ART IS INFORMATION: A CONVERSATION WITH JENNIFER A. FERRETTI
With education largely going remote during the Coronavirus pandemic, navigating resources outside of academic institutions has become imperative for learners who want to continue their work. Jennifer A. Ferretti is an artist and librarian currently working at the Maryland Institute College of Art, whose practices lie at the intersections of art, knowledge formation, information technology, and the local history of Baltimore, Maryland, among other things. Keavy Handley-Byrne spoke with Jennifer about how research can benefit artists, how to use local resources, and the importance of being critical of accepted archive parameters. That conversation is transcribed below.
Jennifer is an artist and Digital Initiatives Librarian at the Maryland Institute College of Art on Piscataway Land (Baltimore, Maryland). She is a first-generation American Latina/Mestiza whose librarianship is guided by critical perspectives, not neutrality. With a firm belief that art is information, she is interested in the research methodologies of artists and non-Western forms of knowledge making and sharing. Jennifer is a Library Journal 2018 Mover & Shaker and a founding member of We Here and Shades Collective.
Keavy Handley-Byrne: Would you mind just introducing yourself -- a little about who you are, what you do, your research interests?
Jenny Ferretti: Sure! My name is Jenny Ferretti -- my pronouns are she/her/hers -- and I’m the digital initiatives librarian at the Maryland Institute College of Art. I’m also a MICA alum. My research interests are definitely topics around librarianship as far as librarianship’s approach to workplace relationships -- so, for example, I just wrote an article about building a critical culture in the workplace, because a lot of times as library and information professionals we think a lot about what we call patrons, so people who use the library, and not necessarily giving the same sort of thought or sensitivity or care towards our coworkers.
Outside of that, outside of libraries, I’m really interested in Baltimore's history -- I’m based in Baltimore, Maryland -- and I’m really interested in Baltimore’s Black history from right around 1935 to just up until 1962. [Laughs] Which is very specific, but it’s because I curated an exhibition of Baltimore photographer Paul Henderson’s work and he worked for the Afro-American Newspaper, so that’s what led me into that topic of research.
KHB: That is super specific! But yeah, sometimes with really specific research interests like that it does help you narrow the sources that you’re looking at down into a more particular space, that can be helpful.
JF: Yeah, I usually just say pre-1968 era, because Baltimore’s civil rights era started pretty early on, around 1935, maybe a couple of years before. I think that’s a little known fact, so it’s just the area that I’m interested in.
KHB: I’m fascinated to hear more about that.... So how has research been helpful to you as a librarian and as an artist? How do you think it can be helpful for educators, curators, artists -- how do you think it can help in those realms that are connected to art? For people who are interested in research as more than just a collection of books or knowledge?
JF: So as I mentioned, I’m MICA alum, but I didn’t really have any connection to MICA’s library when I was a student. One of the things I say in my bio is that I’m interested in the research methodologies of artists, since we aren’t tied to a traditional academic discipline. So we don’t work within the same research systems that other folks might in a really academic environment. I think that research for artists -- you research for many different reasons; one could be to produce an authentic work, for example a filmmaker, if they are making a period piece, would want to make sure the audience feels like they are in that time period. We present research as a way to strengthen your concept, knowing what you know about your research topic or the project that you want to tackle, what do you know and what do you want to know? So that’s another reason you’d want to do research.
But also, understanding where you fit into the context of the field in which you work, so, [in the case of artists] the medium in which you work. Knowing what came before you, knowing what other people are doing within that research topic will help strengthen your reasoning; [and the] idea that your voice is missing and necessary. Like, “This thing isn’t being looked at from my perspective, from my lens, so that’s why I’m making this work.” So there could be a myriad of reasons to do research.
One thing we try to tell our students is that you do research every day, you just might not call it that. I think research has this nebulous connotation to it, that research is “ours” in the library -- as you mentioned, having a bunch of books -- and that’s definitely a form of research, but I think being a little more open and free with what we call research is important in the way we present research ideas and methodologies to students or other folks that we work with.
