- \n
- \u2018After the interview\u2019<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Impact on Design<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Part One: Context<\/strong><\/a>\n
- \n
- Oral History and Technical Failures<\/a>\n
- \n
- OHMS<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Design and Wicked Problems<\/a>\n
- \n
- 50 Years of Wicked Problems<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- “Solving” Wicked Problems<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Part Two: Practice<\/strong><\/a>\n
- \n
- The Method<\/a>\n
- \n
- Action Research<\/a> <\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Design Artefacts<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Domain of Design<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- In Practice<\/a>\n
- \n
- From Scratch<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Adapting Systems<\/a>\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Swimming through Treacle<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Part Three: Reflection<\/strong><\/a>\n
- \n
- Maintaining Access <\/a>\n
- \n
- Adaptive Maintenance in Oral History<\/a> <\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Obstacles to Adaptive Maintenance<\/a>\n
- \n
- Rigid Structures<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Limited Resources<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Wicked Maintenance<\/a>\n
- \n
- Creating Spaces<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Wicked Maintenance as Design<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Conclusion<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Footnotes<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nIntroduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Imagine: it is 23 July 1973. You are standing at the bottom of a stone staircase that leads to a museum. Out of the entrance strolls a woman carrying a bucket and a mop. She stops, tips the bucket of water and starts to scrub the stone steps one at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This scene is the artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles performing her art piece Washing\/Tracks\/Maintenance: Outside<\/em> at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. Ukeles, a feminist performance artist whose work is themed around maintenance and service work, was the first artist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation.1<\/a><\/sup> Before this residency and her performance at the art museum, she produced her radical Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!<\/em>, an indictment born out of frustration with the art world\u2019s failure to engage with the routine labour of everyday life, including the toils of (her) motherhood.2<\/a><\/sup> In her subsequent work with the New York Department of Sanitation, Ukeles expanded this idea of maintenance labour beyond the domestic to the many essential, yet overlooked, maintenance jobs in wider society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In her manifesto Ukeles argues that the world is split into a \u2018development system\u2019 and a \u2018maintenance system.\u2019 Ukeles considers the maintenance system \u2018the life instinct\u2019 with its aim to \u2018preserve the new; sustain the change; protect progress\u2019 or, to put it in more simple terms, to keep things going. The development system \u2013 the creation of things \u2013 is \u2018the death instinct\u2019, according to Ukeles, a drive that focuses on ‘pure individual creation; the new; change; progress.\u2019 Within this stark opposition, the maintenance system carries less social status: maintenance is seen as repetitive, boring, and endless or, as Ukeles puts it, \u2018a drag.\u2019 The development system on the other hand is \u2018excitement!\u2019 Ukeles poignantly summarises the dynamic between these two systems as follows: \u2018After the revolution, who\u2019s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?\u20193<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/hjameslouwerse2\/files\/2025\/03\/Screenshot-2021-11-16-at-10.26.09.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/hjameslouwerse2\/files\/2025\/03\/Screenshot-2021-11-16-at-10.26.21.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/hjameslouwerse2\/files\/2025\/03\/Screenshot-2021-11-16-at-10.26.27.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/hjameslouwerse2\/files\/2025\/03\/Screenshot-2021-11-16-at-10.26.34.png\")
<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nUkeles’ Manifesto – OHD_PPR_0003<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
I first came across Ukeles\u2019 work in 2015 during my BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. Years later I was reminded of her work in a blog post by Charlie Morgan, an oral history archivist at the British Library. In his blog post Morgan discusses various issues arising from the large number of recordings being made during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Morgan\u2019s main concern was the emotional consequences of recording oral history during this turbulent period, arguing that oral history interviews should not be used as a form of therapy and objecting to oral history being used to document traumatic experiences. He draws on Ukeles\u2019 framework of a development and maintenance system to call for a better understanding of ‘the \u201cwork\u201d of oral history’ up to and including what happens when the recording is finished. Morgan adapts Ukeles\u2019 pivotal question when he substitutes \u2018revolution\u2019 with \u2018interview\u2019 to wonder who picks up the garbage \u2018after the interview?