Focusing on the production, circulation, and archiving of images, the Archivo Webinar Series 2024 aims to explore the Archive & Conflict through two main perspectives: on the one hand, to delve into the materialities and immaterialities of archival production within the digital age in regard to contemporary critical appropriations through visual arts that address, access and contest past and present conflicts, history’s repressed events and violations. On the other hand, to examine the aesthetics of datafication, understanding artistic strategies as potential sites for resisting and counter-acting current extractivist processes, which tend to capture and transform everyday life into data.

Presentation

Archivo Platform is pleased to announce the Webinar Series 2024 “Archive & Conflict”. Focusing on the production, circulation, and archiving of images, the Archivo Webinar Series 2024 aims to explore the Archive & Conflict through two main perspectives: on the one hand, to delve into the materialities and immaterialities of archival production within the digital age in regard to contemporary critical appropriations through visual arts that address, access and contest past and present conflicts, history’s repressed events and violations. On the other hand, to examine the aesthetics of datafication, understanding artistic strategies as potential sites for resisting and counter-acting current extractivist processes, which tend to capture and transform everyday life into data.

Program

Feb, 15th

“The Photographic Divide: Remaking Community Heritage in a New Cultural Order”

Gil Pasternak, De Montfort University, United Kingdom

This talk will centre around the craze for collections of photographic community heritage to explore its socio-political ramifications in a cultural order underpinned by a conflictual politics of recognition. Steadily proliferating in Western society and its proxies following the dissolution of twentieth-century political idealisms, these collections have tended to draw on historical domestic photographs in an attempt to safeguard the cultural heritage of weakened communities, via self- reliance and in accordance with their historical self-imaging. The resulting collections have arguably enhanced public recognition of the values and beliefs upheld by members of their administrating communities. Yet, they have also standardised a perception of historical domestic photographs as pathways to the community’s authentic identity and irrefutable past. The talk will thus introduce the notion of the Photographic Divide to consider the way in which unequal access to domestic photographic production in the past has come to prevent some communities from participating on equal terms in the remaking of community heritage in the present. In doing so, it will argue that the craze for photographic community heritage has prompted photographically disadvantaged weakened communities to experiment with alternative photographic production and archival practices in an attempt to take ownership of their political recognition.

Mar, 7th

“On Point of View: Writing photography, violence and the self”

Jennifer Good, University of the Arts London, United Kingdom

In this talk, I discuss the process of writing my current book-in-progress, a work of experimental non-fiction about photography, violence and love. As an academic, I am tasked with understanding photography’s history, but my own experience of violence has shaken my trust in my eyes, even as I carry the authority of someone who ‘sees’ for a living. Writing involves occupying a point of view, taking a position, orientating myself in relation to the issues at hand. By extension, it means questioning knowledge itself: what it is to write ‘I see’ as another way of claiming that ‘I know’. For the past fifteen years, my research has been concerned with photography of conflict, violence, terror, trauma and loss. Behind this book is a recognition that the true connecting thread that has held that work together – the motivation underneath it all – has been their opposites: desire, vulnerability, and love. These are the reasons why photography plays such a critical role in times of crisis and despair. It is also why photographic archives are sites of such contention. I will draw examples from the chapters of my current work that are focussed on conflict and war, to pose a challenge to those writing about violence and seeing: to centre their bodies and their selves, while in turn creating space for the uncertainty of their own vision as a radical political stance.

Apr, 4th

“Fragmented Archives and Photographs”

Idil Cetin, University of Oslo, Norway

Dwelling into the Armenian past through photographs is not an easy task not because of the characteristics of the technical image, but because of the way one can encounters the photographic collections. Just like the survivors themselves, Armenian libraries and archives took root in several countries around the world in the past century following the 1915 Genocide. The photographic collections these institutions hold have been accumulated throughout the years mainly through the donations by the Armenians. One of the striking features of these collections is their fragmented nature in the sense that images that apparently belonged to the same body once are scattered today across different institutions and it is difficult to notice this unless one visits these institutions in person mainly because the majority of the collections in several places remain undigitized. The fragmented nature of the photographic collections is further reinforced by the fact that the available images are those that survived the Genocide, which complicates even further the possibility of finding a coherence in the collections. The webinar will entail a description of the fragmentedness of these archives and photographic collections alongside a discussion on the ethical, political, and social implications of studying them.

May, 9th

“Photographic Disruptions in Declassified Archives”

Evan Hume, Visual Artist / Iowa State University, USA

Evan Hume's research and creative work focus on photography as an instrument of the military-industrial complex for reconnaissance, surveillance, and documentation of advanced technologies. He obtains declassified documents by searching the National Archives and filing Freedom of Information Act requests to US government agencies. The Cold War period that much of the material originates from is a significant turning point in the photography's development and use for intelligence gathering. His artwork combines images pertaining to the photographic innovations and operations of that era with contemporary documents and devices, connecting past and present. Imaging processes including analog printing, digital collage, and data bending are used to animate the archival material and emphasize the tension between informational and enigmatic source images. Through this disruption and layering, historical fragments are shown in a state of flux, open to alternate associations and implications. What we are allowed to know and see is often incomplete and indeterminate, encouraging speculation and critical vision.

Registration

• Zoom Tickets (3,59 €) available at archivoplatform.com/webinar
• Time: 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM