Framing an Archive

FRAMING AN ARCHIVE: Snapshots from Architectural (Hi)stories of Africa

Invited as a Guest Lecturer for the Architecture History and Theory Course at Graduate School of Architecture of The University of Johannesburg

4th August, 2020

Summary of my Lecture:

An Archive is first framed by its creators. This frame is where the creators choose what include and how to include it. This framing can be deliberate where the creators of the archive seek to exclude or to obscure, but also accidental – in what gets overlooked and what remains unseen. In framing an archive, the creators also often decide where to put it – both the collections and the physical space - who can access it, and how. Many archives are created by institutions – state, commercial, religious… but many people also make archives – family photos, memories, fragments, ephemera, collections of stories and historical accounts of communities.

An archive is also framed by its users and interpreters. Sometimes the frames overlap but not always. Ans I suggest that it is in where there is least overlap that there is the most to discover. What you glean from an archive depends on who you are and how you approach it – your frame. Different frames reveal different things about the archive and the interpreter. The frame – for the interpreter is how you know what to look for, how you notice that a thing is missing, or hidden or obscure. It is how you sense the gaps and silences. I would argue that all archives have gaps and silences, because not everything can be recorded. And once recorded, not everything is kept.