CONTESTED PASTS: photography and memory of nation and diaspora

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If you missed this event, you can watch the recording in MEDIA.

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OPEN SESSIONS #5 

CONTESTED PASTS: photography and memory of nation and diaspora

Guest Speaker: MOHINI CHANDRA

Moderators: Esther Scholtes & Santasil Mallik

The present session is linked to the articles Sky Hopinka and Entangled Indigenous Identities: On the triangular relationship between photography, time and colonialism, and Time, Trauma, and Photography. "Where the Birds Never Sing" but images tend to, by Esther Scholtes and Santasil Mallik, respectively, recently published in Archivo Papers Journal, Volume 2, Issue 1, 2022.

Photography is often approached as a site of historical inquiry, in which the traces of a past of violence and traumatic events are examined and reframed. At the same time, negotiations between memory and the historical are possible through subjective and fictional narratives that unveil the perspective of subaltern voices against the Western narrative. 

Archivo Research Network members Esther Scholtes and Santasil Mallik, together with guest speaker Mohini Chandra, will engage in a discussion about photography, historical violence and critical narratives against colonial desire, thus contributing towards a transformative politics of change.

Cover image © Mohini Chandra, Matérialité, 2017-2020.

 

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About the speakers:

MOHINI CHANDRA | Mohini Chandra’s multimedia work on the international flows of people and culture in our globalised world has been exhibited in venues worldwide. For Mohini, the combination of photography, found and archival material, moving image, sound and other installation media, enables the visual expression of personal experience and a ‘mapping’ of alternate narratives within the complex conditions of globalisation. As a descendant of Indian indentured labourers in the Pacific, Mohini has explored the long term effects of Empire and the hidden narratives of postcolonial diaspora experience. Her research encompasses both thinking and making around photography through a range of curatorial, writing and publishing projects.

ESTHER SCHOLTES | Member of the Archivo Research Network 2022 and contributor of Archivo Papers Journal 2(1), 2022. Scholtes is an art historian and photography theorist. She completed two Bachelors in Arts Sociology and Philosophy from the University of Groningen and she graduated her Research Master in Art History from Leiden University in 2018 with a thesis on intermedial photographic and cartographic practices. She has worked at the NederlandsFotomuseum in Rotterdam and press photo agency ANP in The Hague and currently holds a position as cataloguer of the photography collection at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. She has published on contemporary and historicalphotography and is a member of the editorial board of the Amsterdam-basedart journal Kunstlicht.

SANTASIL MALLIK | Member of the Archivo Research Network 2022 and contributor of Archivo Papers Journal 2(1), 2022. Mallik is a visual artist and researcher currently pursuing his M.Phil. from the Centre for English Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His work deals with the intersections of literary and visual cultures in the modern political history of Bengal, India. As a practitioner, he engages with alternative documentary processes and experimental video art, exhibiting them at various film and media festivals globally.