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February 1, 2016 - Comments Off on Book Club No. 6

Book Club No. 6

Join us for our sixth reading and meeting of the LAAC Book Club--where LA-area archivists and friends read and discuss publications exploring all matters archives. Books are selected every 6 weeks by the group, and may cover topics such as archival theory and practice, historical understandings, current issues and trends in information science, informational technologies, etc....we’re open to suggestions!

Our next book selection is The Big Archive: Art from Bureaucracy by Sven Spieker

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Publisher’s Description: The typewriter, the card index, and the filing cabinet: these are technologies and modalities of the archive. To the bureaucrat, archives contain little more than garbage, paperwork no longer needed; to the historian, on the other hand, the archive’s content stands as a quasi-objective correlative of the “living” past. Twentieth-century art made use of the archive in a variety of ways—from what Spieker calls Marcel Duchamp’s “anemic archive” of readymades and El Lissitzky’s Demonstration Rooms to the compilations of photographs made by such postwar artists as Susan Hiller and Gerhard Richter. In The Big Archive, Sven Spieker investigates the archive—as both bureaucratic institution and index of evolving attitudes toward contingent time in science and art—and finds it to be a crucible of twentieth-century modernism.

Dadaists, constructivists, and Surrealists favored discontinuous, nonlinear archives that resisted hermeneutic reading and ordered presentation. Spieker argues that the use of archives by such contemporary artists as Hiller, Richter, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Walid Raad, and Boris Mikhailov responds to and continues this attack on the nineteenth-century archive and its objectification of the historical process.

Spieker considers archivally driven art in relation to changing media technologies—the typewriter, the telephone, the telegraph, film. And he connects the archive to a particularly modern visuality, showing that the avant-garde used the archive as something of a laboratory for experimental inquiries into the nature of vision and its relation to time. The Big Archive offers us the first critical monograph on an overarching motif in twentieth-century art.

About the Author: Sven Spieker teaches in the Comparative Literature Program and the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the editor of ARTMargins, an online journal devoted to Central and Eastern European visual culture.


The group will meet on Wednesday, March 16, from 6:30-8pm at Alcove Cafe & Bakery (1929 Hillhurst Ave). Participants to the Book Club will be capped at 12. Please email laacollective@gmail.com to reserve a spot.

Can’t make the meeting, but are still reading the book? Let us know!

January 26, 2016 - Comments Off on USC Digital Repository Tour

USC Digital Repository Tour

Tour is currently full. Email laacollective@gmail.com to place your name on the waiting list. 

The Los Angeles Archivists Collective is thrilled to announce a tour of the USC Digital Repository on Wednesday, February 24, 2016 at 3:00 pm.

The USC Digital Repository (USCDR) is a collaborative effort between the USC Libraries, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute (SFI), and USC’s Information Technology Services (ITS). Each of these units brings a unique portfolio of technical and content experience, supporting an unrivaled combination of research, pedagogy, preservation, and infrastructure expertise. The repository builds on USC’s strengths in technology and research to capture and preserve collections of significant educational, cultural, and research value. As a result, the USCDR is uniquely positioned to provide the professional expertise and technological resources to allow organizations to cost-effectively create, manage, and preserve sophisticated digital collections.

Website: http://repository.usc.edu

Only 10 spots available! RSVP here: http://goo.gl/forms/sU7GGzxWS2

*Please make sure to include your email - Address and parking details will be emailed.

**Everyone attending will need to bring a government issued identification.

January 20, 2016 - Comments Off on Visit to the LA Art Book Fair

Visit to the LA Art Book Fair

Join LAAC on Sunday, February 14th for a visit to the LA Art Book Fair held at The Geffen Contemporary, MOCA. We will meet to attend a talk entitled, “The Dynamic Library: Organizing Knowledge at the Sitterwerk - Precedents and Possibilities”, located in Gallery D from 12:00 - 1:00.

After the talk, let’s walk over to Far Bar for food & drinks!
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The Dynamic Library: Organizing Knowledge at the Sitterwerk - Precedents and Possibilities.
12:00 - 1:00 Gallery D

At the Sitterwerk in St. Gallen, Switzerland, an unusual system that relies on RFID technology was developed to turn an idiosyncratic collection of art books into a publicly accessible library. What are some of the collections that presenters have created and/or manage, how do they organize them, and how do they make them accessible? This event will explore the challenges and pleasures they’ve encountered, as well as the role played by digital technology. Presented by Soberscove Press.

And, if you’re still around at 3:00, there is an interesting talk organized and moderated by UCLA MLIS graduate, Nicoletta Beyer, as part of the Contemporary Artists‘ Books Conference coordinated by local arts library and archives professionals.

Contemporary Art and the Occult
3:00 - 5:00 Theatre (Gallery V)

A panel of practicing contemporary artists discuss their work relating to alchemy, astrology, chaos magic, Gnosticism, shamanism, and occultism at large; manifested and documented in the printed form.

January 13, 2016 - Comments Off on Velaslavasay Panorama Event Meetup

Velaslavasay Panorama Event Meetup

Join LAAC for an informal meetup at the Velaslavasay Panorama on Saturday, January 30th at 7pm. We'll be attending their event In India - 1903 to 1949: The 78rpm Phenomenon, an illustrated lecture with Robert Millis featuring musical demonstrations by Jonathan Ward.unnamed

From the event description: The lecture is a result of Millis' year spent in India photographing record collections, interviewing collectors, and visiting archives and record markets: photographs of shelves groaning under the weight of unimaginable titles, beautiful label and sleeve designs from long gone eras, wind up talking machines, crammed antique shops, forgotten artists, and more that somehow survived the difficult "archival" issues of India.

This presentation will feature several short Sublime Frequencies films, rare music from 78rpm discs, glimpses of the city of Calcutta, the shellac industry, and 78rpm record collectors.

Tickets are $15 or $12 for VPES Members. No need to RSVP to LAAC.

November 30, 2015 - Comments Off on ARLIS/SC + LAAC 2015 Holiday Gathering

ARLIS/SC + LAAC 2015 Holiday Gathering

Please join LAAC and ARLIS/SC on Wednesday, December 16, 2015 from 6:30 to 9 pm at the Red Lion Tavern in Silver Lake (2366 Glendale Blvd.) for a holiday get-together. It's the end of the semester/quarter/year, let's celebrate!

Long Beach Christmas, [ca. 1920], Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

Long Beach Christmas, [ca. 1920], Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection

Archival students and professionals, librarians, and friends are all invited to come together to socialize, reflect and commiserate on the year, or even plan for the coming year.

The party will be held on the second floor/middle bar dining area of the Red Lion. Appetizers will be provided, thanks to the Society of California Archivists' Member Initiated Events program, with drinks available for purchase at the bar.

Please RSVP here: http://goo.gl/forms/0D1yryKc8f

Questions? Email us - laacollective@gmail.com