Collecting Traces, Documenting Past and Present: How Archiving Became a Way to Open Futures in Contemporary Arab Political Experiences

Abstract

One of the ways this political dream of the recent Arab Revolutions had been re-actualized is through building archives. In countries where political regimes had sought to deprive citizens of their futures by concealing traces of their past, archiving might be understood as a revolutionary gesture. This article studies archival projects born in the Arab region during the 2000s. It interprets the gesture of archiving as a way of caring for the future, and it interrogates its relation to art and aesthetics. How do aesthetics and art contribute to the gesture? What is the relationship between art and activism nurtured in these archival processes? The research is based on interviews with independent archivers who were and still are involved in the documentation of recent revolts and revolutions in the region, and it focuses on three projects: ‘Archives des luttes des femmes en Algérie’, initiated by young feminists and scholars Awel Haouati and Saadia Gacem during the Algerian Hirak (movement) of 2019–2020; the ‘Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution’, founded by Sana Yazigi to collect and share the creativity of the Syrian revolution that started in 2011; the archive of the Lebanese ‘Committee of Families of the Disappeared and Kidnapped’, collected and created by Wadad Halwani since 1982, and later restored and curated by her son Ghassan Halwani since 2006.