I'M INTERESTED IN THOSE MOMENTS OF CHANGE:
Kathy Carbone on art-making and archives
Visitors in the Reading Room with a Survey by the Art + Language Institute at documenta 5. Photograph by Paolo Mussat Sartor, Courtesy documenta Archiv Stadt Kasse
A conversation with Dr. Kathy Carbone, Institute Archivist, Performing Arts Librarian, and Lecturer at California Institute of the Arts
by Jennie Freeburg
When a veteran of the Vietnam War returned to Portland, Oregon in 1970 and became a prominent anti-nuclear power activist, the Portland police began compiling surveillance records on his activities. In 2013, artist Garrick Imatani and poet Kaia Sand sought out the activist, Lloyd Marbet, and their conversations and collaboration with him led to the creation of poems and artworks incorporating his own words “talking back” to the archival documents of his surveillance.
A 1950s segment of a Groucho Marx quiz show has Groucho interviewing Kuldip Rae Singh, a medical student at UCLA. Smiling through a barrage of Groucho's racist microaggressions (“I had that this morning in my swimming pool--a cool dip,” “How did you get enough money to get over here? Come by camel?”), Singh proceeds to use the show’s platform to confess a talent for singing, and subsequently launches himself a musical career, complete with hoards of female fans. Sixty years later, the saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa encounters this video footage alongside other traces of Kuldip Rae Singh in the archives, and incorporates audio from this interview into a musical composition titled, “Cool Dip,” creating a sonic space for intergenerational and interarchival dialogue.
While awareness and interest surrounding encounters such as these, between artist/creators and archives, have been steadily increasing, all too often missing from these discussions (as pointed out in this publication and elsewhere) are archivists.
Standing at the intersection of multiple roles within broader conversations on “the archival turn” in art and the humanities is Dr. Kathy Carbone, a scholar interested in artists’ engagement with archives—materially, as well as in relation to the more abstract trope of “the Archive.” She is also an archivist and a professor who teaches both art students and archives students.
On the day I visited a November class session of Carbone's UCLA Information Studies course, “Archives and Art-Making,” the topic was artist residencies in archives. We heard from Dr. Michelle Caswell on the artist-in-residency program through the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA, co-founded by Caswell) that led to Mahanthappa’s saxophone composition, and from Carbone on her case study on the artist-in-residency program with the City of Portland Archives, including the work done by Imatani and Sand with the collection of surveillance documents known as the “Watcher Files.”
Dr. Carbone was then kind enough to have a conversation with me about the course and her work as an archivist, teacher, scholar, and artist:
Can you tell us a bit about how you came to be archivist at CalArts as well as what led you to pursue your PhD in archives?
I didn’t focus on archives during my MLIS, but I was very intrigued by them. At CalArts, there had never been an archivist position; instead, a librarian managed the archives. In 2009, the librarian that had been managing the archives was leaving, and I told my dean that I would love to take on that job. I had been interested for quite some time in contemporary artists’ work with archives, which drew me to the archives. So, I became manager of the archives, but because I didn’t know how to process materials, I wasn’t even going to attempt that, and I solely provided reference. Once I got in the archives, I just loved the work, and I felt I needed to go back to school. Professor Gilliland at UCLA told me about the Information Studies Department’s Post Master’s Program, which is basically for people like me—people who already have an MLIS and want to add on a different specialty. Within one or two classes I knew that not only did I want to do the program, but wanted to have a long conversation with the archives—do a PhD and study with Professor Gilliland. So I did end up doing the Post Master’s, and at the same time applied for the PhD program. I finished the Post Master’s in 2012, and then CalArts named me the Institute Archivist. And then I went on to do the PhD.
...there’s a disconnect here and also an opportunity for these disciplines [arts and archives] to talk to and learn from each other.
And so, you were still the archivist at CalArts while you were doing your PhD, is that right?
Yes. I worked full time while working on my doctorate. I had a very generous dean of the library at that time, and colleagues that were OK with me not being there sometimes or working kind of a wonky schedule. They were very supportive—I was so lucky with that.
They’re so lucky, too! It’s great when these things work out and it is mutually beneficial. How long have you been teaching this course on artists and archives?
