Presentations
on not looking: the ethics of aesthetics in online exhibits
Presented at the University of Rochester conference: Visual and Cultural Studies the Next 20 years October 2, 2009.
Digital Humanities 2.0: Is Revolution Possible?
Presented at USC’s IML-NEH Digital Humanities Summer Institute, July 23 2009.
Does Information Really Want to be Free: Debating Access and Openness in the Digital Landscape
Presented at UCLA–GSEIS, organized by Chris Kelty. Apparently this will be part of UCLA’s iTunes U at some point, they promised to send me a link when the podcast goes up and I will link to it here.
Abstract:
The now infamous and increasingly trite rallying cry by Internet enthusiast John Perry Barlow that “information wants to be free” bookends an all too often binary narrative about “open access” or “information sharing” online. In this scenario, information is either free or it is hidden behind a firewall. It is open to all or closed off by corporate greed. Questions about the ethics and politics of openness, access, and information circulation are often ignored as we battle over DRM or Microsoft’s intellectual property regime. While these debates are waged in courtrooms, boardrooms, and classrooms the subtleties of knowledge management and the histories of access to information are pushed aside. In this presentation, I examine the questions of open access and knowledge circulation in relation to indigenous knowledge and content. Specifically, I will explore the creation of an indigenous digital archive as a conscious application of digital technologies to undo the default of open access that drives archival sensibilities.
Slides:
Access and Accountability: Collaborative Management of Indigenous Materials
Presented at the Traditional Cultural Expressions Conference organized by the American Library Association, Washington D.C. Nov 11-14, 2008. See the conference website for more information including the video of (most of) the presentations
Museums 2.0: Virtual Repatriation and Indigenous Digital Archives
Presented at “The Future of Public Institutions: New Media, the Press and the Museum” at the University of British Columbia, May 3, 2008.
Abstract:
Museum scholars and practitioners have been very attuned to the cultural and political public and scholarly debates that impact curatorial processes and practices. In the 1970s as global indigenous movements shaped by sovereignty, land rights and self-determination confronted colonial and post-colonial histories, powers, and narratives many museums responded with an openness to collaboration with, and inclusion of, indigenous histories, performances and points of view. This juncture is far from over. Repatriation of indigenous human remains and cultural materials continue to be issues of dialogue and debate, legally, culturally and politically. With the emergence of digital technologies that on the one hand allow for low-cost, sustainable, and portable replication of objects, and on the other hand promote user-generated content, collaborative narration, and remixing of content, the museums’ role in repatriation to and collaborative curation projects with indigenous communities takes on new dimensions of possibility. This presentation highlights the contours of these new museological scenarios by examining the production of an indigenous digital archive that has facilitated the virtual repatriation of cultural materials and personal family collections. The archive’s collaborative production and its embedded cultural protocols illuminate the possibilities for techno-cultural solutions to cross-cutting issues of responsibility, respect, and reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples within an expanded museum space.
A Safe Keeping Place: Shifting Museum Spaces and Embedded Aboriginal Cultural Protocols
Presented at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, University of Virgina, April 25, 2008
Listen to the podcast of my talk.
Culture At the Interface: Digital Archives and Cultural Rights Management in Aboriginal Australia
Presented at the Scholar’s Lab at the University of Virginia, April 25, 2008.
View the slideshow from my presentation below.
A Safe Keeping Place: Digital Archives and Collaboration in Warumungu Country.
The Politics of Search: Archival Accountability in Aboriginal Australia.
Presented at the Media in Transition 5 Conference, MIT 28 April 2007
Paper link: politics_of_search_christen.pdf
In his book, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, John Battelle chronicles the cultural transformations ushered in by the seemingly mundane practice of search. He suggests, “search is building possibly the most lasting, ponderous, and significant cultural artifact in the history of humankind: the Database of Intentions.” The possibilities afforded to search are upheld by openness as the default logic of the Internet. In this case, Battelle’s notion of search maintains the colonial framework of its cousin enterprise: discovery (which sought to create a “museum of mankind”). Battelle’s celebration of search is linked to the continual marginalization of those for whom other systems of property, relationality, and knowledge are at work in this convergence of online activity and increased cultural flows. How does one account for divergent knowledge systems within the dynamics of search? And what difference do they make to a more complex understanding of the parameters of search? Based on ten years of collaborative work with Warumungu community members, this paper examines the production of an indigenous community digital archive and its internal search functionality as a challenge to the dominant narratives of openness and accessibility afforded by a Google-centric view.
“The Internet and the Archive: Technological Translations and Aboriginal Cultural Protocols in Central Australia”
Presented at the WSU Anthropology Colloquium Series, 1 November 2006
The Internet’s default logic seems to be openness: search and you will find. The archive’s logic is preservation: seal and you may save. One is imagined to let everyone see, the other controls who may see. Both of these default logics stem from the cultural and political communities who produced them. But what happens when they travel–when the technologies, and their logical systems move and are changed? Based on collaborative work with Warumungu community members in Central Australia, this presentation explores how the translation of indigenous property systems in two distinct digital spaces (a website and a community digital archive) challenges the dominant logics of openness and preservation in which they are embedded and shifts the framework for understanding the always-constrained dynamics of cultural change.
Uncommon Culture: Making the Net Work for Indigenous Knowledge on the World Wide Web
Northwestern University Center for Screen Cultures Symposium:
Technocultural Translations: Technology and Cultural Identities, 7 April 2006
