Finissage: Collectively (Re)shaping the Archive

For the finissage of exhibition House of Wisdom, we are joined by a range of interesting guests with whom we will go into the topic of autonomous, grassroots and community archiving, and the possibilities of the digital realm.

The finissage is a collaboration with curators Collective Çukurcuma (Naz Cuguoğlu and Mine Kaplangı), Casco in Utrecht and 7 Hills Foundation. The topic ties into the exhibition theme of House of Wisdom, which explores the political significance of books, libraries and archives. It also connects to one of the current exhibition projects at Casco, titled The Library of Unread Books by Heman Chong and Renée Staal.

The event starts with a conversation between Özge Çelikaslan, Tina Bastajian and Annet Dekker. Çelikaslan and Bastajian contributed to the recent Valiz publication Lost and Living (in) Archives, which was edited by Annet Dekker. What are the possibilities for collectively building and re-shaping archives from the bottom up? What is the potential of digital tools to activate archival processes and records? Moreover, how can archiving or appropriating archives in general be used as tools in social movements, as ways to collectively (re)shape public debates?

Subsequently, Read-in collective will host a Haunted Bookshelves session, a collective memorising exercise speaking to the missing pieces from our bookshelves. Here, Read-in understands haunting as, in the words of Avery Gordon, ‘the domain of turmoil and trouble’.
Bring your own quote!: During the session, Read-in invites participants to practice choreographies of memorising. For this iteration they ask the participants to bring a quote to collectively memorise, relating to the question‘Why are the authors of the books I read so white, somale, so Eurocentric?’ Please interpret this as you like, and bring one or multiple quotes for the memorising session!

Donate to The Library of Unread Books
Casco encourages you to dig into your bookshelf for titles you might like to donate to The Library of Unread Books, in exchange for a lifetime membership to the roaming reference library. There will be a donation booth at the event where you can donate your book

Admission:
Entry free, please sign up via reserveren@framerframed.nl

More information:
Click here

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