Archiving Discontinuities

Scattered documents, closed doors and institutional amnesia call for a questioning of archival practices and lack thereof. Archives are structures of collective memory and historical continuity. The role of institutions is to actively collect, preserve and make the archival records accessible for the public. How then do we deal with the absence and partiality of archives of transition? Can we reclaim lost histories from the existing archives in Kosova? How to recover ephemeral materials and to establish the archives of collective memory? Could an experimental approach help us to propose an alternative narrative to the missing historical evidence?

We invite proposals that seek to engage and activate archives to offer new ways of thinking about the past and present, by recovering various local histories otherwise unknown or forgotten. Works can include research into the historical formation of institutions such as the birth and death of cultural institutions, social history of factories, national minority organisations and feminist platforms. We encourage research in dealing with the archives of opposition, or counter-archives, such as alternative platforms of learning, workers strikes, and underground and subcultural movements, as well as alternative research methodologies (i.e. queer tactics or feminist strategies) that have developed out of a response to lack of access to archives or erasure from historical records.

Heritage of Crises

Most contemporary societies have their scars of history leading to or resulting from war, civil unrest, systematic social oppression and discrimination. These periods of crises have social, psychological or historical repercussions that can be traced in a range of events, sites or practices which, in our particular context, can include: places and practices of resistance, protest, and various manifestations of civil disobedience.

 Heritage of Crises may also be found in concrete places and events that pertain to the memory of atrocities, such as: massacres and executions, wartime sexual abuse, paths of displacement, locations of disappearances, tangible and intangible loss, places related to prisoners of war and civil or political prisons. Moreover, methodologies which aim to commemorate, remember, preserve and document, individually or institutionally, the narratives and memory of the aforementioned sites, events and practices, or that provide new approaches to dealing with the past practices, are also areas of interest for research, interpretation and documentation.

Storytelling & Interpretation

Placed in tandem, Storytelling and Interpretation play an important part in changing the way we approach, experience, and communicate cultural heritage. Rather than factual details, Storytelling and Interpretation focuses on people, past, and sense of place, as such it is about unveiling the human story behind our heritage. 

Storytelling and Interpretation can include: individual, collective and national histories preserved and narrated as stories, narratives based solidly on well-researched facts, local knowledge and gossip, fairy tales, myths, legends, word of mouth, songs, visual stories, fictions built on truths, which all in all, through a variety of media reveal perspectives that intend to entertain, educate, preserve and enrich our shared culture.