I began working with Constant in January 2003. Constant is: “a non-profit association, based and active in Brussels since 1997 in the fields of feminism, copywrite alternatives, and working through networks” who develop “an interest in radio, electronic music, video and database projects which move in the spaces of culture and the workplace.” I would add that Constant strives to bring people together around these fields and interests. The idea which permeates Constant is the idea of ‘openness’, in particular to diverse ways of working and to public involvement. The way I articulate this ‘openness’ is through the concept of open source, which is taken from software development and refers to software whose code is available for modification by the user. I use the term open source in reference to Constant in the sense of open code, an open form, but also open in terms of the content and participation.
Constant organizes specific events in Brussels, such as Digitales and Verbindingen/Jonctions. Digitales are cyberfeminist meeting days, and Verbindingen/Jonctions are meeting days based on a proposal of different themes and interests by Constant. These events happen annually, are temporary, and are characteristically transient in venue. Constant does not have a specific event space of their own which is open to the public on an ongoing basis. Instead, they find spaces to populate and use during events. Their day-to-day tasks, such as developing events and activities, working on the archives, and administration, are done from a working space which is shared with other individuals. The choice to work in these ways reflects flexibility and is relevant in the present cultural discourse because it puts into practice the idea of working as part of a network embedded in a particular socio-cultural context.
Constant’s activities are open to participation by the public. For example, the public can contribute and edit traces from events, which will be kept in Constant’s archives. The public can also contribute to specific projects such as webblogs, etc. Constant also has extensive archives which are published and available for the public online. These archives include sound, image, video and text files. I see the way Constant has approached these archives as an attempt to discover how one can create an open source archive, or how one can make their archive open source. Rather than being about preserving past events, I see Constant’s archives as more about a current involvement in order to open a dialogue. Their archives are an invitation for future exchanges to take place.
‘Records’, or traces, can be contributed by the public, who have the opportunity to use a minidisk recorder and a microphone and record an event. In this way Constant’s archives are part of the process or unfolding of the event, with the public taking an active role. The first work that I did with Constant was in connection with their archives. I volunteered to digitize and edit three lectures recorded during Digitales 2002, which are the annual cyberfeminist meeting days organized in part by Constant. I worked with these lectures, from transferring them from minidisks to the computer (digitizing), to editing them, and finally to putting the files in the public domain online. In this sense, I am an example of what I was speaking about earlier when I was speaking about the openness of Constant.
The involvement of the public in the gathering of traces is important not only for the content of the traces. By taking an active role in gathering traces of Constant’s activities, the public contributes to shaping the meaning of Constant itself. This collective shaping of meaning is what I mean when I say that the idea of open source permeates Constant’s activities. Additionally, since one can take away the knowledge of the technical process required to gather the traces; for example how to transfer a minidisk recording to a computer, or how to prepare something for publication, the skills one learns have the potential to be used outside of the context of Constant.
It was through working with these recordings that I had the idea to work with Constant’s archives doing a research project for Transmedia. I had already been working with digital and electronic art archives at an artist-run centre in Toronto, Canada. In that centre, I had been interested in how to effectively archive new media installations. Thus I was interested more in the content of the archive. However, with Constant I was more interested in the method of archiving, and particularly how I could think about a method of archiving that I felt was feminist, in other words a method of archiving appropriate for archiving the Digitales traces.
Digitales is several meeting days where people come together to talk about women and technology. They include conferences, workshops, forums, and art presentations. Digitales days are organized by Constant, in partnership with the ADA network. This means that the archives of Digitales do not only belong to Constant, but also to the ADA network as well. For example, Digitales days take place at Interface 3, a training centre for women using computers which is part of the ADA network. Thus the archive material belongs to Constant and Interface 3 (and the rest of the organisations in the ADA network). Previously there were no guidelines as to how the Digitales archives would be distributed between these organisations, but as of this year the decision has been made that the archives will be ‘open source’, meaning that the raw material will be digitized and made available on a server for each organisation to make their own archive out of it.
Constant has their own ‘physical’archives of Digitales (2001, 2002, 2004) which includes minidisks, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, DV tapes, texts, magazines, journals, CD’s. They also have digital archives, which means audio, video and still image files, text files, and emails. The digital archives are available to the public online, but there is no system at the present time for the public to have access the physical material.
The content of the archives of Digitales are feminist, because it is a feminist event. I also think that the way of collecting the content is feminist, because the process of collecting is open to anyone at Digitales who wants to participate. However, the method of archiving the traces, i.e.: the method of gathering the traces together, was something that I felt was open to research.
Posted by valerie at May 19, 2004 01:13 PM