Book
Carine Zaayman

Anarchival Practices

The Clanwilliam Arts Project as Re-imagining Custodianship of the Past
Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2023
ISBN 978-3-96558-043-5 | Paperback | 10 EUR | ix, 61 pp. | 17.8 cm x 12.7 cm
ISBN 978-3-96558-044-2 | PDF | Open Access | 22.7 MB
Where is the past? It is not really behind us, but with us, constantly imagined and re-imagined in public discourse through historical narrations. Using the Clanwilliam Arts Project as a case study, this volume is founded on the ‘anarchive’, a conceptual constellation that positions the past in relation to the present, bringing into view strategies to facilitate remembering beyond the colonial archive.
Carine Zaayman is an artist, curator and scholar committed to critical engagement with colonial archives and collections, specifically those holding strands of Khoekhoe pasts in South Africa. She is a Researcher at the Research Center for Material Culture (NMvW) in Amsterdam. The main focus of her curatorial work is the project Under Cover of Darkness, which included an exhibition staged at the Iziko Slave Lodge in Cape Town, exploring the lives of women in servitude, especially slavery, in the early Cape Colony.
Keywords: Archive; Anarchive; Community; Oral History; Decolonization; Collective Memory; Clanwilliams Art Project; Performance
Carine Zaayman’s chapbook makes a beautiful intervention regarding archives, artistic practice, and community building via research and imaginative collective action. Zaayman’s definition of the anarchive challenges dominant modalities of European enlightenment thought, proposing a non-linear temporality grounded in ‘immaterial networks of intersubjectivity’ and sensorial experience. Embodiment is key in her analysis of the durational engagements of the Clanwilliam Arts Project. Ultimately, she argues that we should not seek to resolve archival absence, but to continually bring absences and silences into view, and that anarchival modes of practice and representation can articulate decolonial visions for the future. — Deborah A. Thomas, R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the Center for Experimental Ethnography.
Title
Anarchival Practices
Subtitle
The Clanwilliam Arts Project as Re-imagining Custodianship of the Past
Author(s)
Carine Zaayman
Bio(s)
Carine Zaayman is an artist, curator and scholar committed to critical engagement with colonial archives and collections, specifically those holding strands of Khoekhoe pasts in South Africa. She is a Researcher at the Research Center for Material Culture (NMvW) in Amsterdam. The main focus of her curatorial work is the project Under Cover of Darkness, which included an exhibition staged at the Iziko Slave Lodge in Cape Town, exploring the lives of women in servitude, especially slavery, in the early Cape Colony.
Identifier
Description
Where is the past? It is not really behind us, but with us, constantly imagined and re-imagined in public discourse through historical narrations. Using the Clanwilliam Arts Project as a case study, this volume is founded on the ‘anarchive’, a conceptual constellation that positions the past in relation to the present, bringing into view strategies to facilitate remembering beyond the colonial archive.
Is Part Of
Place
Berlin
Publisher
ICI Berlin Press
Date
14 February 2023
Subject
Archive
Anarchive
Community
Oral History
Decolonization
Collective Memory
Clanwilliams Art Project
Performance
Rights
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Language
en-GB
number of pages
ix, 61
Table Of Contents
Note on Parallel Text
Note on Images in the Text
Facing the Past
Archives: Frustrations and Futility
Facing the Silence: The Anarchive
Clanwilliam: Landscape of Past and Present
Performance and Parade
Signal to Anarchival Noise
Making History from the Anarchive
References
has manifestation
ISBN 978-3-96558-043-5 | Paperback | 10 EUR | ix, 61 pp. | 17.8 cm x 12.7 cm
ISBN 978-3-96558-044-2 | PDF | Open Access | 22.7 MB

References

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Cite as: Carine Zaayman, Anarchival Practices: The Clanwilliam Arts Project as Re-imagining Custodianship of the Past, Worlding Public Cultures (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2023) <https://doi.org/10.37050/wpc-ca-01>