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Summary: Index of the Disappeared (Mariam Ghani + Chitra Ganesh)
Chitra Ganesh + Mariam Ghani
have collaborated since 2004 on the project Index of the Disappeared,
which is both a physical archive of post-9/11 disappearances and a
mobile platform for public dialogue. As an archive, the Index traces the
difficult histories of immigrant, other and dissenting communities in
the US since 9/11, and the ways in which censorship of speech and data
blackouts create real absences in real lives, by collecting and
connecting documents and testimony. As a platform, the Index presents
discussions on ideas and issues related to the materials it archives
(and some on archiving itself, like this conference), and stages
interventions that translate those materials into visual elements
installed in a range of physical and virtual spaces - including
galleries, museums, universities, community centers, libraries,
conferences, magazines, books, windows, the street, the web and the
mail. Recent Index projects include a web project
commissioned by Creative Time Reports; a print project for the 30th
anniversary issue of the Radical History Review; a parasitic
library-within-a-library in the downtown Buffalo public library; a
site-specific installation of Index documents related to military codes
of conduct at the Park Avenue Armory for the exhibition Democracy in
America; and a multilingual window installation at Exit Art with texts
drawn from the archive in large-scale neon and vinyl. Ganesh and Ghani
are the 2013-14 artists in residence at the Asian/Pacific/American
institute at NYU. As part of their residency, Index of the Disappeared
is currently presenting the window installation Watch This Space at the Kimmel Center (Washington Square South and LaGuardia Place) and the library installation Parasitic Archive
at the Kevorkian Center (Washington Square South and Sullivan Street).
Details, documentation and updates on the Index can be found at kabul-reconstructions.net/disappeared.
Mona Jimenez
Mona Jimenez started transferring obsolete videotapes in the late
1980s and has been an advocate and organizer for the preservation of
independent media ever since. She is Associate Arts Professor/Associate
Director in NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, where
she teaches collection management and the preservation of video and
digital works. Since 2009 she has been experimenting with participatory
models of media/film archiving locally and through Community Archiving
Workshops organized by the Independent Media Committee of the
Association of Moving Image Archivists. She is the founder of
Audiovisual Preservation Exchange (APEX), a project to network
audiovisual archivists, educators and students internationally through
shared work on collections. She is co-editor with Sherry Miller Hocking
and Kathy High of The Emergence of Video Processing Tools: Television Becoming Unglued.
Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen
Jack Tchen is a facilitator, teacher, historian, and curator.
An associate professor at New York University, he is founding director
of the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute at New York
University and co-founder of the Department of Social and Cultural
Analysis. He is also co-founder and senior historian at the Museum of
Chinese in America. Tchen is the co-editor of the recently published Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear, a comprehensive repository of anti-Asian images and writings. He is also the author of the award-winning books New York before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776-1882 and Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown, 1895-1905.
Awards include the Charles S. Frankel Prize from the National Endowment
for the Humanities (renamed The National Medal of Humanities).
Discussion with Shaina Anand, Lara Baladi, Ann Cvetkovich, Chitra Ganesh, Mariam Ghani, Mona Jimenez, and John Kuo Wei Tchen
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