Archive Fever

As you tend your garden this summer, spare a thought for Alison Vaughan, responsible for no less than 1.5 million precious botanical specimens. As collections manager at the National Herbarium of Victoria, which dates back to 1853, Alison stewards a vast archive of past and present biodiversity that illuminates our social and ecological history and provides tools to build a better future. Why did a 500-year-old aquatic moss from Switzerland end up in drawer in Naarm/Melbourne? How is the Herbarium at once a colonial institution and a resource to remedy environmental ills of colonisation? What does repatriation mean in the context of botanical archives? And whose are the hidden hands that built this continent’s oldest settler scientific institution?

How did hearing Samuel Becket say ‘fuck it’ on a scratchy tape kickstart a multi-doctoral author’s archive addiction? In this episode, Yves and Clare talk to Dr (Dr) Matthew Lamb about his colossal biography of colossus intellect, activist, journalist, novelist, publisher and archivist, Frank Moorhouse. How does a biographer navigate a living subject, especially when that person is a self-proclaimed chameleon? Do the personal archives of such a protean figure help or hinder truth-telling about a man who urged: ‘when the facts conflict with the legend, print the legend’. And where does responsibility lie when your subject commands ‘make it salacious’—but also requires discretion about his sexuality and gender?

In this raw and intimate episode, historian Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson spills the tea on the psychological rollercoaster of archival research: it offered the ‘biggest high’ and also ‘fucked [her] up’. From her formative childhood experiences in Beijing, to stumbling upon a human tooth in a Queensland court file, to reckoning with the human face of anti-Chinese racism, Sophie walks us through the time capsules of human drama she uses to tell the stories of Chinese Australia. What does a former market garden reveal about Chinese and First Nations cooperation? How could language be a technology of resistance for racialised migrants? And why did her ex’s probate records provide a lightbulb moment about migration?

An archival decolonist walks into a colonial institution, and dreams up a whole new paradigm for cultural heritage. Today on Archive Fever, Wiradjuri librarian and museum educator Nathan Sentance illuminates the challenges and possibilities of bringing Indigenous epistemologies and voices into the GLAM sector. Why is it vital to close the gap between First Nations lived experience and the white-dominated written record? How can institutions move away from old models of colonial extraction, and instead build up First Nations collections via authentic collaboration and consent? And why are art and creativity key to making this thing we call ‘decolonisation’ actually happen?

What does it feel like to be a young, urban, Jewish post-war migrant woman who grabs a camera and walks into the Australian desert, only to emerge 50 years later with an intimate archive of a civil rights movement? In this very special episode, Yves and Clare are joined by legendary octogenarian photographer Juno Gemes to discuss her lifelong pursuit of creativity, community, independence and social justice. hy did Juno follow in the footsteps of Richard Avendon and not James Baldwin? What role does photography play in the political and artistic pursuit of truth-telling? Can landscape be a portrait? And why is living in an archive both a privilege and a responsibility?