Enthusiasts: archive

The result of extensive research amongst the remnants of amateur film clubs in Poland under socialism the Enthusiasts: archive is a critical archive of beautiful amateur films found, restored and made available for you.

Presented as a collaborative artwork the Enthusiasts: archive enables you to explore how the generosity of the enthusiast reveals a range of interests and experiences generally invisible amongst the breathless flow of the State sponsored, or professionally mediated.

Our intention with Enthusiasts: archive is to stimulate interest and discussion into the nature of creative exchange, the function of public archives and the future of the public domain

There is an astonishing growth in museums, and in archives and data-banks of images, sounds and information, the French philosopher Jacques Derrida has diagnosed a virulent Archive Fever at work. These new, emergent forms of archival capital have an increasingly powerful grip upon culture and its reproduction. The problem with most existing public archives, is that all creative work is born into copyright; every image, text, film or sound is automatically designated as the property of its apparent author –until death plus seventy years.

Archives, like collections in Museums and Galleries are built with the property of multiple authors and previous owners. But unlike the collection, there is no imperative within the conventional logic of the archive, to exhibit, display or interpret its holdings. An archive designates a territory - and not a particular narrative. The material connections contained are not already authored as someone’s – for example, a curator’s or artist - interpretation, exhibition or property; it’s a discursive terrain where interpretations are invited.

Our experience of working with, and struggling to release material from Polish state film archives, or many public film and television archives in Britain encouraged us to think about creating a ‘critical’ creative archive of amateur film.

With the permission of the film-makers we are currently compressing the films and uploading them on to archive.org an internet public domain resource, from which they can be accessed via the Enthusiasts: archive website.

Through our founding of the Enthusiasts: archive as an artwork, we intend to challenge creative practices – to replace exchanges facilitated by frustration and restriction with those of collaboration and generosity.

A beta version was simultaneously launched with the Polish version of the Creative Commons Licenses, in Krakow, Poland. Here is the full launch program and related archive texts, and Creative Commons Polska

the Enthusiasts: archive was featured as part of the i-commons summit 2006 in Rio Janeiro

You can read a text which includes some of the thinking behind the evolution of the archive, From Capital to Enthusiasm: towards an exhibitionary practice is a chapter in Exhibition Experiments edited by Sharon Mcdonald and Paul Basu, published by Blackwell 2007.

Read Leira Vergara's text on Enthusiasm and the Archive for Zehar Magazine
Or, read a review of the whole project from metamute

You can also read Carles Guerra's introduction to the enthusiasm_archive_workshop at Arteleku from the 22nd to the 24th of February 2006