Long abstract
We will explore parallels in the relationship between
an external reality and both archives and photographs. Both have little natural
connection and/or directly reflecting external reality. Both show traces of
their becoming but must be read beyond the frame of their materiality and the
connections between order and meaning must be disentangled in order to gain and
reveal significance. However, the archival order always contains several voids
- deliberate and unintended - that are due to the process of the archives'
emergence in changing contexts. Thus, various types of silences and blindness
constitute the archive order. How can these silences be broken or made to
resonate? What happens when we are no longer able to grasp them with the
simplifying gaze of habit? How can connections and disruptions that emerge from
archives' silences and blindness be used fruitfully by scholars working with
and in photo archives?
Trouillot talks of archival silence, the Comaroffs of
reading across and Stoler along the archival grain. The visual parallel to
silence is blindness. How can research on photo archives find a white stick or
an archival equivalent to braille? Those with macular degeneration must use
peripheral vision, peeking sideways. What sort of archival research might this
inspire?
This panel will examine various possibilities of
working with photo archives that do not see empty (negative) spaces as a
deficit, but on the contrary as an opportunity for alternative viewings of the
archive, drawing productive power precisely from the contents, no matter how
perceived.
