Lost and Living (in) Archives Collectively Shaping New Memories

Archives are collections of records that are preserved for historical, cultural and evidentiary purposes. As such, archives are considered as sites of a past, places that contain traces of a collective memory of a nation, a people or a group. Digital archives have changed from stable entities into flexible systems, at times referred to with the term ‘Living Archives’. In which ways has this change affected our relationship to the past? Will the erased, forgotten and neglected be redeemed, and new memories be allowed? Will the fictional versus factual mode of archiving offer the democracy that the public domain implies, or is it another way for public instruments of power to operate?

‘Lost and Living (in) Archives’ shows that archives are not simply a recording, a reflection, or an image of an event, but that THEY shape the event itself and thus influence the past, present and future.