Accessing and Connecting with Archives

Visiting archives and museums can be an intimidating experience. The first step is locating the archive/museum. With the advent of the Internet, locating their address is much easier. However, navigating through the process of getting access to actual collections is a little trickier.

Earlier in the year, I went inside the New York Public Library (NYPL) to take a look at their archival collection. The building itself is a glamorous building, but finding the location of the archives was a bit more complicated. I was following a trail of directions that lead me from one room to register for a reading pass, then another to get a library card, and finally to a locked glass door. Although the employees were friendly, navigating through the large spaces to find the employees seemed daunting. As with most repositories, the collections sit behind a locked glass door, where people must be buzzed in for entry. While I understand that this if for the safety of collections, I wonder if all of it is necessary. I took the microfilm to the microfilm reader room and leafed through the letters. Despite some of these letters being personal letters, there was something very impersonal about the process of reading these letters on microfilm.

My experience at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago (CAMOC), the only Chinese American museum of the Midwest, was a vast difference. I nearly missed the building due to the construction at the front of the building, but once inside, the people were friendly and welcoming. A woman, who worked at the museum, walked around with me and highlighted some of the exhibits. Each photograph, item, or display was closely tied to her own family. As I looked at images from the late 19th century to mid 20th century, she would say, “that’s my husband’s father’s second brother’s family” or “that’s my sister-in-law.” In the upstairs exhibit, “Great Wall to the Great Lakes: Chinese Immigration to the Midwest,” the wall was filled with personal stories of family immigration. Each person had what looked like a self-written statement, and a few photos to display. The simple, personal stories made me feel as if I was somehow connected to these people, whom I had never met.

I know that there are great differences between a museum and an archive, but is there a way to create the same welcoming atmosphere? Can we cater an archive for a community, as opposed to for just researchers? If we want to build community archives, how should the building look/feel? How do we create a comfortable, open space, even if we have to build a locked glass door? How do we display the collections and exhibits so that people can feel a connection to them?

Link:
Chinese American Museum of Chicago (CAMOC)
http://www.ccamuseum.org/

“Where is the ‘heart’ of Asian America,” and what does it look like?

As part of the A/P/A Institute staff, I had the opportunity to travel to Chicago last week for the Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS) Conference. The conference title this year was “Where is the ‘Heart’ of Asian America?” As I attended the panels and talked to different people about archives, I found myself wondering where and how this “heart” existed.

In a panel discussing Vincent Chin’s death, one of my personal conference highlights, I sat and listened to Scott Kurashige, Frank Wu, Renee Tajima-Pena, and Grace Lee Boggs reflect on the changes in Asian/Pacific America after the killing of Vincent Chin. Twenty-five years after his death, I still wonder how his death exists with the memory of Asian/Pacific America. How do we capture the anger, the sadness, and the confusion of that time? In many ways, the film, Who Killed Vincent Chin? (directed by Renee Tajima-Pena and Christine Choy), serves as an archive of the incident. The documentary documents the incident, the court case, and the activism surrounding the event, but it cannot and does not document everything. Is this enough? In the conversation I had with Susana the week before, she had mentioned that it’s not necessary to capture everything. She said that if we capture just one thing, sometimes it triggers other sense. (Just as the sound of the ocean will sometimes trigger the smell of it.) In using this rationalization, does the film capture enough to trigger our other senses? The truth of the film triggers our own anger, sadness, and confusion to understand the events surrounding Vincent Chin’s death, even if we did not know about Vincent Chin before watching it.

Where does this “archive” belong? I think the greatest part of this film as an “archive” is its accessibility. For preservation issues, the original belongs in a locked vault somewhere. However there are many accessible copies of the film, which serve to carry on the messages of the film (even 25 years after the events).

Twenty five years later, I am still affected by this film. Twenty five years later, I still relate to the frustration the community felt when the two men who killed Vincent Chin did not receive proper punishment for their crimes. Twenty five years later, crimes like this still happen and still slip through the legal system. I see parallels in the verdict for those responsible for Sean Bell’s death. The film still captures a truth that I can relate to a quarter of a century later.

I hope to use this “archive” to go “beyond abstract community racial terms” (Grace Lee Boggs). This archive reminds me of the importance and power of community organizing, and “taking responsibilities for change so that other people can live in this country” (Grace Lee Boggs).

If these Blogs could talk…

“I just think that that act of making something exist in the world or ensuring that it still exists in the world, um, is really important. Really, REALLY important.”

Last Monday, April 7, 2008, I sat down with Susana Lei’ataua, A/P/A’s Artist-in-Residence for 2007-2008. The idea for this blog came from Susana’s blog with updates on the performance that she has been working on, “Breaking the Surface.”

