coming up with any definite answers or conclusions, Charles-Antoine and Serge-Olivier’s investigation raises important questions about a topic whose insidious significance grows greater everyday.

[original post by Yaniya Lee]