22.11.2024
Publication Release – Inward Outward 2023
On March 16–17, 2023, the third edition of the Inward Outward symposium took place in Amsterdam. Initiated between the KITLV and Sound & Vision, with special support from the RCMC and in collaboration with Framer Framed, Inward Outward brought together archival practitioners, artists, academics, and researchers to explore the status of moving image and sound archives as they intertwine with questions of coloniality, identity and race, focusing specifically around the theme of Witnessing/Care & the Archive.
Today, we’re proud to release the third Inward Outward publication: Witnessing/Care & the Archive: A Publication of the 2023 Inward Outward Symposium. Conceived as a way to further discussions that surfaced during the symposium, this digital publication collects different contributions from the speakers of Inward Outward.
The terms witnessing and care have gained a fair amount of currency in recent times, as public institutions scramble to deal—or give the appearance that they are dealing—with calls to “decolonize” archives, to “redistribute” looted memories, to “redress” irreparable wrongs. As a consequence, while there have been some significant propositions to grapple with these words, there has also been much hollow noise.
So what could one more of these conversations really do?
Rather than adding to the din, and resisting trends that propose “best practices” or formulaic solutions to complex issues, the presentations at Inward Outward stressed the persistence of difficulty. Our conversations offered no suggestions that a panacea might be found, no indication of a new pro-forma method for finding novel ways, yet again, to make visible what so many in Europe do not wish to see. Rather, we interrogated what was—and continues to be—related to the protracted period of modernity; this post-enlightenment moment in which extractivism and the “thingification” of peoples, animals, plants and vital elements is the norm.
Across this publication 9 individual texts unfold, critically engaging with conversations on witnessing, care and repair in the archive.
These include:
– Introduction from Alana Osbourne, Carine Zaayman and the Inward Outward team
– “Curating Other-Archives:Witnessing, Care, and Image Afterlives”, Daniela Agostinho (Aarhus University)
– “Ukugcina amagama: Keeping Names”, Athambile Masola (Poet, Writer, Researcher and Lecturer, University of Cape Town)
– “On Spectrality as a Method of Care”, Evelyn Wan (Utrecht University)
– “Living Archives: The Challenge of Capturing Memory in a Photographic Project”, Edine Célestin (Kolektif 2 Dimansyon)
– “Moving Image Restitution in Australia: Towards an Indigenous Critique”, Nikolaus Perneczky (Queen Mary University of London)
– “Strengthening Community-Based Human Rights Video Witnessing”, Yvonne Ng (WITNESS)
– [Deep Breath] Witnessing beyond Discourse in Colonial Sound Archives”, Luc Marraffa (ASCA, University of Amsterdam)
– “Dreaming in Public”, Aylin Kuryel (University of Amsterdam)
Please download the publication PDF or read it on the publication section of the Inward Outward website.
If you have any thoughts or reflections in reading this publication we invite you to get in touch with us at: inwardoutward@beeldengeluid.nl