Disappearance

Two days of scheduled talks by our invited speakers, including a tour of the Web Archive at the Royal Danish Library - Netarkivet.

Confirmed Speakers

Limited seating. Please sign up with Katie MacKinnon by 1 December 2024.

Description

The materiality of digital data and infrastructures presents profound conceptual and practical questions and challenges for memory and knowledge politics. These challenges relate to classification (what constitutes a memory artefact), materiality (what infrastructures are necessary to collect and preserve digital material), access (how institutions and patrons can gather material from algorithmic and privatized platforms) and interfaces (how professionals and users can visually access, understand and navigate collections meaningfully). As the scope of what can be preserved expands, so does our understanding of what can be lost, raising questions about the cultures, politics and ethics of data disappearance.

This two-day workshop on DISAPPEARANCE investigates these tensions by bringing together invited experts to explore the politics of data through the lenses of disappearance (and recovery). We aim to examine the sociotechnical dynamics of disappearance across various institutions, actors, and political events – ranging from the mundane to the extraordinary.

Guiding Questions

  • How do digital infrastructures shape experiences of data disappearance, and what are the political and ethical implications of such loss?
  • How are different understandings of disappearance generated – through sensory, statistical, mechanical, or political means?
  • What does disappearance produce, provoke, or necessitate?
  • When does disappearance call for reconstruction, emulation, or performance, and when does it demand concealment, covering up, or forgetting?

Related Keywords

obsolescence, legacy, perception, uncertainty, forgetting, leaking, censoring, moderating, representation, extinction, drifting, rotting, afterlives