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ATLas Chronicles. Designing and Valorising an Italian Archive of Past Local TV Channels
No full textEstablishing a first, pilot inventory of privately-owned local TV channels operating in Italy between 1976 and 1990 is the core aim of the ATLas – Atlas of Local Televisions project, a nationally-funded research currently encompassing four Italian universities, with the intent of driving attention on an often neglected area of both academic investigation and archival practice. The research focuses on a sample of five networks which operated in contrast to the national public service monopoly, with vibrant creative innovations and a distinct connection with territories and local economies. After a scientific overview of the project, this contribution will delve into the methodological challenges underlying the design of an open-access repository that hosts a selection of audiovisual fragments drawn from the channels’ native archives, now difficult or impossible to access, or archived following random or commercial criteria. Particular attention is paid to the process of inventory, indexing and generating metadata of the various collected sources, in an effort to maintain a balance between creative and historiographical instances, and to allow the development of dedicated digital exhibitions. With accounts referring to three case studies (Antenna 3, Sardegna 1, and TeleSanterno), the article shares and discusses some lessons learnt, as well as the main struggles (and possible biases) encountered through the analysis, highlighting the memorial and testimonial value of this area of media history
Lockerbie Pan Am 103 – Tracking the Evolving Re-Use of Archive Broadcast News
No full textThis article will examine the changing ways in which the original broadcast news footage of the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 has been re-used. The article reflects on evolving types of usage from the immediacy of contemporaneous news coverage through several other stages: as evidence in investigative current affairs documentary films; as documentary history presenting the contexts of this event; in creative memorials commemorating the lives of the victims; as witness testimony recording the reflections in hindsight of those who experienced the disaster; and most recently in scripted dramatisations. The article explores how the re-use of this news footage can be viewed within the conceptual framework of the creative practice of ‘archiveology’ (Russell, 2018) and argues that this archival re-use has built up many interconnected layers of collective memory about what happened over Lockerbie that night
Shellac in Visual and Sonic Culture: Unsettled Matter
No full textBook review of: Elodie A. Roy, Shellac in Visual and Sonic Culture: Unsettled Matter (Amsterdam University Press, 2023), 240 pp., ISBN 9789463729543
Exiled Airwaves: The Greek Communist Radio Station Voice of Truth Based in Bucharest Addressing the Gastarbeiter in West Germany, 1960–1968
No full textBy studying more local, small-scale radio stations with transnational reach, such as “Voice of Truth,” media history scholarship can better understand the complexity of media landscapes during the Cold War. The production team of the exiled Greek communist radio station based in Bucharest worked to reconcile grand Marxist theories and ideological frameworks with the daily experiences of their target audience, namely Greek labour migrants in West Germany. Seeking to be at the avant-garde of informed resistance, the producers opened as many channels as possible to receive and transmit information, often in remarkable ways given their limited resources. By closely monitoring sociopolitical affairs, triangulating information, and reinforcing transnational ties, the exiled communist radio station proved to be more multivocal and less sclerotic than we might imagine
Do Sheep Dream of Electric Ruins? Encounters with Transatlantic Wireless Landscapes
No full textThis article examines the Derrigimlagh bog in Ireland as a site of infrastructural ruination and media archaeology, focusing on the remnants of the Marconi transatlantic wireless station and the broader implications of technological obsolescence. Through an interdisciplinary approach combining environmental humanities, media archaeology, and speculative documentary practices, the study considers how the bog serves as both a repository of past electromagnetic infrastructures and a terrain for imagining future cycles of extraction and decay. The presence of sheep grazing among the ruins is analysed as a material and symbolic intervention, reframing nonhuman agency within the entanglement of media, landscape, and industrial afterlives