\u20194<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2018After the interview\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What happens after the interview is the focus of this research project. The initial aim of my proposal was to explore methods to encourage visitors of heritage sites to reuse oral history.5<\/a><\/sup> My specific case study was the National Trust property Seaton Delaval Hall, an eighteenth century country house near the north-eastern coast of England. It was acquired by the National Trust, Europe’s biggest conservation charity, in 2009 after a large fundraising campaign by the local community.6<\/a><\/sup> Designing solutions to improve the reuse of oral history proved a confusing challenge. At first glance, the assignment may appear relatively straightforward, but closer inspection soon showed that it was based on preconceptions, paradoxes, and contradictions. In his paper, \u2018Three Dimensions and More: Oral History Beyond the Paradoxes of Method,\u2019 Michael Frisch, in 2008 described the reuse\u00a0\u2013 or lack thereof \u2013 of oral histories as ‘the Deep Dark Secret of oral history,\u2019 since ‘nobody spends much time listening to or watching recorded and collected interview documents.\u20197<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nearly two decades ago, Frisch identified three paradoxes of oral history: \u2018the paradox of orality,\u2019 \u2018the paradox of searching,’ and \u2018the paradox of method.\u20198<\/a><\/sup> In 2025, some of his perceived paradoxes have become less pressing and others more so. Frisch\u2019s ‘paradox of orality’, for example, includes oral historians\u2019 habit of using transcripts rather than the original audio recording.9<\/a><\/sup> The transcripts versus audio is a longstanding debate within oral history, with Raphael Samuel commenting on it as early as 1972 in his paper, \u2018Perils of the Transcript.\u201910<\/a><\/sup> However, since 2008 using audio has not only become easier but also more common due to a wider cultural shift towards audio and visual media through the development of video-based social media such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok, and the rise of the video podcast on YouTube. On the other hand, Frisch’s ‘paradox of searching’ \u2013 how ‘contemporary search tools are producing a significant decline in research skills’ \u201311<\/a><\/sup> has only become more acute over the decades. Advancing digital technologies, including Generative Artificial Intelligence, now possess the ability to transcribe, search, and summarise audio far beyond the capabilities of the search engines Frisch originally examined. Nevertheless, Frisch (among others) was convinced that the key to increasing oral history reuse, despite these paradoxes, lay in the right application of cutting edge technologies available at the time.12<\/a><\/sup> Yet, as I will argue below, the projects which sought to improve reuse through new technologies, consistently failed to recognise the crucial role of \u2018the drag\u2019 maintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Frisch\u2019s third paradox, the ‘paradox of method’, includes the persistent focus on producing<\/em> rather than reusing<\/em> oral histories, which he declares as peculiar given the majority of historical methods centre around studying primary and secondary sources, not the production of sources.13<\/a><\/sup> The drive to add to existing archives hardly comes as a surprise since oral history as a discipline sprung from a need to diversify the archive. The archive as a neutral and reliable record of historical facts needed both questioning and actively counteracting by adding overlooked voices, groups, positions. In some regions this involved adding the voices of the original population, such as in South America, Australasia, and North America. The historiographical narrative suggests that in Europe the focus for recording was more on non-elite groups, such as the working class and women.14<\/a><\/sup> The preoccupation with recording is almost universal and is evident in UK organisations, including National Life Stories, the charity embedded within the oral history department of the British Library. The charity states that, \u2018its key focus and expertise has been oral history fieldwork and for thirty years it has initiated a series of innovative interviewing programmes.\u201915<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to a fixation with recording, Joanna Bornat in her work on archived oral history data identified a \u2018discomfort\u2019 around reuse. She attributes this, in part, to oral history\u2019s connection with the social sciences where it is common practice to destroy data sooner than archiving for future use.16<\/a><\/sup> However, the focus on recording and a discomfort with reuse does not mean there is no reuse at all. Beyond academic practices, there is a clear appetite for forgotten voices and stories, leading to increasing numbers of historical book series that unproblematically draw on oral histories from a variety of different archives.17<\/a><\/sup> Furthermore, it is argued that the academy\u2019s turn to memory heightened interest in people\u2019s personal memories, making archived oral histories a central source of study.18<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n
