Vulnerable Archives

On silenced archives
and dissenting views

Savvy Contemporary
Invocations

17–18.09.2021

Archives – the fragile, vulnerable ones we are addressing here – are not silent per se. They do have a voice, but one that can be silenced. They do have a voice, but one whose potent airing might not be listened to. In this project – initiated by Savvy Contemporary – we collaborate with archives and organizations that engage in strategies of alternative history writing, dissent, self-organization, and participation via practical solidarity. The project Vulnerable Archives understands vulnerability as a method, with the potential of continuous recreative sources of knowledge.

Since 2020, the work of Vulnerable Archives has been taking place in Germany with research partners and communities in Turkey, Italy, and France. The aims of the project is to build dialogues among the communities that have been silenced and denied from archival practices in order to make visible the overlooked efforts and unconventional ways of storing collective memories.

In the frame of the Invocations taking place on September 17th and 18th – whose aim is to enhance archival networks and infrastructures through workshops, readings, discussions, performances, screenings and more – Archive Berlin will introduce a body of materials tracing feminists publishing practices in Turkey and its diaspora as part of Archive Inventory and a performance by Muna Mussie staging the archaeology of one’s body, a corporeal archive, repository of historical practices, fragments, and traces.