• ImaginX en Movimiento (IXeM): Building a Rasquache Digital Archive

    Author(s):
    Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz (see profile)
    Date:
    2020
    Group(s):
    DH2020
    Subject(s):
    Digital preservation, Digital media, Hispanic Americans, Social justice
    Item Type:
    Conference paper
    Tag(s):
    Digital archiving, Digital visual culture, Latinx
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/4kgh-5z33
    Abstract:
    ImaginX en Movimiento (IXeM) is a Los Angeles-based moving image archive and collective I co-founded (with one foot in and one foot out of academia) in May 2019 in effort to counter exclusionary practices that prevent community access and participation in cultural memory work. This paper is an ethnographic case study that provides critical reflections on the strategies employed by IXeM that respond to particular constraints and opportunities pertaining to labor and cost, including operations, acquisition of equipment, funding, and collaborative initiatives for community engagement. This case study will posit labor and cost solutions against a background of scarce resources as well as forge new ideas for community-engaged and justice-based recuperation methods in academia. In particular, this paper reflects on the way IXeM expresses the idea of digital rasquachismo to dismantle traditional archival practices that reinforce oppressive systems that disproportionately subject Brown and Black bodies to generational inequities and inspire alternative methods that retool digital technologies to center the lived experiences and wellbeing of those at the margins. Blurring the divide between choice and necessity, IXeM is driven by both a socioeconomic imperative and a deliberate choice to challenge the authority of top-down knowledge systems by retooling commercial content sharing platforms as archival databases (see: @veteranas_and_rucas, @blvckvrchives, @latinx_diaspora_archives, @quinceaneraarchives, LA Freewaves), which some scholars have viewed as revolting and others an avenue of revolt. Going beyond just “making do,” IXeM enacts a radical politics of resistance by grabbing hold of the tools of social media to transform cultural memory work.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    3 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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