IASA 2017 Annual Conference

During the late-1960s and early 1970s, independent media artists imagined the formation of network of organizations that would support the production, distribution, exhibition, preservation, and study of film and video not only in the known centers of activity, but across all regions of the United States. These organizations provided services for artists – funding and equipment rentals – and to the surrounding community – screenings, coursework, and study collections. Mapping the Independent Media Community (MIMC) is a project that seeks to illustrate the impact of the individuals and organizations that were part of this larger movement to support the development of independent media arts, not just in the United States, but across the globe.

This brief paper will introduce MIMC and discuss the development of the MIMC application as well as the potential impact of the project as a Public Digital Humanities resource for scholars and for the archives that collect and provide access to the primary source materials from which the MIMC data is derived. MIMC is enfolded in the archives. The data model includes the provenance for each discrete data point in the database, linking individual records back to the primary source material from which it was derived. In locating and documenting these archival traces, MIMC provides an understanding not only of the historical unfolding of the independent media arts and Media Arts Center Movement, but of the archivalization of this history as well – the project itself becoming further enmeshed and entangled in the very history that it seeks to uncover.