Notion of omission by Rosemary

https://leftove.rs/
leftovers, left ephemera, ...
state records are not missing from the archive, choice to not put them

Eva Library of Omissions and Inclusions
small library
"How do you bring a classroom to life as a work of art?" (Felix Guattari)
"How do you bring a work of art to life as if it were a classroom?"
wanted to create theme based ressource of materials of things that people felt was missing in established libraries & databases
ex. women writers, feminist works...
https://evaweinmayr.com/work/library-of-inclusions-and-omissions/

Why missing things are important ehm why the things missing are important
people were asked to write descriptions, as a way to introduce the book & index it

letters was translated in Arabic, Swedish, in order to connect communities, but did not happen, limited in reach

translated letter
trying to connect
trying to connect channels

institutional library has a claim of completeness, it automatically triggers mouvement of omission and inclusion
is an interesting dilemma


Femke, Omissum practise
group of people working on and off in different constellations for many years around legacy of Paul Otlet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Otlet

started when Google was claiming Belgium as place of invention of the internet, forgotten European history
a way to head back into French territory
cover up installation of large data centers in town where archive of Otlet is kept
started to work with the archive, trying to understand relationship Google/Otlet, power relations, technical colonialism
we did not directly address, not explicitly, relationship of Otlet to colonialism, did not flag racist expressions that Otlet made in publications
question was asked in framework of other project around cultural databases
Elodie looked into figure of Otlet: https://diversions.constantvzw.org/wiki/index.php?title=Afrique_aux_noirs

We had left some work undone...
omission = 'left to be done'

We tried to address the blind spot in an 'omissum'.
We made intervention in Wikipedia of Otlet.
https://diversions.constantvzw.org/paul-otlet-an-omissum/
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Otlet&diff=950711784&oldid=949099522

a process that is still open, to be continued

Questions
Read the archive against what is missing vs to try to list what is missing/to do list of things still to be added
Leftovers + Mayday Room is archive of political ephemera
what is missing is what it is stating against, not in relation to filling up the gaps but what is productively missing
ex. Highest Court UK, you cannot take notes, record... 
ex. one reads history backwards - what is missing in the present?

work with what is missing
Eva had a suspicion of things missing, you made a hypothesis
Eva: experience of looking at the shelves + talking to librarians about acquisition policies, have almost no say in what is in the packages ordered
ex. Univeristy library London: package would have all catalogues of MOMA, ... this is what students get as a ressource
how can we trade it differently? what would we need?
you can approach a librarian and ask to order a book, it is more a structural thing, thinking of a different method

How much focus is put into the reasons for things (physical items/information) to be omitted?
What is missing? Why?
Femke: what was missing: the aknowledgement that Otlet needed to be approached with caution
where it got lost: trying to keep it an open process, 
trying within constant to build diffeent discussions, opening, moments... Because there were moment were problems were signaled by certain people but we didn't catch it proberly.
there needs to be change in structures with which we're operating. The action on the wiki was necessary

Rosemary:
what is missing: aknowledgement of not being able to complete a collection
sometimes it's very concrete decision in our practice
f.ex. we don't take party political material
even if it could be in the collection; the idea is not to be complete. Thinking about what is missing could help understanding of ot as specialized thing. 
metadata/fields that are missing, we're doing processes with technologies on texts
there's connections between materials that are not complete but that's okay. 
not a full material record neither, materials get destroyed over the years

Eva:not sure about using the word missing; because there will always be missing stuff
wanted just to have more voices, more visions but that didn't really happen
structural problem is really that it is located in the art school, highly loaded & powerful institution
people who are not at the art school dismiss it, don't want to engage with centralist thinking of the art schools
I felt pulled into centralist thinking because I was doing it in the frame of art school
methodologically it's still problematic from the beginning if you want to do community library; in formers community libraries there'no one person starting and collection
group of people with a concern, putting together material around this concern, is a fundamental flow

Did you discuss the innocence that lies in the word 'missing'? Svenja: There's no mention of the violence of exclusion in the word missing
etymology of omission? 
feels like a strategical move to remove something from centralized entity, violent act of omitting, not by mistake or chance, but clear act
Svenja: first encountered term as political correct term for blind spot
FS: it's also the process of slowly understanding that seeing the blind spot was also an omission; 
neglect is a form of violence, yes. I'm not sure by talking there's ways to come back from that. That's why I wanted to talk about practices to deal with omissions

https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/images/b/b6/Mimi_Onuoha_Excerpt.mp4
- hidden -> active 


Link with the Queering damage project
to not stay away from innocent promise of repair; living with the damages
the practise itself needs work

kind of material that cannot be categorized in particular system
ex oral histories...
interesting to think through strategies to deal with that

Mayday Rooms actively acquire stuff?
People approaching you?
It comes thorugh political network we're involved, it is active but in a different way
it is a very fragmented collection
try ot go out and ocllect housing struggles from the last 5y, was difficult, volume/where you look
It is a much active collecting, they've not done very much

sometimes attempting to complete is also violent

Eva: it's a super loaded process you describe [to Femke]
omission as soon as you make it visible, referring to the fact you hadn't included it earlier, 
so it's not an omission anymore? you omitted the omission?

F: I don't think so, it makes the omission much clearer, however painful it is, by doing that the violent neglect becomes more adressable, articulated. It's difficult to find a balance of what is generative or how it can be a form of queering damage. When you're at the same time trying to make up for something that should have been there and at the same time not to pretend that you're repairing something, doing this with many voices, layers,, but it's important to try
but sometimes the attempt to repair can be worse
I don't know if that's even true. There's the problem of history, how do you speak now of something that happened in the project in the past, with a figure that was working in another context
make sure that you're not using the historical discourse as an excuse for the attitude
There's many damages to this... 

attmpt as truth
this conversation connects back to the one at 15h

Rosemary: changing relationships to the state, political parties can be a way to think it thorugh...