Chapter 10
Archival history: synchronic and diachronic
accounts
This chapter uses a classic process
of historicisation based mainly on archival documents. There are many problems
with this process that revolve around selection and interpretation. What gets
archived and what gets erased or thrown away? What gets recorded on documents
in the first place? Does the material that survives adequately represent what
actually happened? What material does the contemporary researcher select as
significant? How does she decide this significance? How does her subject
position influence this interpretation?
Exploding Cinema had three
areas of archived records: minute books; programmes from each show[1];
electronic documents and associated paper files. I typed a summary of key texts
from the minute books, which was made available to collective members. The
texts in paper and electronic format were copied and bound as an archived
record. The programmes were laboriously scanned page by page [almost 700 scans]
and copied as Tiff and JPEG files to CD ROMS. From the programmes a catalogue
of all the filmmakers that had been listed in the programmes (with their name,
work title, duration, format and date of show) was typed out and bound as a
separate volume. From all this material I made a first rough draft narrative
and circulated copies amongst the collective.[2]
The question of
the reflexivity of the researcher has already been discussed in the
introduction and chapter one. Some answers to the questions of what is
represented and what is missed by the archived materials are provided by the
use of participant observation and oral interviews.[3]
Selections from these research methodologies are also included in the account
that follows.
As I pointed out
in the introduction there is a critical time in the following narrative when I
join the collective. From this point in early 1997 the narrative becomes based
on my own witness, and the archive materials are infected to some extent, by my
presence. This results in a change of narrative style.[4]
Any historical
study can take a synchronic or diachronic approach. The diachronic is a
chronological approach - one thing is followed by another, events have
consequences, which we can follow with a narrative flow. This generally means
picking a narrow path through time, which moulds the resulting representations
in various ways. Written narrative has its own tradition that has been traced
back to the Jewish Old Testament and the Greek Iliad.[5]
There are certain literary techniques that we might expect in any narrative
form, especially those that play with our expectations, which generate tensions
and enrich them with digressions. Dramatic high profile events and
personalities that change things are more likely to be recorded than more
mundane social processes. This sort of history tends to favour an idea of
progress rendered through the eyes of leaders. It gives a representation of
history in which change appears to be brought about by great individuals rather
than through social agency. A social history is inevitably complex and does not
easily submit to the simplifications demanded by a good story. The Exploding
Cinema collective is a microcosm of a wider society and even with its limited
numbers starts to provide the complex interactions that make a simple narrative
problematic. Even without the demands of a narrative certain viewpoints, interests,
memories and subjectivites become highlighted at the expense of others.
Synchronic
history was conceived as providing a detailed cross section of the simultaneous
happenings of a particular time. It gives what Clifford Geertz called a thick
description.[6] All kinds of
unconnected events can make up human experience of a time and place. Even when
we want to look at the emergence of something as profound and specific as
printing with moveable type we may find that many factors all contribute to the
point of invention which do not readily lend themselves to ordering in a
narrative sequence.[7] A synchronic
approach allows us to create a picture of life at a time or place in much finer
detail, showing the complexities and essential redundancies. It allows us to
include that which is unchanging or mundane but which is essential to character
and atmosphere, and so to a fuller understanding. Because it allows more to be
included it can be a more democratic approach which can include the texture of
lives and processes which are unremarkable by the traditional historical
criteria. The unremarkable is also often the typical, that which is held in
common.
I have written
up the archival/factual history of Exploding Cinema in two alternating strands.
One focuses on the events and venues and is in the most part chronological: See
sections 1 to 9 below. The other strand mainly concerns themes, like politics
and policies, and events like the Volcano Festivals that occur over a period of
time. These sections build up a synchronic picture of the group during this
period: See A to H below.[8]
By interweaving the two forms of representation I hope to build a detailed
account of Exploding Cinema.
10.00 Introduction: history
and methodology
10.01 Cooltan and the Cinema
Cafe (1991)
10.0A
Division of Labour (1991 - 1999)
10.02 Las Casas (1992)
10.0B
Programme texts (1991 - 1999)
10.03 Jugglers Arms (1993)
10.0C
Politics and Policies (1991 - 1999)
10.04 The Lido Show (August
1993)
10.D
Collective split (1994 - 1996)
10.05. Union Tavern (1993 -
1994)
10.0E
Continental Touring (1993 - 1998)
10.06 Venue Miscellany (1994 - 1996)
10.0F
Filmmakers & performers (1992 - 1997)
10.07 Ritzy Shows - (1995
& 1996)
10.0G
Volcano! (1996 - 1998)
10.08 Three venues - (1997 -
1998)
10.0H
The audience (1991 - 1999)
10.09 The Roof Shows (1997
& 1998) -
_______________________________________________
[1] There are also posters and
flyers but these have not been collected in the same way that the programmes
have been.
[2] These materials will be
available as part of an archive that will accompany the presentation of this
thesis.
[3] As I have noted this is
known as triangulating methodologies
[4] This occurs by sections G
and 8. The change that the presence of a researcher may have had is discussed
elsewhere, particularly in Chapters 6 and 8.
[5] See, Eric Auerbach, Mimesis:
represented reality,
Transl. Willard R. Trask, (Princeton University Press 1953)
[7] See my 'Booking InÉ' The Artist's Book Yearbook 1994 - 95 (Magpie Press 1995) In this
article I identify thirteen variables which together led to the invention of
printing with moveable type around 1450.
[8] This does not mean that
there cannot be chronological elements within the synchronic items; for
instance although the programmes have followed a very stable format there are
things that have occurred in particular periods.