I taught it first at CalArts in the spring of 2016 and am now teaching it again, spring 2018. It came out of several desires: I wanted to make the archives more visible and open to students, and at that time I was also struck by how a lot of artists who use archives in their work were not interacting with archivists (or perhaps more to the point, were not talking about their interactions with archivists or about their experiences working in the space of the archives). In addition, many artists were using any old “thing” in the world and calling it “archival”—and I thought, ok, there’s a disconnect here and also an opportunity for these disciplines [arts and archives] to talk to and learn from each other. So I was excited to turn arts students on to the archival literature, because I think it’s really rich and exciting, and I think many people across the academy don’t even know that it exists. As humanists and art theorists continue to talk about and debate archival matters, they should really know about this literature. The students’ final project for the class is to make an artwork from/with the archives, but it wasn’t just that I wanted students to engage and transform the archives to make something new, but I wanted them to deeply engage with archival thought and see how it might influence their art practice. I wanted to put archival theory, principles, and practices alongside the critical discourse and practices around contemporary archival art-making.
Would it then be fair to say that it’s essentially the same goal for the art students and the archives students, just slightly reversed?
Exactly. For the students at UCLA it was introducing them to the critical humanities literature about archives and art-making. And for them, they didn’t necessarily know that that body of literature existed.
Is the reading list for each class similar, or do you end up weighting them differently for what you need to expose the students to?
With the students at CalArts, there was more archival theory, and with the students at UCLA there was more of the art discourse about art-making and the critical analysis of archival art practice. But with the students at UCLA, there was still quite a bit of archival theory because some of the students weren’t in the archival studies specialization—that’s not their focus—or they hadn’t yet taken a class in [archival] history, theory, or description. But even the students that were versed and/or in the archival studies concentration didn’t seem bored, they still seemed like they were getting something from some of the fundamental texts.
Archives in musuems, art museums as archives. Left: ephemera cases featured as part of the exhibition "We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-1985." Top right: Dayanita Singh with her work, "Museum of Chance," 2013. Lower right: "Boîte-en-valise," 1934-41, by Duchamp, © 1999 Succession Marcel Duchamp, ARS, N.Y./ADAGP, Paris.
There was discussion in class about the degree to which archivists can or should intervene to facilitate artists' use of archives. What is your personal take on this? Could the question of archivist "intervention" be framed less about the relationship between individual archivists and artists and more along the lines of the structure, or design, of archives and archival spaces? Perhaps making it more a question of archives being hospitable to artists?
The first thing that comes to mind is that I think that archivists shouldn’t intervene much, besides making archives users aware of what’s in the archives and how to use a finding aid. I feel that I try to be neutral in the sense of not showing preference for one collection over another, for example, not say: “hey this item or collection is really cool," or "you should use this collection or not use that one." However, when students in the class tell me about their ideas or what they’re interested in, I do then guide them towards materials that I think might support or speak to that interest in some way. If I see the directions that they’re going with their questions or their research then I may suggest something, but I mostly try to stay out of their way as they mine the archives.
Do you mind if I interject something here? I want to say that [UCLA Archivists] Angel Diaz and Heather Briston were central to the class. They were amazing. Heather, the university archivist, was so generous, supportive, and gave me a lot of great ideas. UCLA Special Collections, that’s her universe, she knows the collections inside and out, whereas I don’t. I know the archives at CalArts, so in teaching the course at UCLA, there were things I do at CalArts that I didn’t do at UCLA but that Heather did instead—such as familiarize the students with how to search for and request archival materials at UCLA. She was amazing in regards to the knowledge she imparted and also her enthusiasm. Earlier I talked about not wanting to influence what archival materials students look at, but in preparation for the first day of class when the students visit the reading room to look at materials, Heather suggested, because UCLA’s archival universe is so large, that I should choose some collections for them to view—give the students some boundaries on their first visit—so that they wouldn’t be overwhelmed. At first I didn't know if I wanted to do that, but it was a smart thing to do. For the first day of class, then, I asked Heather and Angel to pull boxes containing student activist materials from the 1950s through the 1980s and the students were so into that.