In spite of easier access and a general increase in reuse, adding new recorded material is still the preferred activity. The focus on ‘what happens after’, \u2013 digital hygiene, data protection, storage and accessibility issues, in other words, maintenance \u2013 is still regarded as the less significant activity. Yet access is a prerequisite for reuse. Many recordings produced by National Lottery funded projects, for example, are remarkably difficult to find.19<\/a><\/sup> Throughout my project, when I asked oral historians where their collected oral histories were stored, I was often met with guilty mumblings as they admitted the recordings were gathering dust on a private hard drive. Most significantly perhaps, at the time of writing, the British Library sound collections remain inaccessible due to a cyber-attack which took place in October 2023.20<\/a><\/sup> This is however not an issue of reuse<\/em>, but an issue of access<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The initial idea of my project was built on the assumption that access to oral history was stable and consistent, and that I could concentrate on optimising the reuse of oral history. However, I soon realised that the period ‘after the interview’ should stretch to cover thinking about reuse and<\/em> maintenance. The latter currently largely escapes the consideration of oral historians \u2013 myself included, at least initially \u2013 because maintenance is taken for granted. This insight, combined with the re-acquaintance with the work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, led me to change the focus of my research: from stimulating reuse to maintaining good quality access to oral histories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Impact on Design<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
This shift in perspective led to an important change in the approach of my design process too. I now aimed to create a better understanding of how we maintain access to oral histories using design methods, rather than designing something clever and new to encourage greater reuse. Christopher Frayling in his seminal paper, ‘Research in Art and Design,’ <\/em>discusses three ways in which design relates to research. Based on the work of Herbert Read he distinguishes: research into<\/em> design; research through<\/em> design; and research for<\/em> design. Research by practice projects such as the one in hand, according to Frayling, should be led by the principles of research through design (RtD). Broadly speaking RtD covers material research, development work, and action research.21<\/a><\/sup> The latter, action research or AR, is the central methodology for my project. The central tenets of AR are practical research and contextualisation aimed at communication through a portfolio and a report. Communication through \u2018the activities of art, craft or design\u2019 is key.22<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My AR took the form of three shorter research placements and a three-year oral history project. The longer running oral history project took place at Seaton Delaval Hall, a National Trust country house in Northumberland. The three placements were at the archives of the National Centre for Biological Studies (Archives at NCBS) in Bengaluru, India; at the British Library in London; and with Seaton Delaval Hall, the same location as my oral history project. The three research placements and the longer oral history project provided the opportunity to include the staff and volunteers at the various institutions as \u2018active participants\u2019 in my work.23<\/a><\/sup> As active participants<\/em>, they were the ones leading the conversation, while I took on the role of \u2018friendly outsider\u2019 who asked questions with the support of explanatory and exploratory design artefacts.24<\/a><\/sup> These artefacts varied from flowcharts to short animations to mock-ups of permission forms. They stimulated dialogue by either presenting the existing situation in a novel way or by developing alternative futures through open and often playful exchanges. The conversations with the active participants allowed everybody involved, including myself, to lay bare and explore the invisible and taken for granted aspects of maintenance as well as to identify opportunities for delicate design interventions, each in their own, specific, context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I framed maintaining access to oral histories as a \u2018wicked problem.\u2019 A wicked problem<\/em> is a staple term in design theory formally established by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber in their 1973 paper, \u2018Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.