KJC Korea
Journal Central

This study aims to explore the ‘affective value’ of records. Traditionally, records have been evaluated as having evidence value, information value, and artificial value. However, the ‘affective turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, which began in the 1990s, calls for discussion on the affective value of records. The overseas archive academia is in full swing discussing the emotional value of records after the ‘affective turn’. However, there is no emotional discussion on records in the domestic archive academia. This study first conducts theoretical discussions to overcome these domestic limitations and explore the emotional value of archives in earnest. Following the theoretical discussion, a specific case will be dealt with next. As a representative storage of affect, which records the pain, sadness, and condolences of the domestic disaster era, this study investigates the record management case of the 4.16 Memory Storage. The Ferry Sewol disaster, which provided a dramatic opportunity to witness the unexpected ripple effect of affect in Korea, and the 4.16 Memory Storage as a recording activity, can be seen as a representative example of affective recording of the pain and sadness of survivors of the trauma incident. It will capture the differentiation of affet recording, which is different from the record management practice, and demonstrate empirically how this differentiation is implemented from collection to evaluation and service through the ‘4.16 Memory Storage’.

South Africa implemented apartheid from 1948 to 1994. The main content of this policy was to classify races such as whites, Indians, mixed-race people, and blacks, and to limit all social activities, including residence, personal property ownership, and economic activities, depending on the class. All races except white people were discriminated against and suppressed for having different skin colors. South African citizens resisted the government’s indiscriminate violence, and public opinion criticizing them expanded beyond the local community to various parts of the world. One of the things that made this possible was photographs detailing the scene of the violence. Foreign journalists who captured popular oppression as well as photographers from South Africa were immersed in recording the lives of those who were marginalized and suffered on an individual level. If they had not been willing to inform the reality and did not actually record it as a photo, many people would not have known the horrors of the situation caused by racial discrimination. Therefore, this paper focuses on Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureau of Everyday Life, which captures various aspects of apartheid and displays related records, and examines the aspects of racism committed in South Africa described in the photo. The exhibition covers the period from 1948 when apartheid began until 1995, when Nelson Mandela was elected president and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was launched to correct the wrong view of history. Many of the photos on display were taken by Peter Magubane, Ian Berry, David Goldblatt, and Santu Mofoken, a collection of museums, art galleries and media, including various archives. The photographs on display are primarily the work of photographers. It is both a photographic work and a media that proves South Africa’s past since the 1960s, but it has been mainly dealt with in the field of photography and art history rather than from a historical or archival point of view. However, the photos have characteristics as records, and the contextual information contained in them is characterized by being able to look back on history from various perspectives. Therefore, it is very important to expand in the previously studied area to examine the time from various perspectives and interpret it anew. The photographs presented in the exhibition prove and describe events and people that are not included in South Africa’s official records. This is significant in that it incorporates socially marginalized people and events into historical gaps through ordinary people’s memories and personal records, and is reproduced in various media to strengthen and spread the context of record production.

In recent years, the term “art archives” has become increasingly popular, with the growing use of archives in exhibitions and program planning within domestic cultural and arts institutions. The need for art archives has been raised for reasons such as establishing the identity of art and culture and providing basic resources for academic research; however, they are now being recognized as a direct resource and service for users. Accordingly, research has also been conducted on the values, policies, and management practices of art archives in the archiving field. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research on management methodologies that can be applied to institutions that manage art archives. In particular, for the efficient use of art archives, classification, organization, and systematic management of descriptive areas must be preceded. But, There are different methods of managing art archives depending on the type of collection, the management institution, and the characteristics of the collection resources, which, in turn, makes it difficult to apply a consistent methodology for classification and description. Based on actual cases from The Art Archives, Seoul Museum of Art, this study examined the types and categories of arts, and presented the establishment of a classification system and archival description rules.