Gathering 2: [De-]Constructing Care in The ArchiveGathering 2: [De-]Constructing Care in The Archive

Following up on our first public gathering (11 February 2021), and connecting to the event The Critical Visitor: Archival Interaction [De-]Constructing Heritage on May 27, 2021, this Collecting Otherwise public gathering aims to delve deeper into questions around archival encounters and how they relate to the accessibility of a collection. Departing from the Archival Interaction's focus on the locus of heritage construction (where, with whom, under the aegis of whom?), we will together hold a conversation space around the thematics of 'entering', 'caring for', 'being with', and 'making kin with' the archive. In this, the public gathering also intends to critically look at the instrumentalisation of (architectural) archives and their attribution of holding 'truth' in constructing (collective) identity and history – as this has been used to marginalise, sanitise, and oppress Other ways of remembering.

By thinking through moments of 'arriving' at the archive and how the archive enters institutions and institutional memory, we will trace – through a selection of our case studies (Vrouwen Bouwen Wonen, Berlage, Nationale Tentoonstelling Vrouwenarbeid 1898, and Keurige Leugens van het Officieel Fatsoen) – the balances of care enacted between the object, archive, archive's origins, the archived practice or subject, the archive's custodian/curator, archivists, 'secretaries', and visitors.

Hannah Dawn Henderson is an artist and writer based in The Hague and Manchester. Henderson has participated in exhibitions and projects internationally, including venues such as Archive Gallery (London, UK), Greylight Projects (Brussels, BE), W139 (Amsterdam, NL), and the Wilberforce Institute (Kingston-upon-Hull, UK), and festivals such as Moves: International Festival of Movement on Screen (UK), And What? Festival (London, UK), Experiments in Cinema (Albuquerque, US), and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Amongst these are projects that have been supported by Stroom Den Haag, Amsterdam Funds for Art, the James Reckitt Library Trust, UK Arts Council and Mondriaan Fund. As of January 2020, Henderson is a resident artist at the Rijksakdemie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. During this Collecting Otherwise event, Hannah will read out a piece of her ongoing work within the working group.

Renan Laru-an is a researcher working curatorially from the Philippines and in Southeast Asia. In 2012, he founded DiscLab | Research and Criticism (2012-2015), a multidisciplinary platform and 'virtual' organisation for critical writing, theory, discursive activities and research on Philippine contemporary art as well as visual and network culture. He is currently the Public Engagement and Artistic Formation Coordinator at the Philippine Contemporary Art Network (PCAN). Laru-an studies 'insufficient' and 'subtracted' images and subjects at the juncture of development and integration projects through long-term inquiries, such as Promising Arrivals, Violent Departures (ongoing), Herding Islands, Rats and the Anthropocene (2015), Lightning Studies: Centre for the Translation of Constraints, Conflicts and Contaminations (CTCCCs) (2016), and The Artist and the Social Dreamer (2017). He has (co-)curated festivals and exhibitions, including the 6th Singapore Biennale: Every Step in the Right Direction, Singapore (2019); the 8th OK. Video - Indonesia Media Arts Festival, Jakarta (2017); A Tripoli Agreement, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah (2018); among others. His independent scholarship has been supported by the Foundation for Arts Initiatives, the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and numerous curatorial residencies and fellowships.

Staci Bu Shea is a curator at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons since and a writer. They broadly focus on aesthetic and poetic practices of social reproduction and care work, as well as its manifestations in interpersonal relationships and daily life, community organizing and institutional practice. Currently they have a special interest in archiving and commoning the "clerical," as well as arts accessibility from a disability justice perspective. Together with Rizvana Bradley they have embarked on a study trajectory called "Poetics of Living" to explore already existing and emerging non-normative forms of living together in consideration of rapidly changing discourses around sexuality, health, communal life, and death. Staci Bu Shea are also working on an artistic and poetic research project called Dying Livingly, which looks at the ways communal life and interior architecture of hospice inform one another and highlights emergent cultures of end of life care. In the past, they co-curated Barbara Hammer: Evidentiary Bodies (2017) at Leslie Lohman Museum of Art (NY) with Carmel Curtis, and graduated from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College with the group exhibition Emphasis Repeats (2016) at Hessel Museum of Art (NY). From 2011-2014 they worked as a studio manager and assistant to Jacksonville-based artist Jim Draper.

Our special guest for this event is Yasmin Tri Aryani. Yasmin is a researcher and graphic recorder, who observes the problematic nature of architectural works that showcase the elements of traditional architecture of dominant ethnicities in government-funded buildings in Indonesia – a strategy that might lead to the marginalisation of minorities. In 2019, she was chosen to be a part of the M+/Design Trust research fellowship, where she brings to light various approaches exercised by Indonesian architects in embracing local traditions that champion inclusivity. Through her research, Aryani also explores the way traditional architecture has been used to represent national identity since colonial government times.

Present during the event are the Collecting Otherwise working group members: Clara Balaguer, Alfred Marasigan, Czar Kristoff, Isola Tong, Michael Karabinos, Hannah Dawn Henderson, Harriet Rose Morley, Hetty Berens, Carolina Valente Pinto, Delany Boutkan, Yessica Deira and Setareh Noorani.

Collecting Otherwise is a work in progress, an always-under-construction research endeavour that is making use of a multi-scalar approach to the archive: from object, to questions, to methodology and tools, and back again.