spotlight
The File Room,
by Antoni MUNTADAS (United States), 1994-
"By giving form to what's disappeared, The File Room reminds us - above all - that artmaking remains an ethical act."1
A PIONEERING WORK
Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser, had just come into being when Antoni Muntadas designed The File Room, a project that remains noteworthy in several respects. Presented initially as part of an installation at the Chicago Cultural Center in May 1994, the project has developed independently on the Web, gaining considerable importance over the years.2 The crux of this work consists of an archive of cases of censorship in the arts. Using its integrated search engine, one can consult the work by category - date, location, artistic discipline, reason for the censorship - or by keyword. Produced with the support of many partners, the original database published on the Web has grown, largely with users' later contributions.3 Documentation in the form of definitions, critical texts on the works, and a bibliography accompanies the on-line project.
One of The File Room's qualities is having been able, at such an early stage in the Web's history, to realize the possibilities of the medium, as a mode of communication and a publication space. Muntadas has shown obvious ability in handling the computerized storage and organization of data, while connecting the latter to the shared space of the network. The Web allowed for the large-scale and interactive availability of content, ensuring data wide-ranging access and a new potential for growth. The project's extraordinary strength lies precisely in the apt use of such possibilities, dynamically related to the proposed content; using the database as a creative medium, it manifests a highly appropriate relationship between form and content.
THE DATABASE : AN ARTFORM
A recent exhibition entitled Database Imaginary brought together several projects by artists creating or integrating databases.4 The event suggested that one could explain the creative use of databases by their ubiquity in our increasingly computerized world, and that databases5 shape the way we understand the complexity that surrounds us, that they influence our imaginations. It isn't surprising, then, to see artists appropriating the form.
Databases are designed to manage a great quantity of data, data that is likely to grow. They satisfy a need to organize, and to facilitate access to varied and abundant content. They allow us to keep this content in memory. They also aim for intelligibility. Moreover, they structure information in a non-linear fashion, allowing for multiple entries and trajectories. Lev Manovich stated in an interview that, "like new media in general, databases allow for coexistence of different points of view, different models of the world, different ontologies and, potentially, different ethics."6
Now, these different characteristics of databases relate, in one way or another, to the archived contents in The File Room, giving them a new presence and significance. To acknowledge a large quantity of censorship cases in the arts is already a realization of the problem. The idea that the collection may grow suggests that many more cases have yet to be indexed, that new contributors may participate - having only recently acquired the necessary equipment or learnt of the project. It also suggests that new cases of artistic censorship continue to occur. The willingness to organize all this data for consultation also confers value on the information. Its organization implies time and effort, familiarity, understanding, and a design intended to making it easy to share the results.
That a "tool" serving to record and organize this information is accessible to Web surfers also says a lot about the necessity of exposing information that, by its very nature, would remain hidden, destined to disappear from the public sphere. However, the work doesn't just take into account "democratic" access to this data; it also reinforces democratic values as such, that is, the possibility of personal action, of individual speech, of making a contribution whose value is equivalent to that of all other occurrences.
The database is an instrument of memory. Memory, however, possesses the ability to counteract erasure, since, every time it is consulted, the document regenerates in the mind of the another individual. Thus, a case of censorship, meant to be suppressed, is here the object of knowledge and recognition. Putting something to memory is an act of conservation, a referencing likely to trigger retrospection and reflection. Furthermore, comparative consultation of the data generates a process leading to an intelligibility, a conscious integration of content to produce meaning on an individual level, a significance that varies according to user and path taken. Finally, the diversity of sources and the multiplicity of trajectories challenges the authoritarianism that a single author and trajectory can imply. For these various reasons, the "ethical" nature and creative aspect of The File Room's content are supported and strengthened by the "ethical" nature of the database and its creative potential.
CULTURAL CENSORSHIP, OR THE POWER OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
"Much of the battle here over censorship and expression has been fought in the arts, which have provided both an easy target and a potent symbol."7
Everybody knows some cases of artistic censorship. The proscribed books during Quebec's "grande noirceur" - a dark period in its recent history -, and the troubling fate of Salman Rushdie after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, are examples that immediately spring to mind. Browsing the archives of The File Room, one can only be impressed by the magnitude of the phenomenon and by the number of instances of artistic censorship throughout the world and through history, in all disciplines. There is no shortage of recent case, and several of these relate to access to and dissemination of content on the Internet, which goes to show that censorship is as active as ever, and this open and "democratic" medium is not immune to controls. One can only admit with the artist: "We can't ever consider censorship a closed matter. It's alive and well, sadly enough."8
That art can be so widely targeted by censorship may seem surprising. Art often seems to occupy a space somewhat distinct from the social and political domain - where agencies of power exert a real controlling function. Yet one must admit, faced with the facts of the situation laid out in The File Room, that art is indeed a "target"; but it is also, therefore, a means for exercising individuality, for expression that doesn't bend to the dictates of authority, of whatever kind. The File Room makes manifest art's potentially subversive aspect. By allowing anybody to reveal what was hidden, making legible that which was meant to be erased, making visible the invisible, the project challenges all forms of control and authority. It provides a public space for individual expression, a space that had been withheld.
Notes
1 : Robert Atkins, Meditating on Art and Life in the Information Age, Antoni Muntadas and the Media Landscape, Barcelona, 1996. 
2 : The installation was presented in several other venues afterward, and at several events, notably the Lyon Biennale (1995), Ars Electronica in Linz (1995), and ISEA 1995, in Montreal.
3 : A form is provided for adding new content to the database. Starting out with close to 400 instances of censorship, it comprised about 5,000 two years later.
see Robert Atkins, op. cit.
4 : Organized by the Walter Phillips and Dunlop Art Galleries, the exhibition was designed by curators Steve Dietz, Sarah Cook, and Anthony Kiendl. The File Room was among the featured works. (See link)
5 : Databases that we can all create ourselves, with user-friendly software, and that can deal with various subjects, thematically structured lists, groupings, and so on; but also the databases that include us - as individuals, citizens, consumers - and are set up by organizations, government agencies, etc.
6 : Interview conducted by Inna Razumova, Gerri Wittig, and Brett Statbaum, and published in Switch
7 : Rachel Weiss, "Some Reasons Why The File Room Exists", in The File Room Publication
8 : In an interview with Robert Atkins
Sylvie Parent
(Translated from French by Ron Ross)
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