Festivals, Covid-19, and the Crisis of Archiving

Abstract

AbstractBuilding upon my experience working with festival archives, this chapter examines some of the challenges with archiving festivals in times of pandemic. It argues that festival organizers, scholars, and amateur historians must collect and preserve a maximum of documents on festivals’ responses to the pandemic: while we collectively are living through a historical moment (an unprecedented crisis), there is a real possibility that the festivals organized in Covid times may not be properly archived. In particular, I look at some of the reasons why festivals are rarely properly archived and examine the impact of technology on the preservation of festival histories. I then discuss how the lack of a clear archival impetus will shape future research on festivals and argue for a reconceptualization of academic scholarship as a counterarchival gesture.