The Archival Multitude

Abstract

Previously ascribed the position of meta-archivist in a culture marked by remembrance and retro-vision, the contemporary artist has been relocated arguably by today’s radical distribution of archival activity in and by the practices and technologies of social media. This conversation with Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, two young audiovisual practitioners from Palestine, reveals some of the reasons behind this reconfiguration of the archival in its relation to the arts. Reflecting upon the emergence of an ‘archival multitude’ in North Africa and the Middle East during the past few years, Abbas and Abou-Rahme discuss the necessity of actively assessing the networked archives of the digital realm, thereby entailing significant shifts of their own artistic methodology.