KHB: Yeah -- for me it ties into the idea of artwork as a way of producing or distributing knowledge.
JF: Yes, exactly. Totally.
KHB: And I know that’s something you’re interested in as well -- could you talk a little bit more about that?
JF: So I think it was right after I started at MICA or -- maybe even for my Job Talk, at Libraries they really like you to do a job talk, same with faculty at institutions, where you present why you would be a good fit, or a particular topic -- I think it was for that, but I presented on this idea that Art is Information. Because I had this art background, and then went on to get my masters in Library and Information Science, I saw these two worlds that weren’t exactly talking to one another. One of the things in my presentation was that I wanted to bridge the gap between artists and archivists (I said archivists because I was working in archives for a while before becoming a librarian). Bridging the gap between artists and information professionals, artists and technologists, artists and entrepreneurs, all of these professions that don’t necessarily talk to each other, but should, because they can add so much to one another.
So I think the idea that art is information, that it should be something that we take the time to understand the concepts in our projects or the way we approach certain things is super important. For example, I did an art residency in Oaxaca, Mexico, earlier this year, right before COVID, and I researched -- I had been to Oaxaca before, but I had researched it to get a better understanding of what it was I was going to do down there. While I’m culturally similar to Mexicans, I’m not Mexican -- I’m from the US, and I really believe that anyone can be a colonizer -- so it was my duty, and the duty of an ethical tourist (because that’s what I was going to be -- even though I was there for an art residency for three weeks, I was a tourist) to do as much as I can to not go down there and be like “hey -- what do I do -- I dunno!” So I sort of relate it to like, when you go to a new city, you probably look on google maps and figure out where you’re going and what you can do there, and so research is that sort of thing too. When you’re embarking on a project, you probably want to get your thoughts aligned -- “what do I know” and “what don’t I know”, as I said before, is a super basic way to start, and is a way I often start.
KHB: When you are interested in a topic, how do you start researching? Where do you start your search for resources, and how do you search for them?
JF: I’m going to give you a very individualistic answer, so I wouldn't expect other people to start this way, but the way that we suggest students start is with a concept map. And it took me a minute to even understand how to make a concept map, until I took a topic I actually know pretty well. So in the center would be your topic, and then around the topic would be the who, what, when, why, where, that you already know -- so that’s sort of the easiest way to start. And then as you branch out, you really start to see connections to the concepts that most interest you about the topic, but also the things that you don’t know yet. So we always tell students, “pick a topic that you actually enjoy,” like who wants to research something that doesn’t bring them some type of joy? You’re gonna have to do this for a while, presumably, if it’s for an assignment, for example, so you might as well pick something that you really like.
You know, honestly, we suggest people just get started by googling, and looking on Wikipedia -- keeping in mind that anyone can edit Wikipedia, Wikipedia has gotten so much better about saying “this needs a citation, we’re not sure if this is for real or not” -- but they also have a list of references at the bottom of the articles. So it could be a way to lead you to other things. So we’re never just saying, “don’t use google,” it’s just, know what you’re doing when you use google so that it can lead you to other sources. So that’s pretty much how I get started on something. Or, I just see, is anyone else working within this area, whether it’s about librarianship or artwork. I’m just interested in seeing: who’s working within this area, who is considered -- I’m not going to say an expert, because I don’t really like that term; but who has made work on this previously or currently?
I did a concept map for my Oaxaca trip, and it was super helpful! I was like, yeah! We always tell students to make concept maps, but it was actually really legit, it helped me ground what I was going to do while I was there, and then figure out who was working within these topics.
KHB: That seems like a great place to start, is, okay, what’s already been done?
JF: And I try to tell students -- we have a template, but if your brain works better with a list format, you can totally do that. You don’t have to work within this bubbly map. It can be more of a storyboard -- do what makes you comfortable. That’s the most important thing: I can’t really tell you how it should look, how it should manifest, whether digitally or on paper, but this could be a way to start your research -- what I call the research road map. Something tangible or digital that you can refer to as you go along. Because I don’t know about everybody else, but when I’m in the middle of something, I’m like, “How did I even… get here?”