During her kick-off event, Susana had talked about finding a recording of her grandmother’s voice at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts archive. Susana did not set out to find her grandmother, but somehow recognized the familiarity of the voice when listening to one of the records. She looked down on the list of names and found her grandmother’s name on the list. The first time I heard that story, I was struck by how personal her exploration of the archives was. My own journey into exploring archives has been discovering the six degrees of separation and how our lives as we know it know, are tied to so many other people.

“And I figure that, you know, that’s where the archiving thing comes in. Is that… That these things were left for me, whether the person recording my grandmother in the early seventies on some, you know, yacht or whatever they were doing in the Pacific from California. Whether they knew it or not, their efforts have been instrumental in me living my life living my life the way I’m living it now. And I would like to be able to do that for other people…”

Since speaking with Susana, I’ve also wondered about what archives I will leave behind. I’ve always been much more interested in hearing other people’s stories than telling my own. My interest is not so much as what I leave behind, but about making people’s stories accessible to lots of other people. And part of making theses stories accessible is not only having a physical place to store them, but also about interpreting and translating these stories so that they are understood.

“The struggle is to really get to… get to the truth of something. Get to the truth of what it is I want to be sharing… giving. And to really be vigilant about that”

While Susana struggles to find the truth of her performances, I am also struggling as an interpreter and translator of these stories. The physical archives get taken out of their original order, moved around, placed into folders named by archivists, and written up in a “finding aid.” While most archivists believe that they do this “objectively,” I question whether that objectivity exists. In processing the Asian Women United (AWU) Records at Tamiment Library, I discovered how much archivists actually reinterpret the organizations as they process a collection. My work on the collection was to, essentially, take the bits and pieces collected by various members of the organization and put them all back together into folders by subject name.

“Right now, whatever work we’re making, however we’re doing it, we cannot underestimate how far it will be heard”

Researchers who use the collection, whether they know it or not, will be influenced by my work. They will see the neatly organized folders of items I thought were important to put together. And whether they realize it or not, they will also be influenced by my desire to share women’s stories. Although there were many collections to choose from, I chose this particular collection because I love learning more about women’s work and women’s activism. And perhaps even more than learning about them, I love sharing these stories. And my version of sharing is by creating a finding aid that will be put online to making this collection accessible and visible.

“And that, you know, that was another defining moment because it was that realization that actually what you’re from is fast receding and you are here and you’re that person whether other people identify you as being representative of that or from that is really you cannot get too hung up on that because you are it… whether they want to allow you to be it or not. And I say that because you know I stand and there’s my Samoan name and then I arrive. And people… ‘You don’t look Samoan, you don’t sound Samoan, *gasp* you don’t speak Samoan. You know, it’s just all too much… for all the expectations. But none of that can alter the fact that that is my grandmother. Right, and I feel that if that’s my story, then for every other human being, we have these stories. And they exist in whatever way they exist. But we do embody something. Like I think that we are actually archives ourselves. We’re an archive… and how we choose to express that. And how we choose to, umm, I think qualify that more than quantify that. But how we choose to really share that”

To read Susana’s blog, Buffa, with updates on the progress of her work, go to:
http://www.apa.nyu.edu/AIR/2007/susana/buffa/

A project 7 years in the making…

What separates a bunch of trash from actual useful items that belong a repository? Who decides what is important and what is not important? What happens when a grassroots organization turned non-profit organization wants to throw out thirty years of history due to the lack of space?

Back in 2001, when Asian CineVision (ACV) was relocating to a new location, they faced the possibility of throwing away their old files that were taking up much needed space. As in any New York City office, space is limited, so holding on to thirty years of archives seems a bit ridiculous at times. However, A/P/A heard about the move and was able to help store part of the archives that ACV was holding on to. A/P/A had seen the value of these files and tapes that had documented this media arts organization that was trying to work with the community to allow them access to the media and give them the power to represent themselves. But what would have happened if A/P/A did not hear about this move? If A/P/A had not understood the value of the items in the boxes, would all this history be lost?

I could sit here all day and try to tell people all that ACV does and has done, but it is nothing in comparison to being able to look at the items themselves. The massive physical presence of the documents, films, tapes, and other items show how much physical space old files can take after an organization has kept files for thirty years.

At the end of January of this year, 2008, the ACV collection finally started to come into Tamiment Library at New York University. It took 7 years for A/P/A, ACV, and Tamiment to begin the physical move of the boxes into Tamiment’s possession. Since it is a large collection, enough to fill an entire room in an offsite storage, the collection has been coming in 25-boxes at a time. The collection is truly vast and amazing. Not only did ACV document the many film festivals they held, including their annual Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF), but they were also collecting events that were going on during that time. ACV has a collection of other film festival catalogues and random collections of articles about Asian Americans in the United States.

It makes me wonder what happens when no one else sees the value of these collections, and they end up in the dumpster. Is there a way to save collections before the end up in the dumpster? Whose job will it be to educate people on the importance of their own work and the importance of documenting their own existence? A/P/A has been trying to play this role, but it only stretches so far. We save as many collections that we hear about as possible, but what about the other collections? How will I be able to save other collections from being trashed? How will you? Do you even care to save them?