Angel also came up with a great exercise for the students, about how to really look at something, and the questions to ask of a text or of an image—how to interrogate what something is. It was so thoughtful and exciting that she did that. We spent four sessions in Special Collections with Heather and Angel, and I felt like they were just such a huge part of the class.
Thank you, those are some really great points. I hadn't thought of what a difference it would make to be working with archives of your own institution versus UCLA, both due to your own familiarity as well as the scope of the collections.
And it seemed like that’s where the class discussion was landing regarding an archivist’s role when facilitating an artist’s use of the archives. As I was thinking of it for myself, I did start to think well, it’s maybe not so much a question of intervening, but more about how an archivist might write a finding aid, or process. On those levels, do you find that working with artists has changed how you approach your work as an archivist?
It has. I’ve become much more aware of the materialities of the archives and how artists, depending on their art discipline and practice, approach archival materials in different ways. So, for example, I’m a contemporary dancer, and I don’t look at material things the way a visual artist does—they’re often interested in what type of paper or font was used, what is the weight or age of something, why is something discolored. They ask a lot of questions about the visual and physical aspects of archival materials. So that has made me think, and has changed my description practices a bit. For example, if I’m describing a poster that we have in the archives, I’ll describe the colors, type of paper or other physical aspects—I’ll go further than we normally would, if there is time, in describing an item or set of items.
I’ve become much more aware of the materialities of the archives
I love that. I think it’s interesting to raise the point that there’s use of using the term “artists” broadly to mean people like choreographers and dancers and musicians, but it strikes me, because I’m coming from a music background, that it would not occur to me to interrogate materials in the way you're describing your visual arts students in the archives. That’s really great to hear explained.
So yeah, it has changed things. However, as I am the sole archivist at CalArts—although this year I’ve been able to hire some students who are doing tremendous work—I don’t always get to do that level of detail for describing things, because I wouldn’t get anything out into the open for people to use. In the best of worlds, yes I do that, but it kind of depends on the situation.
Returning to the idea of what artists or humanists are not always understanding about archives when they’re not engaging with archivists and archives themselves, I think a lot of times what they’re actually critiquing is lack of funding for archives. It’s not always that archivists are making these collections more hidden, or not describing them sufficiently, in large part it's that we aren’t given adequate materials and resources.
You’re absolutely right. A lot of that is out of our control. If an archives in an institution (such as a university archives) isn’t well-funded and/or supported, we get these criticisms that probably shouldn’t be leveled towards the archivists but towards whomever is ultimately responsible for funding/maintaining the archives—the administration, the board of trustees, for example—that’s the level that the humanists should be aiming towards with their critique. I don’t think anyone’s really teased that out so much.
Another topic from class was how an artist's consciousness of their own archive-making affects the materials that do or do not ultimately end up in their archives. Do you think this kind of archival consciousness is increasing or decreasing for artists?
I think it is increasing. At CalArts, I’m talking to faculty artists who are concerned about their archives: how they should organize them, what they should or should not keep, and where they should go. I don’t know if it’s because of the ‘archival turn’ in art and across the academy—maybe, I haven’t outright asked them. I’ve also seen lately that there’s a couple of websites for artists on “how to organize your stuff.” I do have more faculty asking me about those things now than ever before.
I love the way you were talking about working with visual artists and how that affects the way you might go about describing materials. But I’m also so interested in your work as a choreographer. I mean the topic of dance and archives is a whole, that’s a huge other thing, but can I ask how dance has informed your work as an archivist? And also since working as an archivist, I don’t know how much you are still working in dance, but are you incorporating more of your archival thinking into your dance thinking?
I haven’t been performing or even dancing at all the past couple years, because about two years into the demands of the PhD, there was just no way to continue that part of my life. And also, my interests shifted. So, I don’t think that archives are affecting me as an artist, but archival thought—especially around memory—has definitely broadened and deepened my understanding of what dance can do and the ways in which it transmits memory and knowledge. The transmission of memory and knowledge through the body became very real to me through my work with and thinking through archives, even more so than when I was a dancer. So, it made me realize that for some of the repertory that I danced, I’m one of the last dancers to have danced a particular dance, and in that way my body is an archive—I store that memory, and if I were to dance that dance again, I’m passing the memory of and knowledge about it on. I have also became more acutely aware of dance genealogies and lineages.
