ARCHIVES OF CRITICAL UTOPIA(S)

TO START

HOW
(modes of archiving)

WHAT
(artifacts of archiving)

indexing

system of functioning

tradition

institutional activity

WHAT 
(produced by archive)

narrative

history
(writing a new one or/and reconstituting already existing)

questions:

- how do we approach the archive: as an artistic practice? as in visual cultures? somehow else?
- what other than de- and post-colonial archives can be found? what can be learnt from their organisation & functioning?
- what if we bring case studies from the contexts of our research practices into the project?
- what is the relationship between critical utopia & archives in the project?
- cannwe invite some (for instance, small-scale) archives to collaborate? if yes, what archives this might be?

fact

list of references:

Benjamin, Walter & Arendt, Hannah, Illuminations (Unpacking My Library, A Talk About Book Collecting).

Eichhorn, Kate, The Archival Turn in Feminism. Outrage in Order.

Hall, Stuart, Constituting An Archive.

Hamilton, Carolyn, Harris, Veme, Taylor, Jane, et al. Refiguring The Archive.

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/93/215339/the-undutiful-daughter-s-concept-of-archival-metabolism/

situating the archive

archiving as a practice of care

placing and pinning

ordering/
disordering

collecting vs collection

producing habit to certain modes of order

the question of ownership
(as one of the most intimate form of relationships)

instead of being the final destination of knowledge already produced production, the making of archive as a site of knowledge production

affect

theoretical concepts about the arhive

grids of integibility - Ann Laura Stoler

genealogy
(as intervention into present)

archive as being in time and in history differently

periods, key
figures and works, tendencies, shifts, breaks, ruptures

what archives do we engage with?




what are the ethics behind engaging with these archives not in a direct way?

what this tool that we are aiming to create might be? like a linguistic one

porosity by Walter Benjamin

queer?

feminist?

colonial?

expertise & scientific neutrality

translation & mistranslation

the question of authorship and transformation of the public property

DISORDER?


WILD - Halberstam, 2020


REFUSAL- Campt, 2017


OPACITY - Glissant, 1990

"An untamed ontology" - Foucault

Unmake
Unbuild
Unimagine
(the archive)

(An)architecture

(An)archive

Sources
Sekula, Allan (1986) 'The Body and the Archive' October. Vol. 39: 6-56.
Stoler, Ann Laura (1998) Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance (OUP):https://www.researchgate.net/publication/30842600_Colonial_Archives_and_the_Arts_of_Governance
Halberstam, Jack. Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire (2020)
https://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/publishing/lexicon-for-an-affective-archive/

Questions:
If the (Western) archive operates a system of reduction- Can ‘opacity’-‘that which cannot be reduced' (Glissant, 1990) - constitute an insurgent
presence- the uncategorised/ uncategorizable?

(Can 'opacity')- What moments/ practices can serve as an opening/ a fissure in archival logic- from which to unbuild the archive?

What are processes of remembering, of preserving, of honoring, - that do not reduce or attempt to capture? 

Walter Benjamin--

suggests 'constellation' as an alternative ordering/ gathering system to the straight, linear formation of "history"/ "historocity" 

C O N S T E L L A T I O N