The project engages with the processes of knowledge production, foregrounding the biases and power relations embedded in data, databases, and archives, past and present.
DYNARCHIVING positions itself within the ongoing and slowly growing debate on data bias, seeking to contribute by offering ways to de-bias knowledge production, especially at the moment when data is actively used.
As its name suggests, the project emphasizes the transformation of archival material into something dynamic, exposing its performative and unstable qualities as a counterpoint to the notion of the archive as a closed, fixed entity. In this view, the archive is not static but continually produced and reproduced, carrying agency.
Media archaeologist Wolfgang Ernst once described such a process as a dynamic archive or “dynarchive,” in reference to the digital archive as both “memory institution and storage technology.” Drawing on and adapting this notion, the project situates itself between the established idea of the archive and its critical, subversive counterpart, the “anarchive.” Hence the term “dynarchiving,” deliberately framed in the present participle, to highlight the ongoing, dynamic acts of subjective knowledge production and their lasting consequences.
Conceived as both a creative and practical intervention, the project addresses a problem that often remains overlooked. While committed to the FAIR and CARE principles, the work did not extend to developing alternatives to visually centered tools for visually impaired users within the limited timeframe of the four-month fellowship. Nevertheless, the initial versions produced may serve as stepping stones for future iterations.