But what’s been interesting to me as a dancer is that during my doctoral studies, I thought I would be focusing on performance, ephemerality, memory, and the body in relation to the archives, but instead, I found myself gravitating towards what visual artists were doing with archives, which ended up being a research focus. It was surprising to veer off to the visual arts.
I think that’s really interesting. It makes sense to me, too. Sometimes I find that when something was such a huge part of your life and who you were, when you try to shift it slightly and look at it from a different angle, it’s just not the same kind of excitement when you’re trying to combine it with these other things. It's interesting what it can mean to be an artist and an archivist, and how those roles maybe don’t combine in the ways that you’d expect.
Exactly. What I’ve found intriguing about archives related to dance, (but not specifically about dance per se), is movement. Because when I think about records, I think of them as being very mobile. They move, they’re not static at all. They also contain or are imbued with movement in a sense—the residue of human (or machine) activity that went into producing the records remains. I’m much more interested in investigating how and why records move—meaning, the personal, social, political or cultural circumstances that propel records through time and space and the ways in which through this movement, records connect with other ideas, bodies, and events—what are the outcomes of when records and people come together? Like with dance, when two people interact—such as when someone lifts someone up— there’s a new form and trajectory created, and that’s how I look at records. I’m interested in those moments of change, when records get lifted up and out of their “place” and connect and change with/through other bodies. What happens within those comings together? How do people interact with records and to what effects?
I spent a lot of time in a time-based art medium, and that definitely influences how I approach archives as places with multiple flows and layers of time (replete with disparate rhythms, silences, and sounds) within multiple spatialities. Time and space. The movement of records through time and space—and the outcomes of this movement—is just fascinating to me.
Kathy Carbone is the institute archivist, performing arts librarian, and faculty member in the Herb Alpert School of Music, and an adjunct faculty member in the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where she teaches courses in music research methodologies and archival art-making. She is also a lecturer in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she teaches a course on archives and art practices. Her research interests include contemporary art productions with archives; affect, movement, and agency in regard to records; social justice practices in the arts and archives; and, archival ethnography and pedagogy. She has published in the journals Archival Science, Archivaria, and Archives and Records. A former contemporary dancer, improviser, and choreographer, Kathy collaborated with musicians and dancers utilizing both improvisation and set material in theater and gallery based live performance events for over 25 years. Kathy holds a Ph.D. in Information Studies, with a focus in Archival Studies from UCLA, an MLIS from Kent State University, an MA in Dance and Music and a BFA in Dance from Ohio University.
Jennie Freeburg is archivist at an artist studio in Los Angeles and is currently serving as co-Chair for the Press & Publications Subcommittee of the Los Angeles Archivists Collective.
RECOMMENDED READING
Bismarck, Beatrice von, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Diethelm Stoller, and Ulf Wuggenig, eds. Interarchive: Archival Practices and Sites in the Contemporary Art Field. Koln: Buchhandlung Walther König, 2002.
Carbone, Kathy Michelle. “Artists and Records: Moving History and Memory.” Archives and Records 38, no. 1 (2017): 100-118.
Carbone, Kathy. “Artists in the Archive: An Exploratory Study of the Artist-in- Residence Program at the City of Portland Archives & Records Center.” Archivaria 79 (Spring 2015): 27–52.
Enwezor, Okwui. “Archive Fever: Photography Between History and the Monument.” In Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art, 11–52. New York: International Center of Photography, 2008.
Foster, Hal. “An Archival Impulse.” October 110 (Autumn 2004): 3–22.
Howe, Susan. Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives. New York: Christine Burgin; New Directions, 2014.
Magee, Karl, and Susannah Waters. “Archives, Artists and Designers.” Journal of the Society of Archivists 32, no. 2 (2011): 273–85. doi:10.1080/00379816.2011.619707.
Schotzko, T. Nikki Cesare. “To Carry the Archive with Us: The Multi-Burdened Crawls of William Pope.L and Didier Morelli.” Canadian Theatre Review 156, (2013): 52–57.
Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
Zapperi, Giovanna. “Woman’s Reappearance: Rethinking the Archive in Contemporary Art—Feminist Perspectives.” Feminist Review 105 (2013): 21–47.
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