Carine Zaayman

anarchival practices

…in, around and against the intersecting archives that hold strands of precolonial pasts and unrealised potentialities in Southern Africa

My project attends to the colonial ghosts haunting postapartheid South Africa by rethinking how custodianship of the past might be envisaged. I examine four case studies of artist-led projects that reimagine possible forms of historical narration by drawing on sources outside of colonial archives and employing embodied, sensorial, and affective methodologies. I argue that these tactics constitute anarchival practices. In my project, I seek to demonstrate how apprehending archival absence through anarchival practices can help us to unlearn imperialism and populate the pre-colonial archive. Within the framework of the IMAGINART project, I intend to show how political change can be conceived and instantiated through artistic methodologies by making space for counter-colonial action and agency within communities and institutions, such as museums and universities.