BIRGIT EUSTERSCHULTE // The Archive as a Model and Source of Unlearning

EVENT RESCHEDULED

THE ARCHIVE AS MODEL AND SOURCE OF UN/LEARNING

Dialogical Approaches in the Work of Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński and Gulzat Egemberdieva

  BIRGIT EUSTERSCHULTE

This talk asks how the archive can be understood both as a model and as a source of unlearning and what challenges this poses for artistic works dealing with archival material. The emphasis is on artistic methods of historicization that deal with colonial history, the entanglement of coloniality and modernity and the continued effect of colonial patterns in the present.

The use of archives as sources for artistic historicizing does initially not appear to be unusual. However, the specific nature of the research lies in the investigation of artistic methods and approaches that can be understood as forms of unlearning and repairing narratives and historical mis/representation. This talk explores this question through the works of the Austrian artist Belinda Kazeem-Kaminński and the Kyrgyz artist Gulzat Egemberdieva who develop distinct methods of historicizing to uncover alternative stories from the archive – colonial photography and found footage material – and to resist conventional readings and dominant narratives. Both approaches have the use of dialogical structures in common. The talk explores the potential of dialogical forms to overcome the limitations of the archive, to fill gaps and to dissolve hierarchies, thus initiating a process of decolonization and unlearning.

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Birgit Eusterschulte is an art historian, research associate (post-doc) in the Collaborative Research Center 1512 Intervening Arts, Freie Universität Berlin. After studying art history and German literature, she initially worked as a curator. Phd in art history in 2017, FU Berlin; postdoctoral researcher at the Berlin University of Arts 2017-2019; her current project Unlearing History asks how different models of artistic historiography intervene in dominant narratives as methodical unlearning.