Me, Elodie Sacher and Imane Zoubai hosted a discursive workshop around personal and family archives as part of Red Gold Reflections - a series of events A.MAL collective hosted for Dardishi.
In a disursive workshop, we explored what it means to have and use archives, and the ethics surrounding this. This stemmed from an interest of mine and Elodie’s as we both hold and use personal archives as part of our practice. We had many conversations about the etymology of the 'archive' - a western construct of categorising and labelling that gives validity to things which exist in the concrete, and has its roots tangled in racist, white colonial powers. In the workshop we considered how we can disrupt this, whether archives have a place for less tangible experiences like life experiences and ritual, and whether we can use archiving to reclaim our fractured histories.
This was part of a series of events - the culmination of a five month residency myself and four other artists from North Africa and the diaspora participated in, using red algae species as a starting point to explore wider sustainability relations between the Global North and South. Me and Elodie Sacher (another artist on the residency) used and discussed the use of personal and public archives extensively over the course of the residency. As part of Red Gold Reflections, I also ran another event for Dardishi alongside Elodie and Younes El Hossaini (of 560Zoom) - International Lost Species Day screening. We also exhibited our works at the P21 Gallery from 28.10 - 06.11.2021.
With grateful support from Arts Council England, The British Council of Morocco, The National Lottery and Dardishi