Research project B2/191/P2/ARTPRESSE (Research action B2)
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
KBR hosts extremely rich holdings in the field of popular and mass magazines and print culture in general, which offer a view of Belgian art that has never been taken into account in the canonical construction of Belgian art history. ARTPRESSE deals with the networked structure of Belgian art in the interbellum period, as seen (and dramatically reshaped) through the lens of mass media magazines, both Dutch-speaking and francophone. It aims at studying and digitizing a representative part of this neglected corpus, both in order to challenge our canonical view of Belgian art history and to create a best practice helping the KBR to reorient its own archive and heritage policy into these new directions, which are at the heart of the broader current intermedial turn of the digital age. Key in this regard is the collaboration between KBR and universities, which leads to the enlargement of both the notions of library and archive while producing new possibilities for new types of research and digitization.
This four years project has five main objectives:
-To fundamentally redefine the three key notions of "art", "Belgium" and "network", not just by addressing the interconnectedness of these concepts, but by producing a new take on each of them, based on the general framework of intermedial analysis as well as on their relationships through the lens of mass media magazines and the way in which they shape in word and image a vision of Belgian art as a multipolar and multilayered whole.
- To make the essential elements of this material digitally available via the archival resources of the National Library and to guarantee the further implementation of these materials in larger European archives.
- To elaborate a set of guidelines for the optimal valorization of this kind of digital heritage work, in collaboration with the larger dissemination and valorization policy of the National Library in the next decade.
- To develop an overall theoretical, methodological and technical framework based on the notion of intermediality for the cultural and historical study, digitization, dissemination and valorization of similar fields and corpuses, here as well according to the strategic changes and priorities of the National Library as a modern online/offline archive institution of the 21st Century.
- To reposition the KBR as a scientific institution, whose role is not only to archive and describe culturally valuable items and collections, but to take the lead in new forms of interdisciplinary and intermedial analysis and valorization of materials that only the KBR holds in Belgium.
The key features of the ARTPRESSE methodology are:
‒ A radically inductive approach, which is the best guarantee to offer original answers to original questions and to make the best possible use of a corpus that has never been studied from the chosen standpoint.
‒ A mix of four different but perfectly complementary approaches: historical description of archive material (magazine analysis); digitization and linked data description of the material; discourse analysis and iconographical analysis of individual media; intermediality analysis.
Furthermore, ARTPRESSE reuses two existing methodologies, which can be transferred to the corpus and the research question it has chosen in order to study the networked Belgian art system and the shifting relationships within it : the SCOT, whose basic assumptions can be transferred from the field of technology studies to the field of intermediality studies, and Comics genealogy, where we will adapt the framework of Smolderen to our field.
The digitization will be led by the Digitalization service of KBR in order to produce the magazine corpus, followed by an intermediality analysis (KULeuven) and a network study of Belgian art, based on the ANT developed by Latour and Callon (ULiège).
The expected output and added value are:
Historical research :
o A new mapping of art as an intermedial network bringing together art and non-art elements in the Belgian context.
o A methodology for the study of other archives that represent the missing link between "high art" and "historical documentation".
Digitization and valorization :
o Elaboration of criteria for the description of intermedial items, that is criteria for the archival description of items of print culture that do not fall into the traditional descriptive categories of texts and images.
o Implementation of a policy for the application of linked data to such an intermedial corpus.
o Digitization and online presentation of a sizable corpus that has never been processed and that can serve as a model for further research (a corpus consisting of ca. 80.000 pages to be published and made searchable online in KBR platform BelgicaPeriodicals).
o Integration of the digitized intermedial archive in larger databases, such as Europeana.
Valorization will include, but not be limited to, attendance to selected conferences on Library Science, GLAM, Cultural Heritage, Literary Analysis and Cultural Studies, publication of articles, organization of a seminar/event for academics and library professionals, and online presence – on the websites of the partner institutions and on the website specifically set up for the project), on social media, and via blogposts on the Cultural Studies Leuven blog.
