FOOTNOTES #7 CAMP

With Footnotes #7 CAMP, De Appel’s archive invites you to visit Pad.ma, Public Access Digital Media Archive. This ambitious endeavour is a sublime form of hyperarchiving, and an archivists dream.

Pad.ma - short for Public Access Digital Media Archive - is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material. The majority of material is from Mumbai and Bangalore: documentation of changing cityscapes, street and domestic life, commercial and intellectual activity, protests, chance meetings, police raids, train-rides, horse-carriages and other transports, conversations with various community, state and corporate interests, players and agents, art works, phone taps, audio recordings and "found" footage.

As an example, take The Radia Tapes -- These tapped telephone conversations between lobbyist Niira Radia and several politicians, corporate honchos, and media people were leaked around the time of national elections in India. After a public call to transcribe them, the pad.ma team made the transcriptions available for all to see at: https://pad.ma/grid/title/radia

The Pad.ma project was launched in 2008 by a group including CAMP, from Mumbai, 0x2620 from Berlin, and the Alternative Law Forum from Bangalore. (Two other organisations from Mumbai, Majlis and Point of View were part of its initiation.)