‘Performing the archive – embodied geographies workshop’
“A workshop with artist Raisa Kabir, bringing in collective tools to re -imagine what archives can be, and work with the archive of the body. Unpicking ideas around collections, voices, places, and un/archiving as a de-colonial practice. How can our bodies function as road maps or actioning decoded histories? Use this workshop to challenge held ideas around recording information, and how information or narratives can be translated and embodied through your work”
This is the outline of a workshop I held for some PDP students. I wanted to explore themes of archiving, using objects and then translating some of that through our bodies. I have always thought using archives was useful, to question types of histories, and also the power of what is archived, who does the choosing, and what other types of archives exist?
(Outline lesson timings)
2pm – 2.30 (30 mins intro – What is an archive?) 10mins questions roll over
2.40 – 2.45 (5min break)
2.50 – 3.00 (10 mins introduce activity)
3.00 – 3.25 (25 mins activity task in groups)
3.25 – 3.50 ( 25 min discussion)
3.50 – 3.55 ( 5min break)
4.00 – 4.30 (Feedback/reflection)
What is an archive? What are collections?
What do they look like? Why are archives important?
Why do you want to use archives?
We start by introducing each other and I introduce myself, and then I tend to ask my group lots of questions what they might think a traditional archive is. I used my textile opening tool also, that I used in my micro teach, to again start up conversations around objects, narratives and underrepresented archives that might be housed in different languages and materials – like an Edwardian corset, or a petticoat, or woven textiles from South America or Sweden.
I asked the students if they had seen (Watermelon woman) Cheryl Dunye – 1996) A film where Cherly invents the a lost fictional actress in 1930’ cinema to research and create a film about discovering as rearchiving this fictional black actress as a radical attempt at showing where there are howling gaps in the archival records. Her film fills in the history to trace black women actresses and reclaim their stories. Knowing that they did exist, but sometimes we have to invent and insert ourselves where so often people of colour has been purposely erased. It is such an examples of queer black women inserting themselves into the canon this way and subverting and highlighting what is missing.
On the other hand in the National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago – the colonial archives, that detail the names and data the indentured are recorded, their debt owed and which village they came from, which ship they came on and information about their bodies/abilities, but nothing of people’s stories – this is what is missing – and this is where crafted object, I believe can used archive theory to embody history this way.
UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register (Registry of Slaves of the British Caribbean 1817-1834
Prompts used:
- How do we perform with the archive? Whose stories?
- How can we approach with ethics and care?
- What is a body?
- What is the body of work?
- The body of the archive?
- Colonial practices, divorce the archive from the body.
- Graves in Egypt shipped around the world
- What kind of object speaks?
- Do we know how to listen?
Using books by Edward Said, Ariella Aisha Azoulay, Kumari Jaywardena, and Jasbir Puar. We looked at the way the histories of colonised or othered peoples in feminism and decolonial scholarship have been framed by others and framed themselves. I asked the group to pick up a book each and scan the pages for excerpts or even a sentence that stood out, and for them to add it to the map, and maybe we will be able to join up the questions – which I used as prompts to get the group to think about objects, bodies, and the role of archives, and how we value knowledge.
I gave each student a group and an opportunity to speak about the information they had found, and writing notes on the map, created a collective resource. Using great source material we noted that the books were dense, and were needed, but much of the knowledge in them were about our lived experiences of being poc, othered, women, and queer/trans bodies. It happened that this was a sign up workshop that a a fair few students had come to my lectures prior, so had signed up to come, meaning many students were poc and were eager to engage in some of these themes. Some were MA students and had a good grasp of the theories we were discussing, but ultimately it was the non hierarchal format, where a workshop discussion was being led and steered by me, but I did not position myself as a fountain of top down knowledge. It was geared to create a much needed space for the students to discuss these topics, of women of colour, uncredited feminism of colour scholarship, and by creating this space in the university institution it threw into focus the severe lack of other kinds of spaces like this for the students to freely share and hold space for each other.
It brought me back to one of the PGcert sessions that I think had a lot of influence on me, and reiterated the methods I use to teach and inspire. Lateral spaces, and always recognising that students have so much knowledge to share and prior experience. I always feel a bit let down when proffessors haven’t recoogised the material and experiences we’ve had or prior knowledge to sessions. And this is what I aim to encourage and foster. I am trying to make sure I can keep holding space for students and to keep going to give students several options to further/expand their ideas, as this is where eureka moments happen, students feeling safe to share, empowered by the content, then confident to form their own analysis and bring varying ideas together.