_______________________

Welcome to a symposium and panel discussion that brings together a group of artists, scholars, and archivists to address the critical role of archives in postcolonial spaces and decolonial struggles.

As a contested site of power, ’the archive’ has long been a central subject in studies of coloniality — as an administrative technology of rule, but also as a system inscribing, containing and predicting frictions, attractions and aversions within colonial structures. Also, ‘the archive´ is a constantly relevant condition to address in current critical research and arts practices that engage with everything from analogue, historical archives to digital compilations of big data, as well as other archival phenomena.

The seminar is organized on the occasion of Dayanita Singh’s Hasselblad Award exhibition Sea of Files. Archives and archiving have been continuous points of interest, research, and reference in her photographic oeuvre.

Singh has been photographing archives in India since the early 2000s and she stresses how in India, there’s no one single format for the archives. The exact location and function of each archive is less important in her photographs as she creates a synthesis of the enigmatic atmosphere and seductive materiality of the records. However, Singh’s heterogeneous work and methodology does prompt a reflection of administration and archives in post-colonial India.

This symposium is not about Singh’s work specifically but rather aims to facilitate a conversation that includes approaches from critical theory as well as artistic and archival practice, focusing on the archive in current decolonial and anti-colonial endeavors.

___________________________

Karl-Magnus Johansson, archivist at the National Archives of Sweden

Hanni Kamaly, artist

Daniela Agostinho, assistent professor in digital design och information studies at Aarhus University

Cecilia Järdemar, artist and lecturer in photography at Konstfack

Mirka Duijn, filmmaker and scholar at HDK-Valand

Louise Wolthers (moderator), researcher and curator at the Hasselblad Foundation

___________________________

TIME AND DATE: Wednesday the 7th of December, at 13.00-16.00

LOCATION: Gothenburg City Library, Hörsalen (the auditorium), and online, live on Facebook.

Free entrence. The seminar will be held in English.

SCHEDULE:
13.00-14.30: Individual presentations by the participants, regarding the topic of the seminar.14.30-15.00 (ca): Break15.00-16.00: Panel discussion

The symposium will also be broadcast live on Facebook.

________________________

ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS:

 

DANIELA AGOSTINHO is a visual culture scholar and independent curator. She is assistant professor in the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. In her project Archival Encounters she works with artists and curators to develop artistic inquiries into the archives and legacies of Danish colonialism. Recent exhibitions include For Alberta and Victor, a collection of conjurings and opacities (solo show by La Vaughn Belle, ARIEL – Feminisms and the Aesthetics, Copenhagen, 2021); Chamber (solo show by Igor Jesus, Porto, 2020); and 13 Shots, solo show by Aimée Zito Lema (Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, 2018). Her latest publications include the co-edited books Uncertain Archives (MIT Press, 2021) and (W)archives: Archival Imaginaries, War and Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press 2020).

KARL-MAGNUS JOHANSSON is a senior archivist at the Swedish National Archives where he works with research and education. He is the editor of Communicating the Archive: Physical Migration (2013) and Inscription (2018) that explore the intersection between archival theory, contemporary art and media theory, and Filmens Göteborg: spår, erfarenheter och resultat från ett samverkande forskningsprojekt (2021), which presents the results from a film studies research project.

CECILIA JÄRDEMAR is a visual artist and researcher. She holds an MA and an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded PhD in Photography from the Royal College of Arts, London and is currently a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Konstfack. Järdemar´s work is often collaborative, and she is particularly interested in how collaborative artistic processes, with its diversity of voices, can uncover counter-histories and alternative narratives. The collective work has been shown in solo shows at Musée D’Art Contemporain in Kinshasa, The New Arts Exchange in Nottingham, Kalmar Konstmuseum and Gävle Konsthall, among others, and a monograph was published by Sailor Press in 2019. Currently Järdemar is running the Swedish Research Council-funded project Transforming the Encounter together with Congolese artist Freddy Tsimba.

HANNI KAMALY is an artist that lives in Stockholm and has studied at the Academy of Arts in Malmö, Lund University. She mainly works with video, sculpture, and performance. At the center of Kamaly’s investigations is the human body, understood as a projection surface for ideology and power structures. Through in-depth research in archives and collections, the artist follows traces of bodies that have been deprived of names and voices throughout history. Fragments from various forms of dehumanization in art history, regulatory agencies and ethnography are woven together in her works. Together they expose structures of patriarchal and colonial power, racism and nationalism that extend into the present.

LOUISE WOLTHERS, curator and researcher at the Hasselblad Foundation.

________________________________

Image: File Museum, 2012.
© Dayanita Singh