A couple of weeks back (29-30 November 2012) I travelled to Sydney for Reinventing Archival Methods, a two day workshop presented by the Australian Society of Archivists and the Recordkeeping Roundtable. Amongst the wide-ranging discussions were reflections on the place of archives and archivists in today’s increasingly digital world and – as a trained art historian – at times I was reminded of the writings of Clement Greenberg.

In particular, I was interested in the potential parallels between what was discussed and Greenberg’s influential essay ‘Modern Painting’ from 1960. Here, Greenberg looks at the idea that art in the early twentieth century was in danger of being subsumed into other areas such as entertainment. He writes:

The arts could save themselves from this leveling down only by demonstrating that the kind of experience they provided was valuable in its own right and not to be obtained from any other kind of activity.

Each art, it turned out, had to perform this demonstration on its own account. What had to be exhibited was not only that which was unique and irreducible in art in general, but also that which was unique and irreducible in each particular art. Each art had to determine, through its own operations and works, the effects exclusive to itself. By doing so it would, to be sure, narrow its area of competence, but at the same time it would make its possession of that area all the more certain.*

The essay goes on to discuss ‘purity’, and puts forward the idea that the only unique and irreducible quality of painting was ‘flatness’ – the rectangular frame being shared with theatre, colour and form with sculpture, narrative with theatre and literature, and so on.

There are many critiques of this idea, both from Greenberg’s contemporaries and since; and in art historical terms, ideas of flatness and purity (where they did exist) were largely overtaken by pop art, assemblage, performance art, postmodernism and more.

But I think the idea remains an interesting one, and in this age of digital media can be used to pose some interesting questions of archives and archivists. Do we need to be conscious of where our work overlaps with what libraries, galleries, museums and other related institutions are doing? Or even of what commercial companies (like Ancestry), web designers or ICT professionals are working on?

If we fail to distinguish our own practice from other (related) activities, do we risk a ‘levelling down’ of all these activities, potentially threatening funding, resources, or the very existence of some? Do we need to worry about this?

And if we decide we do need to worry (I think we do), we need to be able to define and communicate what it is about archives and archival practice which is unique and cannot be obtained from any other activity. While this might narrow our area of competence, it may also be a way of making at least part of our current territory more certain than it appears to be in the current climate.

We also need to be careful. Clearly defining what makes archives unique must not be accompanied by a raising of the drawbridge – collaboration, sharing and connection is essential – but that does not mean that we shouldn’t more clearly define what we bring to the party (to mix a metaphor).

I am interested in what others think. In particular, what is it that is irreducibly, uniquely different about what archives and archivists offer to organisations, communities and the world? And how can we best communicate these qualities to others?

* Clement Greenberg, ‘Modern Painting,’ The Collected Essays and Criticism – Volume 4: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969, Edited by John O’Brian, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1995, p. 86.