\u2019 Broadly the term refers to stubborn and complex societal problems.25<\/a><\/sup> Rittel and Webber position their definition of the wicked problem in opposition to the received scientific and linear perception of problems and problem solving, in which a problem is defined and demarcated before a solution is found. A wicked problem resists this linear approach and is solved only in a non-linear<\/em> manner: both the problem definition and possible solutions are developed simultaneously.26<\/a><\/sup> This approach is central to what RtD\u00a0 and AR involves: conducting a continuous conversation between the designer, the people inside the design situation, and the situation itself.27<\/a><\/sup> Translated into the terms of this project, the conversations were between me and my colleagues at the placement organisations, focused on the wicked problem of maintaining access to oral histories. This non-linear way of working lent itself well for my research into maintenance: the invisibility and taken for granted nature of maintenance meant new information was continuously uncovered throughout the project, which required me to reflect again and again on my interpretation of the problem and hence on my proposed interventions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My placements in India and London and my in-depth work at Seaton Delaval Hall and the National Trust, revealed two main culprits of the situation\u2019s wickedness. The first is how the digital revolution has altered public expectations of access to information, including archival material. Systems that grant access to oral histories need to be adapted to ensure these new expectations of instant digital remote access are met. This is a form of maintenance known in software engineering as adaptive maintenance, where a system is updated in reaction to changes in its environment.28<\/a><\/sup> The second component of wickedness is formed by the obstacles that block the required maintenance from happening: rigid organisational or hierarchical structures and, above all, limited resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rittel and Webber argue that there is a \u2018no stopping rule\u2019 with wicked problems.29<\/a><\/sup> There is no clear or inevitable moment at which the problem can be considered as solved. This means that the components of wickedness I identified during my research will be different from components of wickedness in the future. Because there is no clear end moment of a wicked problem, there is equally no end to the number of solutions, \u2018solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but good-or-bad\u2019 meaning the problem can never really truly be solved.30<\/a><\/sup> The inevitable conclusion is that I cannot design something which will solve the wicked problem of oral history access and reuse ad infinitum<\/em>. However, while design desires to fix the world and create new and better futures, maintenance wants to simply ensure that there is a future. Maintenance is the \u2018life instinct.\u201931<\/a><\/sup> It accepts that the same work will need to be done tomorrow and the day after. I decided to embrace Ukeles\u2019 plea to recognise the prerequisite nature of the \u2018life instinct\u2019 and chose to design with a maintenance mindset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With a keen eye for the unique situations of each of the placement organisations I was working with, I aimed to create outputs that allow space for adaptive maintenance despite the obstacles I had repeatedly witnessed. I have dubbed this \u2018wicked maintenance\u2019, a form of maintenance that accepts that there will always be new developments that require adaptations (the unsolvability of wicked problems), but that should not inhibit the striving for outputs that seamlessly integrate into existing systems. It is a form of maintenance-oriented design that does not chase the revolution but focuses on \u2018after the revolution.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The combination of oral history and design within one research project is uncommon. Yet it proved to be a fruitful match. With oral history as my subject I was able to understand how maintenance can function as a form of design. From oral history\u2019s relationship with digital technology to the ethics of reuse to how it fits within pre-existing ideas of history and heritage, the wicked problem of accessing and reusing oral history underlines not only the crucial significance of maintenance, but equally how society values maintenance and the experience of maintenance labour today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This critical commentary contributes to the fields of oral history, design, and public history and heritage, not only because it is a multidisciplinary project, but also because maintenance is a universal and essential form of labour across all disciplines. The text consists of three parts. The first part contextualises my practice within the fields of both oral history and design, with a specific focus on how maintenance addresses a gap in these respective areas. The second part describes my methods and practice. And the last part discusses my findings and outlines my contribution to knowledge. Following the practice of AR, this commentary should be read in close conjunction with my portfolio of practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Wicked Maintenance as Design<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Limited Resources<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Obstacles to Adaptive Maintenance<\/a>\n
- Adaptive Maintenance in Oral History<\/a> <\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Adapting Systems<\/a>\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Design Artefacts<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Action Research<\/a> <\/li>\n\n\n\n
- “Solving” Wicked Problems<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Design and Wicked Problems<\/a>\n
- OHMS<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Impact on Design<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n