Digital and Community Archives

The workshop program (2021-2022) is designed for The Whole Life Academy program of Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin.

The current situation of global social and political unrest is strongly connected to archival practices. In recording, storing and sharing lived experience, data and knowledge, the present is captured within a constellation of complex historical and contemporary social choreographies and sensual protocols. The Whole Life Academy Berlin rehearses collaborative forms of knowledge production in archives, taking up urgent questions on decolonizing archives and objects and unfolding marginalized narrations.

What strategies of commoning, collectivity and solidarity can archives offer in the face of health, economic, natural and political crises? How can local narratives, archival objects and biographies contained within archives be made legible today? How do current human and non-human relations shape the ways in which archives are built and function?

Embedded in an international long-term research process, the Academy will develop a nomadic curriculum in ten online workshops from October 2021 to February 2022.

The zine publication documents "Art Pluriverse", an annual community science series initiated by the Biennale of Western Balkans in 2020 as part of its year-round programme, in connection with the History of Art Laboratory, School of Fine Arts, University of Ioannina in Greece. Art Pluriverse aims to uplift intangible cultural heritage through community science, by engaging communities and the public in co-creative research in close collaboration with artists and researchers. Drawing on art, intangible cultural heritage and open knowledge, the programme foregrounds communities that safeguard local practices, by documenting their artistic heritage and traditional knowledge through open, educative and participatory methods. The collaborative process leads to the co-creation of research-based art and the development of digital community archives based on open-access principles, envisioning an Art Pluriverse for collectively experiencing and sharing tradition anew.