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Paper short abstract:

Rethinking visual archives as a kind of commons, this paper unpacks how novel approaches to collecting and preserving photographs and film footage might facilitate new ways of understanding colonial histories while also facilitating other ways of imagining alternative decolonial futures.

Paper long abstract:

What images do “official” archives contain regarding Europe’s colonial past? How public are these collections and does such access matter? What historical and ethnographic re-readings do these images make possible? Rethinking visual archives as a kind of commons, this paper unpacks how novel approaches to collecting and preserving photographs and film footage might facilitate new ways of understanding colonial histories. The paper argues that while conservation and preservation are key, access to these images also facilitates new modes of engaging the past that may contribute to constituting alternative political and decolonial futures. Attending to the precarity that often surrounds academic labor, especially in the context of Southern Europe, the paper discusses ways of rethinking visual collections as a kind of common ground, a place of action, where researchers, artists, and activists can produce knowledge that allow us to rethink colonial encounters of the past, while reimagining forms of action and interaction that can actively decolonize disciplines and institutions. At the same time, the paper unpacks the ethical considerations surrounding such visual reactivations, thus also connecting current debates regarding the repatriation of museum objects with questions regarding the digital circulation of images from equally complex collections. Drawing on the author’s ethnographic and artistic practice, the paper does not provide clear solutions, but rather ponders how rethinking Europe’s visual commons might illuminate new forms of action, engagement, and knowledge production.