Reconstructing the Archive: Collaboration, Intervention and Sharing History

The Stanley Kubrick Archive (SKA), housed at the University of the Arts London, contains over 900 linear metres of material spanning Stanley Kubrick’s filmmaking career. Within this ‘identity archive’ are voices of a myriad of other contributors to his films and material relevant to fields beyond film. This paper focuses on the innovative ways we are working together as historian and archivist to challenge the narratives of the archive, to re-evaluate its structure, and to reconsider its role as a shared repository of history. We begin by discussing our collaborative project ‘Reconstructing the Archive’. The project addresses gaps and silences in the SKA by comparing the catalogue to the physical material and looking to other sources outside the archive, with the aim of attributing work to unrecognized collaborators. We are focussing on marginalised voices to reclaim the past and decenter the dominant white, heterosexual, cisgendered male, auteur-based history of film production. Using examples from the catalogue and sharing items from the archive, we will demonstrate the process of working together, what we have found and how we are addressing the gaps through catalogue interventions and the creation of a digital oral history counter archive. We then discuss the contested nature of ‘identity archives’ and the role of the archivist and the archive in shaping history and memory. We will present ways that our project can serve as a springboard to develop a new archival praxis that bridges the gap between historian and archivist. We conclude by discussing ways we can all share our findings within and beyond academia, to make archives more accessible and inclusive and to make an impact on wider historical narratives. We must consider ways that communities, and particularly young people, access history and how we can move together towards a better understanding of the past.