KHB: I have definitely had that experience as an artist and as a researcher. A lot of my work for Strange Fire revolves around finding research that is still in the realm of -- I don’t like the word ‘expert’ either, I think it’s super reductive -- the idea that there are people who work in and around information about certain topics that have been working on those things from a long time and from a perspective that might be different from the dominant perspective, generally a white, male, straight, PhD, working within an institution…
I guess that sort of works well with my final question. If you’re working outside of an institution, or with limited resources, more public resources -- how does one access information from outside of an institution? If you have a local or city library, what kinds of information can those institutions offer to somebody who’s not affiliated with a university or a research institution?
JF: I really appreciate this question because I feel like, even though I am a librarian, I came into this, in my opinion, a little late in life. I wish I had known more about what libraries do when I was an undergrad. When I was in grad school for library science, that’s when I started realizing what libraries can do. And, again, I wanted to be an archivist, so that’s why I went to library school.
I think it’s important to remember: I always tell students there’s three kinds of internet. There’s Google -- everything everybody can access; there’s what’s behind paywalls that libraries have access to; and there’s like… the dark web. So one of the reasons for that is capitalism; people want to get paid for the information behind these paywalls, these are the scholarly communications and publications. This kind of information is restricted to libraries because libraries can pay contracts to get access to this material.
So it becomes hard, if you don’t have a public library card or you’re not affiliated with an institution, to access this material. But the best thing about public libraries is that you have access to so many databases, probably more so than colleges and universities, because they have to cover a wide breadth of topics and interests. I always always always recommend that our students, staff, and faculty get their public library cards. We are an art and design college, so our main collections are going to cover those topics. We have a couple of databases that are gonna cover the general humanities, but we always say, if you get your public library card it actually opens up a huge variety of resources.
For example, [the public library] ha[s] the Afro-American Newspaper, which I used a lot for the exhibition I curated. There was no way that I could have accessed that through MICA, or through any other college or university really; it was the public library, Enoch Pratt Free Library, that gave me access to that.
Another thing that libraries do, that I think is a little known service, is that they almost all will provide interlibrary loan service. This means that if your public library or your institution’s library doesn’t have a particular article that’s behind a paywall, they will request another library send it to them digitally, and then they’ll send it to you. They’ll do that with books, too; some of them will do it with video items, like DVDs and BluRay. Obviously, it's a little bit different during the pandemic; it’s a little bit more -- we’re unclear how many libraries are participating in ILL, and what kind of things they’re actually lending out physically. But if it’s an article, and someone is around to scan it, that’s another way to get an article behind a paywall.
It’s a real bummer when you leave an institution! I would love to have access to the databases that Pratt Institute has, which is where I went to grad school, because they have databases that relate directly to my profession. But, because MICA offers interlibrary loan, I just find the abstract or the short description of an article and then request it through our interlibrary loan. So that’s a really great way to get access to things you don’t have access to.
Another thing that might be worth trying out is building a network, like a learning community, so that if you can’t find this one book or text through ILL for whatever reason, if you and four other people chip in to buy it, you can then share it amongst one another. I’m a really big fan of sharing and utilizing what drives and what funds libraries -- what keeps them going is providing access to things. So I always suggest that people get their public library cards.
...Did I answer your question?
KHB: Yeah, definitely! I personally love libraries, I briefly considered a masters in library science, I got my masters in photography instead, but -- I love a library. That’s one of my favorite pastimes, is to [dig through them]. And I’ve been really milking my institutional email for some time, we’ll see when they cut me off.
JF: Yeah! And I mean, I have a community of folks that I reach out to, like, “hey, does anybody have access to this article?” if I can’t wait for an Interlibrary Loan. It’s the same sort of thing -- if you know people who are part of different institutions, you can look at their database list at their library and see, oh, this institution has this database, maybe they’ll have this article. So we just have a slack and message each other, like, hey, does anybody have access to this.
KHB: Especially now that so much is remote, there’s such a difficulty in accessing information that’s housed in a physical space.
