WTO History Project

http://depts.washington.edu/wtohist/

This project focuses on the World Trade Organization protests and events that occurred in Seattle in 1999.  Made possible by the University of Washington Library as well as the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, the aim of the project centers around the notion of public memory, and the active reexamination of people, organizations and events that made up the pieces to a much larger focus on a global citizens movement.  It is not only this major disparity between the events and capturing of events that happened by participants in the WTO protests through major television networks and newspaper reports, but also this relationship to the physical body and the lived, remembered bodies during the week long event that is striking when looking back on archival footage.

Much of the History Project’s collection focuses on the act of gathering timelines, interviews and images in such a way that takes into account multiple perspectives, and an overarching structure in creating an indexical listing of people, signs and personal testimonies that gives more of a “face” to the various marches, blockades and inner-workings of the WTO meetings in coming to terms with the people and causes involved. The digital collection of images is divided into document types, Issue areas, organizations and intended purposes (mobilization, oral histories). One of the most interesting elements to my own research on this project website regarding the collections is the labeling of pictures and the interconnectedness of events with particular listings and searchable terms. The labels range from “ten cops standing inside a ring of bicycles” to one word terms such as “turtle” or “V-sign” and “Crowd #1.” Looking at this very particular example of an archival digital project, I am interested in the process of gathering and processing images and texts surrounding the activist body as part of larger area of historical memory regarding protests in a particular time and space. In the new face of a global citizens movement and historical preservation, how exactly do higher institutions such as the University of Washington play a role in recording and providing a public activist space? What are the boundaries of a public activist space, if any? In categorizing digital images of the WTO protests through searchable terms, how is memory rearticulated in relation to public digital spaces?