Ivan Szekely from the Blinken OSA Archivum,Central European University will deliver the ninth CRISP online seminar entitled 'Orwell and Archives'. This hybrid seminar takes place online at 3pm UK time on Wednesday 19th February 2025. If you are in the University of Stirling you can also attend in person. 

Abstract

Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four usually brings to mind the ubiquity of surveillance, dictatorial power in every aspect of life, Big Brother, "newspeak" and other terms that have entered mainstream English. Under the pretext of another, no less important, motif of the novel, the constant rewriting and reinterpretation of the past, this seminar aims to share with the participants some thoughts on memory institutions, especially archives.

In none of the four main paradigms of archival history has the reliability of the information content of the preserved documents been given a prominent role – it has been taken for granted, implied by institutional authority, or referred to the competence of the 'owner' of the archives. Today, archival scholarship increasingly emphasizes the importance of recognizing the agency of archives and archivists, as opposed to the positivist view. New types of archives have emerged: community archives, samizdat archives, post-custodial archives, 'counter-archives', even 'archives of lies'. The big internet service providers even question the very existence of the archive as an institution, claiming that all information is now stored forever and can be accessed anywhere, anytime. But there are several fundamental arguments for the survival of archives and other memory institutions.

In discussing the relationship between memory institutions and art – such as the Winston Smith Library of Victory and Truth – some examples from the practice of the Blinken OSA Archivum will also be presented.

Biography

Dr. Ivan Szekely, social informatist, is an internationally known expert in the multidisciplinary fields of data protection and freedom of information. Former chief counsellor of the Hungarian Data Protection ombudsman, and associate professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Szekely is at present Senior Research Fellow and Counsellor of the Blinken OSA Archivum at Central European University. His research interests and publications are focused on information autonomy, openness and secrecy, privacy, identity, surveillance and resilience, memory and forgetting, and archivistics.

Practical Information

The MS Teams link for this event will appear at the bottom of this page ahead of the event.

The seminar will take place at the University of Stirling Campus, in the JISC Innovation Hub, Level 3, in the University Library. If you would like to reserve a place please contact: CRISP@stir.ac.uk.

This event is part of the surveillance extravaganza taking place at the University of Stirling in January and February 2025 and is scheduled to accompany the hosting of the Winston Smith Library of Victory and Truth at the University of Stirling Library. Keep an eye out for other events related to surveillance, privacy and citizen-state relations.