One of the problems of the archive that has long fascinated me concerns its temporality. Inevitably, the archive lifts the objects it contains out of their own time and context. Taxonomies, classification systems and meta data descriptors (Dublin Core) abstract the archived object from the climate in which it originally appeared. If the present, the moment of its appearance, is characterised by immediacy, then the archive is denoted by a suspension of time, a form of atemporality that makes it possible to transmit something, some quality of this object across time.

This September, the Network Archives Design and Digital Culture (NADD) is launching a project in collaboration with artist Maria Blaisse and Miriam Windhausen, who leads a Mondriaan Fund pilot on artists’ legacies. Windhausen has been researching the process of estate formation and management since 2018. Her latest project focuses on six cases, one of which concerns Blaisse’s body of work. The project will set in motion the assessment and inventorisation of Maria Blaisse’s archive, based on an assessment framework that NADD developed last year, with a view to its future preservation, management and, perhaps most importantly, uses.

How can a culture-producing organisation start an archive? On 15 June, the Network Archives Design and Digital Culture (NADD) brought partners LIMA, NDE and DEN together to answer this question by showing the steps to follow and introducing the available tools and guidelines. Here, we share the meeting’s most important tips and insights on how design and digital culture organisations can archive their created content in a sustainable, accessible way.

The Netherlands has a rich history of design and digital culture. Making an important contribution to this are workshops and media labs, which organise projects or residencies with makers. Over the years, they build up a large amount of knowledge, which they can pass on to new generations. Yet because workshops often work on a project basis, it is not self-evident that this knowledge is archived, let alone made accessible. In the coming years, the Network Archives Design and Digital Culture aims to support workshops and media labs to make their archives more accessible. What does it take to organise and archive this knowledge? And how can institutions better share the knowledge that lies in their archives?

On 17 December 2020, the Network Archives Design and Digital Culture was officially launched with an online event that introduced the network's programme of activities. Watch it here.

How does artificial intelligence (AI) view a digital archive? Does it see connections that we don’t see? What patterns does it reveal? Can AI be a guide, or a curator? Together with Het Nieuwe Institiuut and VPRO Tegenlicht, designer and artist Richard Vijgen has been investigating these questions.

Archives are about much more than just the passive preservation of finished products. The added value of archiving for designers and digital culture makers is that it can advance their own practice or discipline – for example, by finding inspiration and depth in someone else's archive, or reflecting on one's own.

One of the most important dilemmas for NADD (the Network for Archives of Design and Digital Culture) is how it makes choices. These are not only technical dilemmas but also – and more pressingly – choices relating to the composition and accessibility of archives.