Inward Outward: Revisiting Witnessing & the Archive

investigates the status of moving image and sound archives as they intertwine with questions of coloniality, identity and race. Here, the archive is understood as resting in both physical structures (e.g. national, regional, local or personal) and less tangible ‘cultural archives’ (e.g. beliefs, knowledge, collective memories). Through a symposium series, publication, workshops and other events, we bring theory and practice into dialogue by drawing together people from different professional and creative backgrounds.

Last year, in March 2023, Inward Outward initiated a conversation on how concepts of witnessing and care engage with sound and moving image archives in the form of a two-day symposium. Rather than engage with a new theme this year, ongoing events press us to return to these themes and conversations. In doing so, we hope to extend the threads sewn in 2023 to address the brutal escalation of long-held settler colonial projects as they redraw what witnessing, care and archival work might entail right now.

For 2024, we will take a different approach in order to revisit these themes. The programme features an afternoon working session with James Parnell (by invitation), an early evening conversation between scholar Tina Campt and filmmaker Mohanad Yaqubi, followed by the launch of the last symposium’s edited collection.

Tina Campt and Mohanad Yaqubi will think together on how film practices and sonic and visual archives resonate with cycles of colonial and racist violence, as well as the challenges we face as we witness, carefully archive, and resist their unfolding. What does it mean to be critical of colonial archives and their formation in a time when physical sites of memory — archives, universities, museums, monuments, and shrines — are actively and intentionally being destroyed by war? What are the ethics of archival knowledge-work intent on protecting past, present and future memory at this moment?

16:30: Registration Open

17:00-19:00: Tina Campt & Mohanad Yaqubi in Conversation

19:00-19:30: Inward Outward 2023 Publication Launch

19:30-20:30: Drinks

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