The archives must go on:An archaeology of digital image technologies within European national film archives (1990-2020)

Abstract

In 2012, film projection went digital, leading to widespread reactions to the claimed death of film and the beginning of a new era for cinema. However, that was not the first time that European national film archives came across digital image technologies. In this dissertation, I sweep through the thirty-year period between 1990 and 2020, in order to propose a comprehensive history of the archival encounters with digital image technologies, from an archaeological point of view. Through an intertwined coverage of archival discourses and technologies (as well as the sciences behind them), I analyse the patterns of technological development, adoption, adaptation or rejection during what can be theorised as a permanent socio-technical transition. I argue that these processes contributed to the shaping of imaginaries which in turn changed the archival practices and discourses. On the one hand, they changed the way archives perceived and theorised digital image technologies, their potentials and their limits. On the other, they adapted the technologies to what corresponded more efficiently – albeit not thoroughly – to archival views and needs. Furthermore, I also claim that there is not one digital technology; but many different ones, conceived through their own socio-technical culture, and refined towards specific goals.By crossing the archival discourses with industrial and scientific ones, I integrate the technical details of (digital) image technologies within the study of film archives; a direction which has never been explored before. This novel research direction enables me to provide a comprehensive technological history of film archives