Introduction to the Issue: Sensing the Archive

Abstract

The seemingly endless pandemic lockdown has generated a flourishing cultural economy of media archives brought to life. Feature-length (or more) essay films on Timothy Leary (My Psychedelic Love Story, Errol Morris 2020), The Beegees, (The Beegees: How Can you Mend a Broken Heart, Frank Marshall, 2020) The Beatles (Get Back, Peter Jackson 2022), Tina Turner (Tina, Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, 2021) and the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969 (Summer of Soul [or when the Revolution could not be Televised…]), Questlove, 2021) and many more, have taken archival film practices mainstream, using digital tools to remake histories of popular culture that are affective, sensorial, and experiential. Media artists and scholars have likewise been drawn to the vast archives of 20th century culture for encounters with the images and sounds of the past. This work enables us to redefine our place in a historical nexus of imagination and memory where trauma, struggle and injustice can be confronted along with new ways of plotting the future. Beyond the glitter of celebrity culture thousands of artists are excavating and recycling to create new modes of being in the world, and they do so with one eye on the revived sounds and images, and another focused on the sources, the labour, the technologies, and the desires of media archives and archivists as progenitors of history.