Official museums, exhibitions and archives in the modern world are often evidence of the modes of exercising power and control by the state. The modern state's power to control and order memory, recreating the past to impose imagined national identities, are all underpinnings of various modes of official cultural display that we are exposed to in our daily lives. The last day of the Townhouse gallery's “Speak, Memory” symposium tackled issues that revolved around the politics of archiving and displaying cultural memory. “Don't wait for the archive!” is the rebellious scream that the Pad.ma members have put forth in their presentations. “Pad.ma,” short for Public Access Digital Media Archive, is an online digital archiving platform. According to their website, the Pad.ma archive contains “annotated video material, primarily footage and not finished films. The entire collection is searchable and viewable online, and is free to download for non-commercial use.” Playing by the rules of the online world, where blogs recently opened the way for citizen journalism, Pad.ma invites people to create their own archives.Their theses on the archive promises an alternative to the monopolization of public memory by the state. In other words, Pad.ma is an alternative, free and open platform for rethinking the archive and reproducing a participatory democratic process for knowledge production. Nevertheless, their archives initiative is not encyclopedic in anyway. According to Namita A. Malhorta, Pad.ma does not comprise fragments of representation, nor is it comprehensive. Despite the limitless realm of the virtual world, the idea of a comprehensive online archive is scary, counter productive and violent. The claim of totality resides with totalitarian institutions, which Pad.ma and other similar initiatives are rebelling against. Yet, an online archive's scope remains wide and often trespasses the strict rules of the non-digital world. Thus, how do online archives deal with the controlling regulations of copyrights, etc.? The existing tension between the online world that lives on the public thirst for free easy access to knowledge and legal restrictions on information punctuates the debate on alternative online archives. Pad.ma provides a general public license that facilitates the sharing of, and collaboration in, knowledge production. Their licensing agreement, in line with other legal initiatives, such as the Creative Commons, makes pledges with their users to honor a democratic vision for sharing knowledge. Other initiatives, such as AAAAARG.ORG, provided interesting anecdotes on these legal issues, particularly related to the question of piracy. AAAAARG.ORG describes itself as “an online pirate library.” Linked to a Public School initiative, the online library facilitates the sharing of a plethora of material uploaded and accessed by users all over the world. This free access to knowledge is, of course, threatening to the publishing market. According to the initiative's founder, Sean Dockrary, they received their first “take down notice” after four years. The few objection emails they received came primarily from publishers rather than authors, who are offered an amazing opportunity for disseminating their work through such open forums. For the technologically savvy artists who are operating these online platforms, there are numerous ways to escape such legal harassment. Nevertheless, a rethinking of copyrights laws and other ownership regulations of knowledge will continue to shape the future battle between the online world and the capitalist market regulations. These initiatives are without a doubt good news for the public; knowledge production and access to information are only a click away.