Exiles from the Netherlands: A Rhizomatic Approach to Dutch Hip Hop History
No full textMainstream canonisation of Hip Hop history in the Netherlands has mainly focused on the country's West, and often relegates anglophone rap to a footnote in favour of Dutch-language rap. I offer an alternative reading by approaching the Netherlands' early Hip Hop history rhizomatically. I examine Hip Hop group Zombi Squad from Groningen, a province in the country's periphery, to elucidate two key characteristics of the development of the Dutch Hip Hop scene that have been underappreciated. Firstly, I show that the practice-oriented interconnectedness of the Dutch scene across country was integral to the general scene's development. Secondly, I argue that a national approach to culture obfuscates the creolizing dynamic of Dutch Hip Hop history and how this is inextricably bound with colonial history. Hip Hop as such, provides an entry point to explore how these influences manifest locally to re/present Europe in a way that adequately reflects its inhabitants
An Extraordinary Ordinary Portrait Studio in Alkmaar: The Family Photography of the Vlaanderen Sisters (1938-1972)
No full textThe Vlaanderen sisters ran a photographic portrait studio from the 1930s until 1972, as the third and last generation of an Alkmaar family business. Tonny (1901-1993) was the photographer and her sister Sophie (1905- 1995) worked as assistant. Both lived practically their entire lives right above their studio on the Oude Gracht in Alkmaar. In contrast to the studio’s conventionality, expressed in the inconspicuous style of the portraits that it produced, stands the eccentricity of its owners. This essay explores how the sisters navigated this paradox by investigating how their own social personas – which they actively tried to shape through their public appearances in the street as well in the media – related to their photographic craftswomanship, staging and processing their clients’ portraits in the studio and in the dark room. And what can we learn about the operation of a Dutch photo studio during the post-war era along the way
TrendMonitor Audiovisuele Collecties in Nederland 2024
Full text linkDe vijfde editie van de TrendMonitor Audiovisuele Collecties in Nederland biedt een actueel beeld van hoe erfgoedinstellingen omgaan met audiovisueel (AV) materiaal. De
monitor bestaat uit een online enquête, aangevuld met twee focusgroepen en één interview om de resultaten te duiden. Net als in eerdere edities (2017, 2019, 2022) zijn vergelijkbare vragen gebruikt om trends te kunnen volgen. Dit jaar is er meer aandacht geschonken aan thema’s zoals kunstmatige intelligentie en born digital materiaal door middel van aanvullende vragen en extra aandacht voor dit onderwerp bij de focusgroepen
Caring for Past Media from Below: Bottom-up Practices and Networks Supporting Obsolete Broadcast Technologies
No full textThis paper examines grassroots practices of care for obsolete broadcast technologies through the lens of Maintenance and Repair Studies and Science and Technology Studies, focusing on two case studies: the preservation of U-Matic video technology and the reappropriation of CRT displays in retrogaming communities. Through qualitative analysis, the study investigates how these practices operate across three dimensions of care – object, network, and ecosystem – revealing the interplay between material work, distributed expertise, and the broader ecosystems that support technology persistence. The analysis focuses on the heterogeneous actors operating outside formal institutions, including former users, retired professionals, and amateurs, and shows how their practices of care are not merely preservational but also generative. In doing so, the paper underscores their crucial role in preserving obsolete media, framing media persistence as a fragile yet productive achievement of care work
Tracing-at-a-Distance, or a Meaningful Level of Radioactivity
No full textThis article argues that radioisotopes – atoms with unstable nuclei which undergo decay and become detectable against less energised backgrounds – can be understood as a form of media, one that challenges the seeing-at-a-distance of the televisual with a 'tracing-at-a-distance' of radioactive decay. These energetic entities, largely released in the development and subsequent use of nuclear weapons, became indispensable tools for US ecologists during the Cold War, where tracing radioisotopes became a means to reveal biological pathways and biospheric processes with atomic precision. Thinking radioisotopes within the context of the televisual affords the opportunity to challenge the distinction between inscriptive and transmissional media, while bringing media studies into closer contact with the energy humanities and environmental history