Can the archive restore you? A study of three works: Mpho Khwezi’s A Piece of Paper (2020), Abri de Swardt’s Ridder Thirst (2018) and Eva Knopf’s Majubs Reise (2013)

Abstract

The article is intended to contribute to a growing debate about how to approach and interact with problematic archives. The article examines three works made by a photographer and two filmmakers, respectively, based on their artistic interactions with their respective archives. Their works were brought to annual workshops in 2019 and 2020 organized by Reframing Africa, co-hosted by the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg. The central objective of Reframing Africa continues to be lobbying for the preservation, restoration and repatriation of films made by African filmmakers on the continent and in the diaspora. But there has also been growing interest among participants in the colonial and other racially inflected archives of the moving/still image. The main title of the article, ‘Can the archive restore you?’, is intended to echo that of Nigerian filmmaker Onyeka Igwe’s short film No Archive Can Restore You (). The article argues that the engagement by the authors of the three works with deeply problematic visual archives has produced significant insights into their construction and the ways in which they represent ‘reality’ and ‘truth’. Each of the three artistic interventions does suggest how even the bleakest archival materials, however, can be used as the basis for activating the restorative potential of the archive. The works discussed are Mpho Khwezi’s A Piece of Paper, Abri de Swardt’s Ridder Thirst and Eva Knopf’s Majubs Reise.