Transforming Collections: Reimagining Art, Nation and Heritage

20多年前，斯图尔特·霍尔提出了一个问题：“谁的遗产？”（Hall, 1999）。霍尔呼吁对遗产和国家进行批判性的转变和重新构想，“打破传统”，重新构想后国家”，这一呼吁一如既往地迫切。在2019冠状病毒病大流行的持续不同影响和全球重新点燃“黑人的命也是命”运动的背景下，如果不解决艺术领域的结构性不平等、围绕“有争议的遗产”的辩论，以及物品中蕴含的艰难和有争议的历史，就无法想象“国家收藏”。改造藏品：重新想象艺术、民族和遗产旨在建立在非殖民化女权主义方法和创造性机器学习（ML）发展的基础上：实现藏品的数字交叉搜索，揭示偏见模式，揭示隐藏的和意想不到的联系，从而开辟新的解释框架和艺术、民族和遗产的潜在叙事。《转变收藏》试图解决以下问题：我们如何在我们的文化收藏中对抗结构性偏见和分散西方白人叙事？（Wekker, 2016; Olusoga, 2016）-我们如何才能揭示被压抑的历史，放大被边缘化的声音，并重新评估被主流叙事忽视或边缘化的艺术家和艺术品？-我们如何改变支撑收集和再现不平等和抹除的架构和“压迫算法”（Noble, 2018） ？-我们如何想象一个分布式但又相互联系的“国家收藏”，它建立在现有知识的基础上，并丰富了现有知识，具有多种多样的新叙述？-我们如何通过收藏作为更广泛的“数字文化记录”的一部分来重新构想艺术、民族和遗产（Risam, 2019）？“转化收藏”是由伦敦艺术大学（UAL）和泰特美术馆牵头的一个跨学科合作项目，泰特美术馆收藏了16世纪以来的英国国家艺术收藏品和国际现当代艺术收藏品。该项目将由UAL的非殖民化艺术学院和创意计算学院的核心团队领导，作为独立研究机构（IRO）与泰特美术馆密切合作。除了泰特美术馆，“转化收藏”在英国有9个项目合作伙伴和4个合作组织，代表着重要的公共收藏、主要的艺术慈善机构和不同规模的重要档案。它们是：艺术委员会收藏、英国文化协会收藏、伯明翰博物馆信托、格拉斯哥博物馆、利物浦博物馆信托、米德尔斯堡现代艺术研究所、惠康收藏、艺术基金、当代艺术协会、英国艺术协会、JISC档案中心和Iniva（国际视觉艺术研究所）。我们在埃因霍温的Van Abbemuseum也有一个国际项目合作伙伴，他将在第一年主持一个重要的项目会议。该项目采用了一种编织的方法，包括：1)批判性艺术史和博物馆学研究；2)创造性机器学习开发和参与式设计；3)艺术家数字委员会作为对藏品的干预。在国家领导的TANC基金会项目，临时语义（2020-22），联合大学领导的项目，AHRC黑人艺术家和现代主义（2015-18）和UKRI MIMIC项目（音乐智能机器创造性互动，2018-21）的见解和新发现的基础上，转化收藏将“消除障碍”的挑战视为知识和权力的问题-不仅是什么变得可见，可读，可访问的问题，而且是如何，以及为谁。因此，“馆藏转换”旨在模拟和测试新的、可持续的跨馆藏搜索方式；揭露集合数据的内在不公平；重新连接，重新语境化和重新诠释“彩色艺术家”的作品；并授权不同的利益相关者发现收集的有时令人不安的故事。

Over 20 years ago, Stuart Hall posed the question, 'Whose heritage?' (Hall, 1999). Hall's call for the critical transformation and reimagining of heritage and nation, for 'un-settling "The Heritage" and re-imagining the post-nation', remains as urgent as ever. In the context of the ongoing disparate impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the global re-ignition of the Black Lives Matter movement, 'a national collection' cannot be imagined without addressing the structural inequalities in the arts, debates around 'contested heritage', and the difficult and contentious histories imbued in objects. Transforming Collections: Reimagining Art, Nation and Heritage aims to build on decolonial feminist approaches and creative machine learning (ML) development: to enable digital cross-search of collections, to surface patterns of bias, to uncover hidden and unexpected connections, and to thus open up new interpretative frames and potential narratives of art, nation and heritage.Transforming Collections seeks to address the following questions:- How can we counter structural biases and decentre white Western narratives in our cultural collections? (Wekker, 2016; Olusoga, 2016)- How can we surface suppressed histories, amplify marginalized voices, and reevaluate artists and artworks ignored or sidelined by dominant narratives?- How can we transform the architectures and 'algorithms of oppression' (Noble, 2018) that underpin collections and reproduce inequalities and erasures?- How can we imagine a distributed yet connected 'national collection' that builds on and enriches existing knowledge, with multiple and multivocal new narratives?- How can we reimagine art, nation and heritage through collections as part of the wider 'digital cultural record' (Risam, 2019)? Transforming Collections is an interdisciplinary collaborative project led by University of the Arts London (UAL) with Tate, home to the national collection of British art from the 16th century and an international modern and contemporary art collection. The project will be led by a core team from UAL's Decolonising Arts Institute and Creative Computing Institute, working closely with Tate as an Independent Research Organisation (IRO). In addition to Tate, Transforming Collections has nine project partners and four collaborating organisations across the UK, representing significant public collections as well as major arts charities and key archives of different scales. These are: Arts Council Collection, British Council Collection, Birmingham Museums Trust, Glasgow Museums, Liverpool Museums Trust, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Wellcome Collection, Art Fund, Contemporary Art Society, Art UK, the JISC Archives Hub and Iniva (Institute of International Visual Art). We also have an international project partner in the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, who will host a major project conference in year one. The project adopts a braided approach enfolding 1) Critical art historical and museological research with 2) Creative machine learning development and participatory design and 3) Artists digital commissions as interventions into collections. Building on the insights and emerging findings of the Tate-led TANC Foundation project, Provisional Semantics (2020-22), and the UAL-led projects, AHRC Black Artists and Modernism (2015-18) and UKRI MIMIC project (Musically Intelligent Machines Interacting Creatively, 2018-21), Transforming Collections approaches the challenge of 'dissolving barriers' as a problem of knowledge and power - not only a question of what becomes visible, legible, accessible, but also how, and for whom. As such, Transforming Collections aims to model and test new and sustainable ways of searching across collections; to expose in-built inequities in collections data; to reconnect, recontextualise and reinterpret the work of 'artists of colour'; and empower diverse stakeholders in discovering the sometimes uncomfortable stories that collections.