The evental archive: Collective mnemonics and post-digital networks

Digital open-access networks, including virtual archives such as search engines, social media profiles and corporate and personal websites, have reconfigured the dynamics of information dissemination. This article introduces the concept of the ‘evental archive’, a new archival form that emerges from multimodal engagement with unfolding events. It considers the cognitive and radical implications of interactive transactions within post-digital networks, with a particular focus on how evental archives preserve and extend the temporality of the original event by transcending its significance. These archives are facilitating a collective reconfiguration of mnemonics by enabling more inclusive modes of participation, largely mediated through the communicative function of the image. Moreover, the increased accessibility and popularity of digital archives influence the perceived truthfulness of their content, which is often aided by photography’s presumed veracity. This article, therefore, also examines how the evolving conditions of digital archives and open-access networks impose new pressures on the traditional role of the photographic document. Furthermore, it considers how the temporal nature of virtual interactions redefines the contested relationship between truth and the image.