if heritage imaginaries shape and constrain the political imagination, how can alternative cultural and political archives expand the scope of the political imagination?

The Cultural Archive

Increased access to alternative archives is an integral part of expanding the way in which the past is ‘read’ and through which art engages with contemporary political and developmental concerns. In previous research, the team found that historical scripts can also constrain the way that the future is imagined, whether by artists, academics or activists. In recognition of these constraints, in both Uganda and Bangladesh there was an interest in and demand for support with the establishment of archives of politically significant art, archive training and help experimenting with cultural archiving. This project responded to that call through the production of cultural archives.

Forming archives

The project consisted of a number of experimental activities held in York (UK), Chittagong (Bangladesh) and Kampala (Uganda) to explore, surface, disrupt and create alternative archives. These included, arts exchanges, archive training, artist residencies, creative labs, arts based workshops, public conversations, street happenings, exhibitions and artist responses. The project was archived in three different ways to reflect the different audiences and networks; through an anthology of texts, ‘Placing the imagination’, reflecting the groups overlapping interests in text, archive, structure, design and image; as a toolkit for practitioners of creative activism, ‘The scrapbook for artful activism’ for creative activists; and an archive of the project artworks, documented through photography, film and audio as ‘Archive Alive’.

Artist Exchanges and Residencies

Artist residencies, responses, exchanges, and in-situ creative labs and happenings bring together artists and members of the public - and contribute to alternative cultural archiving.

Contributing artists included sculptor Shohrab Jahan, painter and sensory artist, Shaela Sharmin, painter and multi media artist Sharad Das, video artist Zihan Karim, illustrator and performance artist Zahed Ali Chowdhury (Yuvraj) and performance artist Joydep Roajda, photographer Jim Joel, poet Susan Kiguli, multimedia artist Pamela Enyonu, painter and installation artist Matt Kayem and textile artist Njola.

Events: York

Archive training

During October and November 2019, four colleagues from Bangladesh and Uganda came to the UK to visit a range of different archives and participate in an archive symposium; visual and sensory artist Shaela Sharmin and sculptor and installation artist Shohrab Jahan, both from Chittagong Institute of Fine Arts, Bangladesh, and photographer and researcher Jim Joel from Uganda.

The team visited the Oury and South African collection at the Borthwick Archive, as well as the Railway Museum Archive. The whole team visited the Black Cultural Archive in Brixton, and the Feminist Archive at Bishopsgate, followed by a tour of the Bloodaxe Archive at Newcastle University and the Borthwick at the University of York. 

As well as archives, the group visited public art galleries and museums, and held a public conversation to reflect on the themes that had been emerging from this team research; ‘Public art and the political imagination: in conversation with artists and curators from Bangladesh and Uganda’, with visual artist Shaela Sharmin and sculptor Shohrab Jahan from Chittagong, photographer Jim Joel from Kampala, chaired by filmmaker Emilie Flower from York.

Archive symposium

In May 2018, The Centre for Modern Studies at the University of York hosted a symposium about Political Memory and its Archives within the political forms research. They asked, how is political memory layered, recorded and reconfigured? The symposium considered some of political memory’s many archives, in the literal and the figurative senses, and explored the traces left by exile, displacement, war and political struggle.

In October 2019, York Centre for Modern Studies and Centre for Applied Human Rights hosted a second symposium in the series, titled, Art, archives and the political imagination

This international symposium brought together artists, curators and academics from Bangladesh, Uganda and the UK to discuss conceptual and practical questions related to political and cultural archives. There are a range of themes that we were interested in, including: integrating unconventional archive materials; integrating a political perspective into a cultural archive; collaborations between artists and archives; the ways that the broader public access material; and practicalities associated with establishing archives and promoting engagement.

The discussion was also informed by a Leverhulme-funded research collaboration, Another World, involving York and Makerere, exploring the archives of Transition Magazine, an influential journal of arts, culture and society published in Kampala during the 1960s.

At the symposium, the group discussed alternative archives, resistance to archiving, the ethical tensions of producing archives from testimony, and the craft, protocol and practicalities of creating an archive.

The training and symposium were the first step in developing proposals to establish interactive public archives of politically significant art and material culture in collaboration with Makerere School of Industrial and Fine Arts in Uganda, and at Chittagong Institute for Fine Arts in Bangladesh. These archives hope to represent ways in which the arts, material culture and politics have been intertwined. The project reinforced the idea that understanding the archives outside formal archive structures and protocols may be necessary for creating new archives that can accommodate and facilitate artistic practise and diversify archive users.  A useful continuation of this work would be the further exploration of the contribution and form of alternative, community and arts based archives.

