Over the past few decades, traditional archival structures have come under widespread criticism for their claims to provide authoritative access to reliable documents and for their inherent Eurocentric, universalist, or colonial biases. In response, artistic, militant and academic projects have not only questioned and sub-verted the political implications of supposedly neutral archives, but have also proposed alternative ways of conceiving documents and collecting them. Turning to anonymous, private or subaltern sources, or producing their own audiovisual material, such projects provide access to oppressed voices, minor narratives and counter-versions of established histories, challenging established representations, understandings and frameworks. Moreover, widespread access to technology means that the production of audiovisual documents is no longer restricted to professionals. Documents can be recorded, edited, reappropriated, manipulated and shared online by anyone with a smartphone at hand. Viewers are thus now also potential producers, aware of the technical possibilities to fabricate, falsify and distort images. This proliferation of potential documents with an uncertain status raises both an emancipatory potential and a pervasive sense of doubt. In this workshop, we will reflect on the dialectic between the emancipatory potential and the pervasive ambiguity generated by the omnipresence of potential documents of uncertain status, and discuss different ways of problematising, using or challenging them through artistic means.

The Viewing Booth » by Ra’anan Alexandrowicz will be discussed intensely during the workshop