Event | Keeping/Discarding: Critical Reflections on (Un)Archivability – Seminar
Event | Keeping/Discarding: Critical Reflections on (Un)Archivability – Seminar
Date: 16 January 2025
Time: 9:00-13:00
Location: Leiden University, PJ Veth Building (Room 1.01)
Registration: https://forms.office.com/e/qbvnHfA9mJ
Credits: 2 ECTS
What do we keep? What do we discard? A story or an object becomes ‘archivable’ when it holds a meaning for an individual or a community, sparking an affective reaction that binds the past, the present, and draws a line into the future. However, this process is never neutral, as much as the archives’ curators – public institutions’ employees trained in Archival Science, volunteers in community archives, but also people completing their family archives – would like to argue to the contrary. It is always political. It is always socially bound. It is always sensitive to historical conjunctions.
As archives tell stories about the collective memory of people and places, they deal with the questions of who and what gets to be remembered or forgotten. Therefore, archiving can both be a source of violence and healing as they are forms of bodily inscriptions. Archives tell us as much about what they contain, and what they leave out. How can we map or identify what is discarded from archival work? How and in what terms do archival objects ‘qualify’ or ‘disqualify’ as archive-worthy?
“Keeping/Discarding: Critical Reflections on (Un)Archivability” is a joint collaboration between the ARTIVES ERC project, Re/Presenting Europe NWA project, Preserving Memories, Bridging Gaps Alfred Landecker Foundation project and NICA and is hosted at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.
Programme
9h00-9h15 Coffee/tea and registration
9h15-9h30 Opening by Kamila Krakowska Rodrigues (LUCAS, NL)
9h30-10h00 Performing family archives: a conversation with Carmen van Mulier (independent artist, LUCAS, NL) and Mathieu Wijdeven (Theatre Rotterdam)
Moderation: Sanne Rotmeijer (LUCAS, NL)
10h00-10h15 Coffee break
10h15-11h45 Roundable “(Counter-)Archival Interventions”
Sandra Manickam (Erasmus University Rotterdam, NL); Tzy Jiun Tan (Global Asia Initiative, NYUAD); Ruy Blanes (ISCTE, Portugal); Jonathan Tjien Fooh (VU Amsterdam, NL)
Moderation: Bram Ieven (LUCAS, NL)
11h45-12h00 Coffee break
12h00-13h00 Panel “Archival explorations”
Euclides Gonçalves (Kaleidoscopio, Mozambique): “Development archives: the T-shirt as a document”
Carolina Valente Cardoso (Univ. Of Gothenburg, Sweden) “Archives of the political pitch: football fandom, heritage and activism”
Sam Burgum (Birmingham City University/Univ. Of Sheffield, UK) “City as an archive”
Moderation: Bareez Majid (LUCAS, NL)
Registrations: please register via the link by January 8th: https://forms.office.com/e/qbvnHfA9mJ
Credits for NICA ReMA students and PhD candidates
ReMA students and PhD candidates affiliated with NICA can obtain 2 ECTS (pass/fail) by attending the seminar having done the preparatory readings (the list of 3 articles will be circulated with the confirmation of registration and writing a short reflection (up to 1000 words) on one of the aspects of (un)archivability approached in the seminar in their political and/or affective dimensions. The reflections will be circulated for peer-review among attending NICA students.