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Wiki-histories: Archival Internship at Khoj


“Far from a fixed form, the encyclopaedia is a particularly mobile genre that has fluctuated widely over centuries and different cultures, influenced by changes in what counts as common knowledge and developments in the technology of the book…”
– Dan O’Sullivan (What is an encyclopedia? – CPOV, 2011)
What is an encyclopaedia? What is an archive? When a moment of beauty, a spoken word of wisdom, a crazy idea passes by, how do we relive it, share it and keep it alive in our collective memories? Every single day as we crawl through a densely networked world creating meaning, news, art and reality, what traces do we leave behind? Are institutional narratives, art history and pedagogical material being produced, circulated and consumed in drastically transformed ways today? What can we learn from crowd sourced models of knowledge such as Wikipedia? As artists how do we make ourselves visible and etched in the new canons of history?
An important aspect of Khoj is that we not only bring together dynamic art practitioners and thinkers but are also a unique archive of experimental practices, art histories, early artworks of many established artists and more. As Khoj embarks on a new journey to build this archive, the aim is to destabilize the idea of a larger Archive and instead, think of innovative ways to capture, document and make publicly available, the stories, biographies, images and other material we have so carefully preserved till date.
In a series of many such interventions to imagine a Khoj archive, we call upon students, artists, researchers and others to apply to “Wiki-histories” – a three month internship with Khoj. Through the internship we will try to understand alternate archives, experience how information is canonized in the digital age and raise pertinent questions about the position of experimental art practices within academia.
Interns will work in collaboration with the Khoj team to produce Wikipedia biographies of seminal contemporary Indian artists in English and Indian languages. They will also delve into questions of image licensing, authorship and art for education. They are expected to fully engage with a virtual community of Wikipedians and their policies to create these articles. This is an unpaid internship open to Delhi residents only. A small travel allowance will be provided. A letter of recommendation will be provided on completion. Interns are expected to bring their own laptops.
Note: Proficiency in writing in one Indian language is appreciated.
To apply, please send an e-mail titled Wiki-histories with your C.V and two academic/writing samples to applications@khojworkshop.org by 25th October, 2013.