The Women’s Gallery Principles
I was refreshed when I read what So Mayer wrote about ‘archive ache’ a month ago.
I’ve felt a lot of that ache over the last few years, reviewing and adding to the Women’s Gallery/Spiral archives in the Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL), with help from many others.
I *think* and *hope* the review’s nearly over and that in the coming week I’ll make my last visit to ATL.
So it was special to see this in yesterday’s paper.
And to recall that 35 years ago, the view out the window was about the same except there’s more lavender and the fruit trees have grown.
And then to look at a stray few pages of draft Principles that I haven’t seen for years. Found when going through the last boxes here at home.
No idea who wrote these pages. Or why. Or when. Maybe for a talk? A ‘lecture’? A grant application? A group discussion? It’s certainly different than Why a Women’s Gallery? from the Opening Show in 1980. And from that other piece I found, about the Protocols that Bridie Lonie and I developed for the Getting Free project, though it may have been a precursor of those protocols. It’s almost certainly from long after the gallery ceased to be a physical space, in 1984.
(NB The Women’s Gallery Inc was Spiral’s legal umbrella from 1980 to about 2002.)
Through these review years and especially this Sunday when they’re almost over and it’s exactly 35 years since Keri won the Booker Prize, the ache of the archive has been intensified because of adherence to these principles.
Because of them, some archives in the ATL, embargoed until 2015, are again embargoed because of their capacity to hurt people still living: the ‘domestic’ and ‘professional’ lives of some of those most closely involved in the work were deeply entwined and we wrote and sometimes typed long long letters. No idea how we found the time.
And now, when any researcher can make a quick snap with their camera ‘for research purposes’, there are also archives we want to protect from exploitation for a while longer: a researcher could breach copyright online or on a t-shirt and the owner of that copyright probably couldn’t take legal action because of the cost.
To find and read these Principles now, when the ache of the archive may end soon, is kind of comforting. Yes, we thought about what to do and why.
Principles
What does the Women’s Gallery do?
The women who founded the Women’s Gallery wanted to hear, present and preserve stories, particularly stories by women, that might otherwise be untold or disappear, because —
The existence and telling of the stories threatened established ideas of the way things are;
Those with resources to record and present and preserve material did not value certain kinds of stories.
The collective works to do all or some of the following things with these stories —
Find them, fictional and non-fiction in a variety of media’;
Collect them for the use of future generations, so they can work from positions already established rather than from a position of lost ground;
Ensure that they are archived in a public institution;
Edit them for presentation/publication in a way that is safe for the storytellers.
At the same time, the Women’s Gallery gathers as full a archive as possible of the processes involved in that work and ensures that the archive is preserved in public institutions in New Zealand/Aotearoa.
What is the special character of the material collected by the Women’s Gallery?
The way the stories in the archives are recorded tends to give them a degree of intimacy that amplifies and enriches them.
Distinctions between the public and the private are not attempted nor considered possible(1). This leads to a degree of detail that makes the archives of immense benefit for historians. The combination of volume and texture offered by uncensored material will allow future researchers to explore not simply end-points but the processes that led to them. The stories emphasise connections rather than being organised hierarchically. In this process all forms of archivable material are considered to be equally important.
The process involves active listening and support.
What activities does this collection process involve?
The Women’s Gallery engages in four principal activities. These are —
Finding; collecting; making public; and facilitating: supporting the storytellers to edit and present their stories for themselves.
It may do this by —
Assisting with fundraising;
Assisting with editing;
Assisting with publication.
The Physical Archive
What does the archive consist of?
It constitutes tapes, images and text: other electronic forms of retention may develop which will be included.
What becomes of the physical archive? Who owns this material?
The material objects of the record, such as videos, audiotapes, images and writings, including any transcriptions and abstracts made by the Women’s Gallery are the property of the Women’s Gallery.
The Women’s Gallery works to offer a safe and appropriate place for the collection, preservation and where appropriate, discussion and dissemination of material. It is currently held at ATL.
However, storytellers can choose whether to place the record with our collection at ATL or at another institution.
We also undertake to ensure that storytellers can choose to have the material objects that record their stories returned to them at the end of the project, rather than have them added to the Women’s Gallery archives.
Before their story is added to our ATL collection, storytellers can choose who may have access to their material and within what timespan.
If we keep the record we may also copy the record and give the storyteller that copy to keep.
Who has access to this material?
There are two ways in which people may have access to this material —
They may access the physical archive, which is held in different public institutions.
Or, they may have access to it through the writing and research of people who have used it.
To use the material, writers/film-makers/researchers must make application to the tellers of the stories.
The nature of the material has led, from time to time, to the requirement for restricted access to certain parts of it.
The Women’s Gallery reserves its own right of access to all open access material in its archives and its right to restrict access to the secondary material that Gallery workers have generated, for instance transcriptions, copies of tapes and abstracts.
Who owns the copyright to this material?
The people who recount their stories to us — in any archivable form — hold the copyright to their stories, in the forms in which they have been recorded. Unless they have chosen not to do this storytellers have the right to decide who will use their words or images within another context and to negotiate payment for use.
Can I alter or add to my story?
The Gallery is unable to undertake to edit or alter material once it is archived. But we encourage project participants to add to their record, especially if they decide any correction, explanation or expansion is necessary.
And then I found this photograph (2). Kind of nice as these archival moments end and something new begins. All of it trying to ‘make ourselves and the world whole’.
(1) This ‘not’… ‘nor’ reminds me of Bridie’s writing but no idea if she wrote this. Could have been me doing my best.
(2) From Virginia Woolf’s ‘The Leaning Tower’ (essay, 1940).
‘…let us bear in mind a piece of advice that an eminent Victorian who was also an eminent pedestrian once gave to walkers: ‘Whenever you see a board up with “Trespassers will be prosecuted”, trespass at once.
Let us trespass at once. Literature is no one’s private ground; literature is common ground. It is not cut up into nations; there are no wars there. Let us trespass freely and fearlessly and find our own way for ourselves. It is thus that English literature will survive this war and cross the gulf — if commoners and outsiders like ourselves make that country our own country, if we teach ourselves how to read and to write, how to preserve, and how to create.’
