Archive of Forgetfulness

Archive of Forgetfulness is a catalogue of the pan-African digital exhibition and podcast series which ran from September 2020 and December 2021 at archiveofforgetfulness.com. The publication acts as a physical translation of the collection of work online, and opens up wider questions around archives, memory and forgetfulness. The project includes the work of fifty-six artists, cultural producers, curators, creative thinkers and researchers from the African continent and diaspora, including Angola, Brazil, Canada, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, France, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, USA, the United Kingdom and Zanzibar. The catalogue speaks to the four parts of this larger project, namely an eight-part podcast series, twenty-two art works submitted in response to an open call, five essays and six regionally curated projects. As a collection of work centred on the African continent, the various contributors interrogate archival gestures, raise questions on personal and political histories that emerge via infrastructures of mobility, and suggest ways of living and remembering for alternative possible futures. In these works, archival labour and memory work are understood as deeply political, personal and speculative.