Archive Inferno is an open, online and itinerant study group that runs 8 week curriculums organised and led by artist and writer Joshua Leon. Its intention is to develop and produce new strategies and knowledge by offering a communal space to dwell, think and feel through focused reading and research.
Its primary focus is to critically understand and simultaneously produce a concept for a poeisis of history situating this idea in the practice of considering how to care for, dream in, refuse narratives, repair wounds and reform infractures of the archive (institution) in the time of ecological, economic and social crises.
The first sessions will meet every Tuesday from 5:30pm GMT (6:30pm CET) until 8:30pm GMT (9:30pm CET), from 10th June until 29th July.
The study group situates itself in the contemporary tumultuous conditions reading these conditions of duress, and desires to create a space to spend time understanding how this duress impacts subjectivity in relation to the archive (institution), before seeking potential modes of joy, escape and imagination for working under such stress.
We will develop a thorough understanding of the history of the archive (institution) and archive theory before developing questions around what a poesis of history could be, and how such a poesis can produce new strategies for being.
Some of the key questions that will be discussed over the course of the curriculum are:How does poesis allow us to intervene, interrupt, or communicate with history? Working within the idea of a poesis of history how can we research and work with and for what has been forgotten, hidden, overlooked or erased in the archive (institution). How do we go about finding and listening to the documents that may not exist, or that are in peril? What is the role of imagination and the world of dreams is in the archive (institution)? And how can we allow our imagination and dreams to interact with history as a method to transform and liberate the unseen, unspoken and unheard and potentially recalibarate the archive (institution).
These questions will form the structure of the classes led by Joshua Leon, in which the group will work slowly in communion through assigned readings.
Each student receives a dedicated and downloadable reader for the course.
There are no desired outcomes, this is a space to grow intellectually and spend time developing critical thought.
Archive Inferno draws on Joshua Leon’s extensive research into archives (Institutions), and the development of his ‘theory of collapse’ which he uses to study, explore and produce writing and exhibitions at the moment of interaction between archival memory, social history and autobiography.
Register here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/archive-inferno-spring-session-1-tickets-1302874445539?aff=oddtdtcreator
For enquiries please email:
archiveinferno@gmail.com