archive
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (novel)
page 310 about art being "a way of storing our brains in each other's" > art as a knowledge function before it became merely aesthetic
western/modern understandings of the world don't see art or poetry in this way, as forms of knowledge
Audre Lorde speaks on this...
in Poetry Is Not a Luxury, she writes:
"I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean - in order to cover a desperate wish for imagination without insight"
talking about Audre Lorde's ideas in the introduction of Sister Outsider, Nancy K. Bereano writes:
"We have been told that poetry expresses what we feel, and theory states what we know; that the poet creates out of the heat of the moment, while the theorist's mode is, of necessity, cool and reasoned; that one is art and therefore experienced "subjectively," and the other is scholarship, held accountable in the "objective" world of ideas. We have been told that poetry has a soul and theory has a mind and that we have to choose between them.
The white western patriarchal ordering of things requires that we believe there is an inherent conflict between what we feel and what we think - between poetry and theory. We are easier to control when one part of our selves is split from another, fragmented, off balance."
the importance of archiving
some first thoughts after visiting the exhibition and open archive "Re/Assembling Anti-Racist Struggles" at FHXB Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum in Berlin (October 17, 2025)
> now more than ever do we need to understand the implications* of struggles against injustice; knowing what has been done before and with what effects can help us see that/what we can do now
* with implications I mean the (historical) presence of these efforts, what they consisted of, what happened, who were involved, what the contexts were, etc.
> the individualism that characterizes neoliberal capitalist societies makes us feel that we have no power to bring about change, but we can't allow ourselves to just comply with an unjust system
> there have been, and are, so many people and initiatives that 'resist'
> however, we don't usually see or realize this because historical anti-racist struggles are largely rendered invisible
"active forgetting"
this is an active practice by modern/colonial governments and agents
for example: "the British government only admitted in 2013 that when it withdrew from Kenya in 1963, extensive records of the colonial administration had been moved to England and stored in secret archives...it was only due to a transnational alliance of NGOs, lawyers and historians that an admission of the existence of the archives was forced through and more than 5000 Kenyan citizens were compensated for the violence and suffering they had endured" (from the curatorial text of the exhibition)
> but, a new anti-racist ecology of remembering is emerging
"a politics of voice"
we are making things visible, finding new ways to do so
this is where archiving can be meaningful, as a practice of remembering and activating
some notes I took during a public lecture with Lilah V, organized by CLiP at Kunstinstituut Melly (March 13, 2026)
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about Lilah V and her practice:
- Lilah V is a community archivist and organizer in the Filipino diaspora in the Netherlands
- she is the archivist for the JMS Legacy Foundation
- the JMS Legacy Foundation aims to promote and share the legacy of Jose Maria Sison for all revolutionaries, activists, scholars, and seekers of a just society
- Jose Maria Sison, popularly known as JMS or Ka Joma (Ka is short for kasama, the Filipino word for comrade), was a revolutionary leader, a political theorist, an internationalist, and a poet, whose writings have guided the resurgence and development of the Filipino people’s revolutionary struggle for national and social liberation
about CLiP:
- CLiP stands for Collective Learning in Practice
- it is an educational program organized by Kunstinstituut Melly where 10-14 young participants come together over the span of six months
- for this year's edition, the participants explore collective survival in times of global crisis
- from October 2025 to March 2026, the participants have been developing skills and tools for collective survival through a mix of creative and practical methods, including discussion, movement, LARPing, food preservation and mutual aid
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attacks on history & knowledge
= attacks on the self
= attacks on the people and their resistance
history of struggle
when historical efforts of resistance (against oppression) are erased from knowledge domains, your ability to see a different (more liberated) future for your people is robbed from you because you are unaware of what generations before you have already done and accomplished
so archives (where histories of struggle are remembered) are not just places of history, but more so places for future
but: remembering is nothing without action
in order to keep knowledge alive, the sources of that knowledge need to be kept alive; the people, the land
it's therefore not enough to fix information in space; archiving needs to go hand in hand with activism (transforming) in order to truly bring about change
how can archival institutions (but also, for example, museums) contribute to transforming?
- by making visitors care
>>> speak to emotions
>>> close the distance between the present and the past by allowing visitors to touch things in the archive
- by being part of the community for which they are archiving
>>> become aware of the needs of the community
>>> organize political education and practical training
yesterday my friends and I ended up in a conversation about the meaning of art in this capitalist world (February, 2026)
we talked about the standardization of music, how many songs nowadays are molded into an easily digestible, consumable and reproducible format. we said that in this way, music seems to lose its artistic meaning. it becomes more of a product, focused on the consumer, rather than something that comes out of the artist’s urge to give shape to...
their feelings and thoughts;
the experience that is unique to them and their community;
the practice of cultural traditions or the exploration of new ones;
the transmission of knowledge.
in other words, creating to reflect on the human experience, rather than to satisfy the consumer experience
it is for this reason that I am rethinking how I want to listen to music. again, I recognize here that for a long time I have been practicing a habit that, without my awareness of it, is rooted in neoliberal, capitalist logic. especially in the last couple of years, with spotify increasingly using algorithms to inform listening behavior, I have become less and less intentional with what music I am consuming. I want to change that!
for other reasons as well (spotify underpaying artists, running ICE recruitment ads and its former CEO investing in weapon production), I want to quit spotify and find other ways of listening to music
I am aware that this change will probably require patience and perseverance, at least in the beginning. that is because this fast-paced logic that has been characterizing my consumption of music (among other things) has inevitably infiltrated my desires;
chances are that diving into something deeply, listening to a music production that is not formatted to instant gratification, will not satisfy at first...
but I'm determined!
update (March, 2026):
- I quit spotify and subscribed to qobuz instead (fairer pay of artists; less algorithmic recommendations)
- I started listening to radios more (club carter radio by Sagid Carter; worldofjazz; operator)
- I started listening to sets more (on soundcloud and youtube)
- I keep track of what music I am listening to in my notes app, by making a new note every month where I write down the albums and songs that I am not just listening to but engaging with on a deeper level; this stimulates me to be more intentional with experiencing music and to enjoy it as a work of art that can bring me something more than just pure entertainment or the filling of time/space; and going back to these notes brings me so much joy which helps with the reprogramming of my desires, away from capitalist logic
lauryn hill in her song superstar (1998)
“You are what you watch. We have to be very conscious of what we feed to our eyes and our ears”.
Lindiwe Dovey, Professor of Film and Screen Studies at SOAS, reflects on the importance of intentional viewing - challenging us not to be led by the algorithm. She also shares her favourite film, an inspiring quote, and why her office feels like home.
click here to go to this reel on instagram
art & creation