JF: Yes, for sure.
KHB: So that’s a great option, to build a learning community like that, with people at many different institutions or who have many different kinds of access.
JF: Yeah, the bummer about -- or, the things we have to think about a little bit differently, as art librarians is, there’s not a lot of art books available in e-book form. So how do we help our community get access to things that they need, when it’s things like that, that aren’t available digitally. We set up what we call Document Delivery, where we actually scan things from the regular circulating collection since our community doesn’t have access to our physical materials. Your library might be offering that, sections of a book for example -- they might be able to do that for you.
KHB: I’m personally based in New York, and I did my masters at RISD, so when I was there there was definitely a move, as things really shifted with the COVID crisis, to start scanning things to be able to provide them digitally. And now that New York is somewhat reopened, there’s definitely a move towards public libraries offering that same kind of service, and also offering physical materials for extended time periods, rather than the two-week limits we used to have.
If I can take one step back and ask a question -- it’s a little bit basic, but I think a lot of faculty and students can feel apprehensive about using the library. So if you could just talk a little bit about what kinds of different sources there are, primary, secondary, what the difference is… and what each source might be more important for. So, for example, how might a book review be useful versus the book itself?
JF: Primary sources are things that are first hand documents, for example, if I wrote you a letter -- that’s a primary source. People are a primary source, so if you think about how journalists use people for interviews, that’s a primary source. I do this workshop called Researching Community History, where students would come into the lab space, and I would have, up on the white board, “How would you describe Baltimore? How would your friend describe Baltimore? How would a family member describe Baltimore?” And it was very different and interesting to see all the responses, because the ones from people who don’t live in Baltimore would say things like “The Wire,” and “crime,” and things like that; People who live there might also have things there that indicated a fear of being outside, but also really positive things like, “great art community,” “cute houses,” things like that. So I just use that as an example that you are a source, so when you’re doing this work, we all bring our own biases, whether they’re implicit or explicit, to this research, and that’s something to keep in mind.
Oral histories are a primary source, paintings are primary sources… I’m just thinking of my presentation, going through all of these slides…
And then a secondary source is going to be something like a book, or an article. Secondary sources will be things like statistics -- because data is a primary source, raw, untouched, un-graphed information, but once it gets graphed it’s a secondary source, because someone has decided things about the data, that they can then turn into whatever they want the data to say. Data is not neutral, as a lot of other things are not neutral.
Then there are tertiary sources, which are things like dictionaries, encyclopedias, which I only bring up because I didn’t know what ‘tertiary’ meant before library school, so [laugh] it’s always something I like to throw out there.
So as far as using sources -- that’s a really funny thing to bring up, because a lot of our students will look at a book review instead of finding an article, which they might have been assigned to do, and it’s kind of hard to tell the difference in a library database. And if you’re actually writing about the book, you would want to look at a book review -- writing about why this book is important or when this book was written, who wrote it, what do critics have to say about it, what are other people saying that you should read in addition to this, for example. And then you would use the book if you’re trying to illustrate a point that the author was making, that’s more from the author’s perspective, and the review is more from a critique perspective. So I think it depends on what you’re trying to say: you might have a need to use both the review and the actual book.
KHB: Do you have any more thoughts you would want to share from the perspective of someone who works within a library, but is also an artist?
JF: Just to reiterate a point I touched on, information isn’t neutral. It’s something that in the last ten years it has been written on that librarians are really rethinking the stereotype of a librarian: not having any opinions about certain asks or information -- what happens when you do have opinions? There’s been many things -- like the patriot act affected how libraries operate because information about patrons was something that the government was trying to get. So thinking through these values of librarians is definitely something widely talked about in library-world.
You know, libraries are like anything else -- we work within systems that are really fantastic but they’re also not without fault, they can be criticized. They uphold the same systemic oppression of other systems -- if they’re part of higher ed, they’re their own systems, etcetera. I think it’s important to remember that.
