2022 Budapest Symposium
Session 5 : “We have learned to see” – PANEL II
Budapest, 26 April 2022
Modarator : Camille Blot-Wellens, historian, researcher and independent archivist
Please do not publish or re-use in any way any of these documents without prior permission of the speakers.
Tracing Visual Evidence of the Holocaust: Challenges of the Digital Curation of Liberation Footage across Archives and Disciplines
Our understanding of history particularly draws on our shared visual cultural memory. Over the last decade the use of digital technologies to process, analyse, enrich and discover historical filmic records has radically transformed our perception of and dealings with non-feature film heritage materials. Historical sources that had been practically invisible to the public have become increasingly discoverable and available for re-use and for deep, personalized engagement by citizens.
This “digital turn” provokes a reinvigorated approach to questions of curatorship How do we regulate access to, and moderate re-use of sensitive and complex historical records? . What strategies and measures do we employ to ensure the integrity of these new digital collections, in alignment with our “legacy” archival practices?
Dealing with Europe's darkest heritage, the EU-funded Innovation Action Visual History of the Holocaust. Rethinking Curation in the Digital Age focuses on filmic records produced by Allied forces and relating to the discovery of Nazi concentration camps and other atrocity sites. In the course of the project, these historical films, which currently are dispersed across archival institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia and other former Soviet Republics, are aggregated, digitized, analyzed and annotated. Using existing and emerging technologies, including advanced digitization, automated analysis of images and text, time-based annotation and location-based services, the project provides tools to trace these images and explore how they have been used and reused. It develops strategies to discover and unlock layers of context and meaning inaccessible through traditional linear narrative modes.
For our panel we invite archivists, curators and scholars working with liberation footage to discuss curatorial, ethical, technical, and conceptual considerations surrounding these sensitive materials. How do FIAF archives manage their holdings of atrocity footage? How can we trace the afterlife of these images through space (as dispersed cultural heritage) and time (the visual afterlife of the Holocaust in popular culture)? How does datafication change the status of film as source? How can state of the art technology help us to achieve a broader understanding of these materials and their historical significance? And which of our findings and results can provide FIAF archives with new approaches, methods and tools to digitization, curation and databasing of non-canonical film records?
Digital Humanities and the Archive: Datafication and Curation of “non feature” film documents, transhuman agents, historiographical challenges – and chances
Ingo Zechner, Head (of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBI), Vienna)
Curatorial Challenges and Policies of Access to Europe’s darkest Heritage
Matthew Lee (Imperial War Museums (IWM), London)
Using prototype tools to detect and classify cinematographic concepts and relations in digitized film collections
Daniel Helm, research assistant and PhD student (Computer Vision Lab at TU Wien, Vienna)
Combining Sources on Nazi Atrocities: A Metadata schema to describe, relate and annotate film and non-film material
Anna Högner, Research Associate (Austrian Film Museum (OFM), Vienna)
Cinematography of the Holocaust: Making the ephemeral canonical
David Kleingers, Head of Filmportal and digital projects (Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (DFF))
Summary of concepts and outlook
Michael Loebenstein, Director(Austrian Film Museum (OFM), Vienna)
Kerstin Herlt, European Projects Coordinator (Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum (DFF))
