Performative Screenings #86
Propositions: Experiments in Collective Archive & Composition
hosted by The Collective Art Community Against Censorship
with the participation of Archive of Silence
Besides the program below school is open to the public on
Saturday 26th, October, 3-8 pm And Saturday 2nd, November, 3-8 pm
Closing Saturday 9th, November, 7 pm
Program:
Mourning Censorship
Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024 at 7 pm
Reading and screening session
With Frida Robles and Ujjwal Kanishka Utkarsh
Is there anything more violent than a killing whose grief is banned? Censorship goes as deep as to not allow families, communities, and societies to mourn over the loss. The bodies that cannot find burial, the vigils that cannot be celebrated, the prayers that are prohibited, the denial of extraction, the continuous bombings, discriminations, and inequalities paired with it. Who, in this world, has the right to weep for their loved ones?
We will read fragments of the text “Violence, Mourning, Politics” by Judith Butler and “Enter Ghost” by Isabella Hammad. We will watch the short film “Special Service” by Ujjwal Kanishka Utkarsh. The filmmaker will be present.
We allow for silence for all those who are continuously annihilated.
*Text by Frida Robles
Weekend with Archive of Silence
Friday, October 25th, 2024 at 7 pm
Conversation with Archive of Silence
The discussion will be in person. No registration is required.
Sunday, October 27, 2024 from 2 pm - Open End
Workshop: Community Archiving Day
Limited Capacity!
Registration is required via https://www.eventbrite.com/e/workshop-community-archiving-day-tickets-1054690089449?aff=oddtdtcreator
Archive of Silence warmly invites the school community to a weekend of shared learning, collaboration, and collective archiving. This will be a chance to connect, contribute, and reflect on the work of preserving instances of silencing post-October 7th.
We’ll start on Friday evening with a discussion about our journey in grassroots archiving, exploring the challenges we’ve faced, the lessons we’ve learned, and why this work is so important. Together, we’ll dive into some questions: Who gets to tell these stories of erasure? Why is it crucial to document repression? And perhaps most importantly: How can archiving itself serve as a form of resistance against erasure and silencing?
On Sunday, we invite you to roll up your sleeves and join us for a hands-on day of collective archiving. When we started the Archive last October, our goal was to document the silencing and censorship happening around us. We aimed to preserve these moments for journalists, historians, and future generations. However, faced with the overwhelming bias in German media and the lack of journalistic ethics, we found ourselves not only documenting repression but also stepping into the role of retelling stories that weren’t being told fairly. We realised how challenging it is to systematically gather all the evidence — something that is still crucial for furthering the ongoing fights.
That’s where you come in. We’re asking for your help. Whether it’s selecting a case from our public list or uncovering unarchived examples from Austria, you can play a key role in preserving these stories. Together, we’ll gather the evidence, digitally archive it, and, if desired, print and store it physically—ensuring that these moments are never forgotten.
Archiving is resistance.
Remembering is resistance.
*Text by Archive of Silence
Workshop: Collective Compositions
Facilitated by Steph Holl-Trieu
Dates:
Friday, November 1, 6-9 PM
Sunday, November 3, 2-5 PM
Saturday, November 9, 7-8 PM
(Independent work time during public opening hours: Saturday, November 2, 3-8 PM)
Limited Capacity!
Registration is required via https://www.eventbrite.com/e/workshop-collective-compositions-tickets-1054684141659?aff=oddtdtcreator
This workshop is an invitation to engage with the existing archive material, to unsilence it by elaborating on, drawing connections between, and filling the intervals of what has been documented. As part of this engagement, the objective is to question the categories that order reality and hold it together in stable, seemingly unbreakable narratives. Reflecting on the positions from which we speak and act, we will work with sound as well as (moving) images to compose a collective proposition for activating the archive. This proposition will be presented publicly as part of the closing event on November 9.
*Text by Steph Holl-Trieu
A:
We have a problem!
B:
A school could be a space to name problems
to examine them
to understand them
A:
Where to go if there is a problem school doesn’t want to name?
B:
We go to school!
A:
Which school?
B:
school is a factory, a copy room, an investigation office, an archive house
school in October is a radical communal experimental space
A space in which a collective knowledge give-and-take is attempted
where links are forged
where sharing information is practiced
Above all school is a school is a school is a school
A:
Apropos October…
From October last year till October this year, the cultural and academic sectors of Austria and Germany have witnessed an unprecedented number of cancellations, censorship, and repression. Hundreds of open and closed letters have been written and signed. The amount of these cases and their context, representation, debates, and conversation are so vast that one loses track and forgets.
B:
school is also a space for observing comparatively
for remembering
for preserving
A:
In the past year alone, many artists, cultural workers, academic scholars, and concerned individuals have come together to form grassroots practices of archiving, informing, and protesting this fascist escalation.
B:
school in October is a space for honoring the labor of the past year
of the past decades
school in October is a space for making this labor visible
through physically documenting them
through aggregating the documents
A:
What is aggregation good for?
B:
school in November is a radical communal experimental space
A space in which collective composition is attempted
where links are forged
where propositions are made
Above all school is a school is a school is a school