Another thing I tell students a lot is that all of these decisions within a library, again, on this idea of neutrality, have been the decisions of people. So where a book is, how a book is classified, what category or subject it’s within -- a person has decided that. So again, you might come across something that you feel is wrong, like, “this book shouldn’t be in this section, it should actually be in that section” -- because people have made those decisions. I think it’s important to walk into a library knowing that that is the case.
KHB: Yeah -- human institutions always have various degrees of decisions that one may think of now as wrong.
JF: Exactly.
KHB: Just for a really broad example, all of our photography books in the RISD library were categorized under ‘technology,’ and that made no sense to a lot of us. We were like, “but this isn’t even about the technology, this is about a particular artist’s work,” but that decision was made a really long time ago with the Library of Congress [cataloging system].
JF: Yeah, and it makes you think -- is it because photography wasn’t seen as a fine art?
KHB: Exactly! JF: So I think it can be really hard to -- I didn’t feel empowered in the library as an undergrad, not even a little bit. I had never talked to a librarian at MICA’s library. But I will say, if you have a question, like “hey, why is this categorized under technology?” What I hope that I do in my job is to help folks feel empowered to find things, know how to evaluate them critically, and ask questions, question the way things are systematized or set up.
KHB: That’s great. I definitely wasn’t empowered as an undergrad to ask questions of librarians, and now I’m like, oh, if I had just asked a few questions, I’m sure that the librarians at my undergrad institution would have been happy to help me find the information that I wanted or that I was looking for.
JF: Yeah -- but I do think it’s hard to know how to build that into your practice, it might take some time. So I completely understand that. I did not do research, did not take the time to understand concepts I was trying to approach as an undergrad. And I think the curriculum has changed a lot since I was an undergrad. I’m wondering, since I was in school, how the other curriculums have changed also, to try to emphasize that and try to build it into someone’s practice.
KHB: I definitely think that, especially in the art world, there are some artists who are taking research a lot more seriously, and artists who are also educators are trying to instill those values in their students as well.
JF: For sure.
KHB: And for some artists, the kinds of research that involves going to a library is less important, and instead going on Reddit and seeing what the prevailing opinion [there] about something is really important information for them.
JF: Totally. And they might not do it the same way every single time, for every single topic, every single project. And that’s cool. You don’t always have to go to the library, but like you said, you can just look on Reddit. If you look on IMDB and try to figure out who made what, when, and how, that sort of thing, that is doing research. So I think once we open up the idea of research, and don’t pin it to how you research in traditional disciplines -- for me personally it becomes easier to understand and feel like you’re doing it already.
KHB: Especially now, looking back on when I would google something as a child to prove my parents wrong in an argument -- that kind of thing is so prevalent now, “I don’t know about that thing, I’m gonna look it up” -- including that as part of your larger practice can be so helpful, to include information that you find on Google that then leads you somewhere else.
JF: Totally, and that’s where I think librarians can really help -- besides like, “where do I find this thing” -- is working on that critical evaluation. I’m just thinking about the election, and how there might be misinformation about how you vote and things like that, and how to evaluate those sources and cross reference with other sources of information to make the best decision for you. I was just thinking through that sort of thing this morning, actually, like, “oh, I should bring that up with Keavy.” [laughs]
KHB: Yeah! That’s a super important one! I was just talking to my partner, who is a lawyer, and who reads a lot of bills, generally -- she’s kind of a law nerd. [both laugh]. But she’s had many arguments with people who say “this is what the bill means,” and she asks, “but have you read the bill?” And they say, “well, I don’t need to read it, because I read this other source.”
JF: Yes! Yes, yes yes, exactly. The Bill being the primary, who wrote about it being the secondary.
KHB: Knowing the difference, and knowing how to be critical of either the primary source, the bill itself, who wrote it, why, and what their aim is, but also, who’s reporting on it, and why, and what their aim is.
JF: [laughs] I wish I read bills for fun! That’s cool!
KHB: It is cool! And it’s cool for me to hear her take on that stuff. The kind of research that she does is totally different from the kind of research that I do, but there’s a lot of crossover actually, in how we look at the world through those different lenses.