Some highlights from the first shipment are:
• Film Festival Catalogues from Hawaii, Singapore, Cairo, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
• A box labeled “Bill Gee,” a previous Director of ACV, with photo prints, notes, and other items that give a look at the life of a director of ACV.
• And the massive volume of files on the different film festivals that ACV put together, including AAIFF, Videoscape, the Children’s Film Series, Korean Film Series, Hong Kong Film Series, and many others.
• CCTV Production workshop notes. ACV had the first Chinese language programming in the United States, under the station name Chinese Community Television (CCTV). Every year the CCTV crew, and other professionals held a workshop to teach the community members how to shoot and edit their own videos.

For more information on Asian CineVision, visit:
http://asiancinevision.org/aboutus.html

For more information on accessing the collection at Tamiment, visit:
http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/tam/usingtam.html

Exhibiting Archives: The Politics of Archives

Today, March 10, 2008 at 6pm, A/P/A had the official opening of the Kip Fulbeck: Part Asian, 100% Hapa exhibit. The 80 portraits each have a photograph of an individual and, in their own words and their own handwriting, their answer to “What am I?”.

The exhibit itself serves as an archive of identity. Kip spent three years collecting 1,100 portraits, and his book and the exhibit are just a small fraction of the actual portraits collected. As Kip says, “This project isn’t about race. It’s about identity. I didn’t want to do a project about race because fitting into other people’s concepts and definitions of race—or more accurately not fitting in—is what started this whole ball rolling in the first place. I wanted to do a project about who we are and what we are—in our own words, with our own definitions.

However, the exhibit itself does not document the amount of work behind the exhibit. Where do the documents of going out and searching for these 1,100 individuals exist? How did Kip select the 80 portraits to display in the exhibit? And beyond Kip’s work, I wonder how the work of the other organizations involved in the exhibit were documented. Is someone saving the email exchanges between the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) and Kip to get the exhibit running? Or how about the countless emails and phone conversations that were exchanged between JANM and A/P/A to bring the exhibit here? Or the email exchanges to put together a gallery opening? Who is collecting these “documents”? What about the work behind the exhibit that has no physical document? There are no photos that document the A/P/A staff that risked their lives to put up the 12-panel sampling in the Kimmel windows. There are no photos of the two installers putting up the exhibit at A/P/A. There were no photos taken of our A/P/A staff when she came in early and stayed late at night to make sure the installers had everything they needed. There are no photos of the security guards who came in overnight to make sure the floor, including the portraits were safe.

These are all questions that play out in the politics of archives.

* Is it important to document this process?
* Who is responsible for documenting this process?
* What does documenting all of this mean?
* What is “documented” and what is left “undocumented”?
* How do you provide enough information, without providing too much information?
* What kind of archive does this belong in? An art archive? A labor archive? An Asian American archive? A hapa archive?
* How will others know/remember this “work”?

One of my favorites:

http://www.seaweedproductions.com/i/hapa/samples/websample7.jpg

(from Kip Fulbeck’s website samples)

About the exhibit:

http://www.janm.org/exhibits/kipfulbeck/home

About the project:

http://www.seaweedproductions.com/hapa/

To purchase the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Part-Asian-100%25-Hapa-Fulbeck/dp/0811849597

“Asian/Pacific Americans” and “Archives”

“Archives.” I am starting to see this word more and more. Gmail has its own “archive” button that takes the selected messages out of your inbox and into a different location. Angryasianman.com has his own “angry archive.” The Internet archive has a “Wayback machine” that lets you look at different websites at different times. My voicemail also informs me that if I save messages, it will save them in “the archive” for 14 days. So what exactly is an archive? And how does that relate to Asian/Pacific Americans (A/PAs)? And how does it relate to working for the A/P/A Institute at NYU?

The first images that come to mind when I think of archives are dusty rooms filled with spider webs and old boxes. That’s not exactly an inviting image. So what then is it about an archive that appeals to me?

An archive, according to Merriam-Webster.com, is “a place in which public records or historical documents are preserved,” or “a repository or collection especially of information” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/archive). That definition sounds as appealing as that dusty old room.

To me, an archive is a space where a community can share memories. Unlike private collections, an archive must exist in the public with open access. This archive “documents” the past, which shapes the way we see the world today, and how we act to change the future. An archive becomes crucial for documenting A/PAs. Much of the history of A/PAs has been ignored in standard K-12 history textbooks. Outside of the Chinese railroad workers, the history of A/PAs has been left out. The archives serve as a public forum where A/PAs can be included as part of the fabric of American history along with other communities.

My work as the Graduate Assistant in Archives for A/P/A is to facilitate the process of getting community members to understand the importance of their own personal collections to turn them into public archives and to help repositories understand the significance of each of these collections.