The question ‹Where are you from?› has typically linked whiteness to Europe and marked non-whites as perpetual outsiders. Black Local History along the Slash of the Im/Possible examines omissions and gaps in Swiss archives and historiography, as it relates to black lives, and calls for critical fabulations as a method and practice of redress, to re-imagine what was, as well as what could be.
Feminist care ethics teach us that digitizing archival collections is just the first step in series of ongoing relationships. Research at two different digital community archives—the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) and the Texas After Violence Project (TAVP)—reveals that the impact of archives goes well beyond academic researchers, catalyzing profound emotional shifts in record creators, storytellers, community members, and future communities.
Eine Vielzahl künstlerischer Forschungsprojekte beschäftigt sich mit «archivischen Praxen». Der entsprechende Diskurs orientiert sich aber eher an akademischen Trends als an einer Beschäftigung mit der konkreten Arbeit von Archivar/innen oder den Funktionsweisen des Archivs als Institution. Im Interesse einer demokratischen Kultur wäre hier ein vertiefter Austausch gefragt.
Fragments of an Archive consists of 9 videos featuring poetry readings, documentary footage, digital animations, field recordings and photos from the artistic «archives» which were produced during the formation of the exhibitions, A Season in Shell (Zurich, 2014), Mutual Aid (Zurich, 2016) and a performance in the framework of New York post-et préfiguratif (NYC, 2015). The exhibitions and performance looked at transnational trade flows of objects and ideas between Africa, China and Switzerland.
