VISUAL MATERIAL
A research project exploring what happens to archives when naming, categorisation, and identity labels are removed or destabilised. It examines how audiovisual memory behaves when it is no longer anchored to fixed identifiers.
What forms of archival knowledge emerge when identity labels, author fields and categorical naming systems are suspended in the audiovisual archive?
Anonymity
Metadata erosion
Relational memory
TV archives
Digital heritage
Post-identification systems
The project investigates how archival systems behave when traditional indexing structures (names, authors, titles) are removed, shifting focus toward relational traces, temporal context, and collective memory. In many TV archives from the 1970s and 1980s, program titles were often not consistently recorded. Instead, archives used dates, codes, or general descriptions. This means many broadcasts were stored without clear names, which makes it difficult today to identify and trace them.
Removing stable attribution from records.
Meaning emerges through connections, not labels.
Archives become distributed cognitive systems where postcustodial agency comes in.