Open Space(s)
Traditionally, spaces have shaped cultural production. Whether referring to social spaces, such as the 19th-century literary cafés, bookstores, archives, libraries, and meeting halls – or more recently, music studios and art galleries, the physical location has always influenced how knowledge is created and shared. However, in the post-pandemic digital era, this understanding is shifting. Today, we live in a world where virtual and physical dimensions have become increasingly intertwined, blurring the boundaries between ‘real’ interactions and digital presence.
In this series, we explore the relationship between culture and the concept of space. Here, ‘space’ encompasses not only the physical and immediate environment but also its extensions into the digital realm.
Adrian Matus interviews Jacqueline Gordon (Communication Specialist at the Historical Archives of the European Union, Florence) and Anastasia Remes (Archivist at the Historical Archives of the European Union, Florence).
Archives are vital for knowledge formation. Historians and social scientists rely on these spaces to shape new narratives and question the past. Yet, archives often seem to be unveiled in a sort of mystery, which might be partly due to the access restrictions for the specialists and broader public alike. However, not all the archives follow this restrictive approach. On the contrary, many institutions started to favour openness and transparency. Rather than limiting access for the researchers and the larger public, they encourage interactions on different levels.
Such institutions provide primary sources for specialized researchers, create workshops for university and high-school students and also engage the broader public through exhibitions and online presence. In doing so, archives provide a fresh understanding of their own role in the 21st century.
One example of such space favouring openness and transparency is the Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU), based in Florence. In this episode of Open Space(s), we speak with Jacqueline Gordon, Communication Specialist at the HAEU, and Anastasia Remes, Archivist at the same institution. Throughout this podcast, they share the multiple reasons that make this archive unique, highlighting its defining features and current challenges.
Unlike national archives, the HAEU does not belong to any state. Instead, it is a transnational one that preserves documents created by various EU institutions, collects private papers of individuals, movements and international organizations that lead to the European integration, stores oral history interviews, and engages with the larger public throughout its educational projects. By reading the documents, one can have a unique insight into the personal experiences, negotiations, as well as informal decisions that shaped the EU.
The location of the archives also plays a crucial role, as Florence is not one of the EU’s main political centers. Instead, the founders chose this place because of the proximity of the European University Institute (EUI), where scholars often focus on the history of European integration. Although its geographical location might pose particular logistical challenges, many of the HAEU’s archival materials can also be consulted online or through on-demand digitization programs, as Anastasia Remes mentioned in the podcast:
we are creating digital copies for preservation and for access. During the COVID-10 pandemic, this became very important, as people were not able to travel to Florence to consult the original documents.
In this way, the physical space of the archive naturally extends into the digital realm by facilitating researchers’ access to primary sources.
As the podcast emphasizes, the HAEU has certain unique features. One of them is the large variety of documents in different national languages, a richness that can also pose unique difficulties. Therefore, Jacqueline Gordon and Anastasia Remes presented the specific archival workflow, focusing on metadata and controlled vocabulary challenges encountered when curating multilingual documents. By employing multilingual archivists and closely working with the original institutions, the archive demonstrates a strong commitment to linguistic inclusivity. Another challenge is the increasing presence of digitally born documents, which pose new questions in the archival work.
Ultimately, Jacqueline Gordon and Anastasia Remes underline that HAEU are not simply storage spaces but active vectors that shape historical awareness:
we also have activities for family and children- concerts, art exhibitions (…) the idea is to offer a lot of activities that will bring the general public who would never visit on a Saturday an archive. We bring them here and we teach them about what we do. And for them, it is a real revelation because most people don’t know that the history of the EU is preserved in the hills of Florence
In the era of digitalization, political shifts, populism and Euroskepticism, the archive’s mission to preserve, educate and engage the broader public is more important than ever. The hope is that such archives will indeed help the much-needed reconnection of citizens with the European project.
The conversation was conducted by Adrian Matus. Alina Young edited the audio file.
