Arts Digital Lab Seminar
Learning Lessons from Disasters:
Is there any point in creating post-disaster digital archives?
Paul Millar, Jennifer Middendorf
“United Nations: Earth on course to become ‘uninhabitable hell for millions‘”
– Stuff, 13/10/20
“150 million people estimated to be impacted by climate disasters by 2030”
– Stuff, 20/9/19
The CEISMIC Canterbury Earthquakes Digital Archive was created in 2011 by a UC-led consortium of cultural heritage organisations to preserve images, stories and media about the earthquakes for the purposes of commemoration, teaching and research. Collecting broadly and eclectically, often filling gaps not covered by institutional collection policies, CEISMIC aspires to be a resource for answering present and future questions about the earthquakes’ impacts on culture and society. CEISMIC has also sought to align itself with similar types of post-disaster archiving projects internationally.
This seminar will begin by describing the development of CEISMIC and outlining some of the project’s challenges and possibilities. But the main thrust of the session will be to arrive at a robust discussion about the point and purpose of post-disaster cultural heritage digital archives like CEISMIC in an era when headlines like the ones above underscore the accelerating crisis of the global climate disaster, expected to affect over 4 billion people and destroy lives, livelihoods and entire communities. Do small discrete archiving projects like CEISMIC have value or meaning when the climate disaster looms so large?
Wednesday 21 October 11 am – 12.30 pm
Logie 401