CEMPER – Centre for Music and Performing Arts Heritage in Flanders, Belgium

Invites you to a new webinar series:

To Imagine Otherwise: Future Archives

The digital transformation of our society has had an enormous impact on the nature and form of information. Art, too, is increasingly taking on non-tangible forms. The preservation of art is a major challenge for art and heritage organizations today. Questions arise around technological, practical and ethical issues, such as:

• What do we preserve?
• How do we determine what should be preserved?
• How do we preserve?
• How can we decide today what is important for the future?
• What about our blind spots? Do we construct the past from a specific frame of mind? Do we unconsciously engage in canon formation?
• Do we have a responsibility to portray gender and diversity?
• What about participation?
• How do we relate to governments and the public?
• And in all this: how do we justify our choices?

In a series of four webinars, spread over the autumn of 2021 and the spring of 2022, four international leading experts will talk about the archive of the future. After each lecture there will be plenty of time to ask questions and share experiences. Each lecture stands alone. You choose which and how many lectures to attend.

The moderators are Saskia Scheltjens, head of Research Services department of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and her colleague Maarten Heerlien, head of Collection Information & Archives at the Research Services department.

This series is intended for anyone in cultural heritage for whom managing and documenting (art) heritage is a challenge and an assignment. In addition, everyone who is interested in this theme is also welcome.

The language is English. Participation is free of charge.

Each webinar focuses on a specific theme.

We kick off on Tuesday, December 7, 2021, 3:00 — 4:30 p.m. CET | ​“What is the role of the archivist in times of (online) participation?” With: Alexandra Eveleigh, Collections Information Manager at Wellcome Collection in London.

Register for free for the webinar on December 7 at this link.

The second webinar is on Friday, February 11, 2022, 3:00 — 4:30 pm CET | ​“The Urgency of Feminist Standpoint Appraisal” by Michelle Caswell, Associate Professor of Archival Studies, Department of Information Studies at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

Register for free for the webinar on February 11 at this link.

The webinars in the spring of 2022 will address the topics of ​“representativeness” and ​“digital preservation”. More information follows soon.

Read more about CEMPER here.