Interrogating the Archive

Reading Workshop: “Digital Knowledge and Collective Memory"

Erika Barbosa, PhD Student, Visual Arts with K. Wayne Yang, Provost Muir College and Professor of Ethnic Studies, UC San Diego

May 15, 2019, 12 p.m.
VAF 366, Visual Arts Facility, UC San Diego

This workshop will examine notions of digital knowledge and collective memory, looking specifically at contemporary artist Walid Raad's The Atlas Group project, which interrogates the historiography of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). Taking into consideration Raad's thematic "symptomology of war" in relation to three recent texts on the project, we will investigate Raad's performed and fictionalized archival art practice as a case study for thinking about digital knowledge.

Registration (suggested) at: interrogating.the.archive@gmail.com
Reading list below

Interrogating the Archive: Shared Research Methodologies at the Intersection of Aesthetics and Authenticity is a research project which addresses key methodological gaps in qualitative research practices. By focusing on forms of knowledge production in the archive, this interdisciplinary group seeks to develop entirely new shared research methodologies for tracing the lives of marginalized communities, ‘ethnographic’ objects, and unconventional artworks that are systematically subject to erasure by dominant cultural paradigms.

More information: https://sites.google.com/view/interrogatingthearchive/home

INTERROGATING THE ARCHIVE
Interdisciplinary Chancellor’s Collaboratory
Visual Arts | Communication | Ethnic Studies
University of California, San Diego

Image: The Atlas Group, Fakhouri File, 1996-2002 (detail)

Choi, Jong-chul. “Reinventing the Archive in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Walid Raad’s The Atlas Group.” Digital Creativity 29, Issue 2-3 (2018) 235-248. DOI: 10.1080/14626268.2018.1447969

Gilbert, Alan. “Walid Raad’s Spectral Archive, Part I: Historiography as Process.” e-flux Journal #69 (January 2016): https://www.e-flux.com/journal/69/60594/walid-raad-s-spectral-archive-part-i-historiography-as-process/

Gilbert, Alan. “Walid Raad’s Spectral Archive, Part II: Testimony of Ghosts.” e-flux Journal #71 (March 2016): https://www.e-flux.com/journal/71/60536/walid-raad-s-spectral-archive-part-ii-testimony-of-ghosts/