Process Documentation
Methodology and framework
The exhibition practices the ethic of care that centres on radical empathy and obligations of care. The emphasis is on the "particularity, connection, and context" (Cole and Coultrap-McQuin, 1992) rather than abstract moral principles. The exhibit will help to raise the unique voice of individual victims. We place care at the core value of our moral construction.
On the other hand, we acknowledge the limits of empathy, the difference between self and other. As Edith Stein (2013) interprets "empathy" as broadly as “acts in which foreign experience is comprehended.” With that said, we will be mindful to not appropriate the experience of others under the guise of empathy in our archive. Under careful negotiation, we expect empathy would give us insight into the others and their positions, while also letting us be aware of the disjunction between the self and the other. Additionally , connected with care and respect, we would strive for the balance between our desire to enrich the victim story and the privacy, desires and needs of the object's records and the victim's family.
We keep in mind our responsibilities toward a larger community, for whom the use of records has lasting consequences (McEwan and Goodman, 2010). The exhibit is established based on our ethical commitment to empathize with communities affected by archival use. To articulate the responsibilities into our archive, we keep a list of questions for ourselves through the project: What are the consequences of every decision we make on the larger communities? Whose voices are silenced? Will the way we do the mapping potentially create risks for vulnerabilities or marginalized groups? We set these questions for ourselves as guidelines to guide us through the process of exhibit creation. Moreover, we also take note of our ideas that may be beneficial for future development. Due to the time constraints, we may not address all of them, but we hope that our ideas could help others in the iteration of the process of developing the archive.
Silent Witness Map
Primary exhibit users are family and friends of victims, survivors of domestic abuse, artists use records, community members use records, and academic scholars. The exhibit hopes to provide each visitor an emotional experience aiming to raise awareness around the province.
Before starting the map, as mentioned by Hannah, a location we would never be exposed to is the address of shelters, which is obvious for the victim's safety.
Tragedy took place a decade ago, and building infrastructure has been changed since then. Hence, what would be a potential risk for unrelated people who are currently living in mentioned places, or victims' family who may still live in the place.
While working on mapping their biography with destinations, we kept in mind how much of the granularity of the location is appropriate. When it comes to their places of residence, we give general locations like the cities or countries they resided in. The only specific addresses we provide are of public locations and organizations like universities. Further, to respect the victims and their families, we only used previously published location material so we are not releasing private information.
What is the value of the digital exhibit contributing to the Silence Witness Program?
Instead of simply digitizing victims’ records, we aim to utilize the map to enrich the records and explore a new way to tell the stories for victims. Memory ties to space and time, and we want to place the memory back into its original ‘box’. For instance, the Royal Alex Hospital in Edmonton in the 1990s is not the exact Royal Alex Hospital viewers passed by a few days ago. We want to preserve the nuance of memory by contributing the context for victim life at that time. In our exhibit, each victim will have a map version corresponding to their living period.
Records are biographies written by the family of the victim. The content is also limited to fit in the fixed size of physical plaque sticking on life-sized silhouettes. In the digital version of the exhibition, it opens the opportunities and space for the archiver to not only record the victims' families documentations but also to enrich the records by adding geographical aspects to the records. Each victim biography has a map that defines their associated places. For instance, Lisa, a small town Alberta farm girl, lived her dream in Grand Cayman. These places are not necessarily places where they were found. It could be places marking their life milestones, or places they dreamed to go someday but unfortunately could not make it.
Limitations
As most of our materials are over a decade old, some of our subjects had limited information, making it difficult to build a map of their lives. We confirmed some locations through news reports if necessary. This exemplifies the importance of archiving information as their stories are lost overtime without cataloging.
Reference
Caswell, M., & Cifor, M. (2016). From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in the Archives. Archivaria 81, 23-43. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/687705.
Cole, E. B., & In Coultrap-McQuin, S. (Eds.). (1992). Explorations in feminist ethics: Theory and practice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
lacovino, L. (2010). Rethinking archival, ethical and legal frameworks for records of Indigenous Australian communities: A participant relationship model of rights and responsibilities. Archival Science, 10(4), 353–372. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-010-9120-3
McEwan, C., & Goodman, M. K. (2010). Place geography and the ethics of care: Introductory remarks on the geographies of ethics, responsibility and care. Ethics, Place & Environment, 13(2), 103–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/13668791003778602
Stein, E. (2013). On the problem of empathy. Springer.