Exhibition

Public art events during the residency included; a presentation and workshop on collaborative collage at the Centre for Applied Human Rights open arts day at the Crescent in York and a collaborative installation between Emilie Flower, Shohrab Jahan and Jim Joel inspired by our existing archives, ‘archive alive’. The exhibit was held at the Social Design Exhibit of York Design Week curated by Rebecca Carr, and assisted by sound designer Lynette Queck.

Events: chittagong/dhaka

Street Festival

 In December 2019, the project supported activities within the Cheragi Art Show 7 in Chittagong and a storytelling workshop in Dhaka. The Cheragi show was curated by Jog Art Space members Shohrab Jahan, Zihan Karim, and performance artist Joydep Roajda. The festival has run for 8 years and was created to open a space for questions, mystery and dialogue between the public and artists. The space is curated through a collaborative process of team discussion, there is no interpretation of the works on site,  and all artists are present to discuss the work with the public. Over 1500 people were estimated to have visited the exhibition over the weekend. Emilie Flower and Ruth Kelly participated as artists and recorded the process and reflexions on the process with Duniya Khandokher from Action Aid Bangladesh, working alongside festival artists including Zahed Ali Chowdhury (Yuvraj) Shaela Sharmin, and painter and multi media artist Sharad Das from the Chittagong Fine Arts Institute.

Storytelling

A storytelling workshop was held in Dhaka at the Global Platform to test the creative activism methodologies and feed into the collection of texts. In support of this new direction, Ruth Kelly and Emilie Flower gave a talk about practise based research to the masters students and lecturers at the Chittagong Institute and Ruth Kelly has organised a series of  linked research workshops at the University of York that incorporate the project team and learning, and overlap with the project themes.  Art and research photographic walking methods, with Jim Joel’ (October 2019) ‘Writing together, with Jane Arnfield’ (January 2019) and quality control in collaborative work (TBA. 2020).

Events: Kampala

Art Exchange and Archive

 Shohrab Jahan joined the Makerere Fine Arts Institute with the support of Dr Lilian Nabulime (Lecture and sculptor) and Professor George Keyune (lecturer, art historian and sculptor) to carry out a residency in the department. During this time he worked on a life sized wax sculpture, helped by a group of student volunteers, and ran a workshop in the Makerere Gallery for students at the Institute. Jim Joel worked with archivists from the Uganda National Museum to activate the archive by photographing spearheads from the museum that demonstrate the diversity of craftsmanship in Ugandan history, called into question national borders and evoked memories from childhood. This theme resurfaced through the work of Emilie Flower, who created a clay path installation in the exhibition space that surfaced memories for people of childhood.

The team brought these pieces together in, ‘A Temporary Exhibition’, in the temporary exhibition space at the Uganda National Museum. Hundreds of schoolchildren visiting the national museum also visited the exhibition, removing their shoes to walk along the clay path to view the sculpture and stopping to examine Jim's 6 foot photos of spears from the museum stores and question their origin and purpose. The exhibition opened with a reading by Ruth Kelly and Susan Kiguli. The exhibition provided no explanation for the work, but the visitors book suggests that people were make clear meaning from it and enjoyed it, and the artists have been asked to be involved in further exhibits in Kampaal over the summer (sadly corona virus put a stop to this).

Three Kampalan artists, Pamela Enyonu, Matt Kayem and Njola Impressions took part in activities during the residency – including helping with the installation and attending the storytelling and art workshop - and will be producing an open artistic response to the project over the next few months. Their plan is to do something at the community arts organisation Yourspace.

Storytelling

Ruth Kelly, Susan Kiguli and Scovia Arinaitwe ran a storytelling workshop, hosted by the Ugandan Library beside the Uganda National Museum. The main focus was the interaction between origin stories and personal stories, including discussion of myths and folktales, and the participants personal stories. The workshop was an opportunity to experiment with the use of different exercises for exploring stories and myths, for activists to focus in on the motivations for their work, ‘unlearn’ some of the myths they hold and build new allegiances with artists and academics. As well as contributing to the toolkit, one of the visual artists involved is planning to work with Ruth Kelly to produce an immersive installation from one of her stories.