the archive that i imagine to unlearn the archive by Melina Scheuermann

This exhibition emerged from the artistic research project PerformArquivo. The project was realised in three main moments during 2024 in Porto : a 6-week long artistic residency, a workshop for professionals in the field of arts and arts education, a publication and this exhibition (work-in-progress). I departed from the proposal to take up archival documents of my study within the history of education as performative scores and triggers for artistic engagement. In particular, I studied two picture book series of the pedagogical object lesson method (Pt. lições de coisas, Germ. Anschauungsunterricht) that circulated across Europe in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The picture books are traversed by several intersecting discrimination based, amongst others, on gender, race, sex and class. Through the artistic engagement I reflected on the epistemological, political and ethical implications of archiving and the writing of history and developed a performative-archival practice as an artistic research methodology in the history of education. The "archive that i imagine to unlearn the archive" is an exhibition of the interventions produced as much as the structure of an archive. I borrow the concept of unlearning from decolonial and postcolonial theorists who discuss it as a practice that challenges the value-based, hegemonic apparatus of knowledge production such as the archive from the inside. There is a slight irony, seemingly a paradox in name of this archive: The archive that I imagine to unlearn the archive. Unlearning something while repeating, practising, constructing it? The idea is not repetition, unless it is always considered repetition in variance and in motion, never settled, never fixed.The method of constructing an archive to unlearn archive imperialism and historicism is a self-reflexive move that embraces and inhabits a problem by playing it out and finding the moment and movements of change and transformation from within. By inhabiting the archive as my research problem, I was faced with the challenge of archiving differently. As a work-in-progress the archive is going to change. New images might be added, images might be removed or differently contextualised. Current elaborations will evolve. Structural changes of the archive design might occur. This artistic investigation was realised as part of the project PerformArquivo hosted by Corpo Raíz – Associação Cultural in partnership with Teatro de Ferro, Sekoia – Artes Performativas and the Research Institute in Art, Design and Society (i2ADS).

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This exhibition emerged from the artistic research project PerformArquivo. The project was realised in three main moments during 2024 in Porto : a 6-week long artistic residency, a workshop for professionals in the field of arts and arts education, a publication and this exhibition (work-in-progress). I departed from the proposal to take up archival documents of my study within the history of education as performative scores and triggers for artistic engagement. In particular, I studied two picture book series of the pedagogical object lesson method (Pt. lições de coisas, Germ. Anschauungsunterricht) that circulated across Europe in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The picture books are traversed by several intersecting discrimination based, amongst others, on gender, race, sex and class. Through the artistic engagement I reflected on the epistemological, political and ethical implications of archiving and the writing of history and developed a performative-archival practice as an artistic research methodology in the history of education. The "archive that i imagine to unlearn the archive" is an exhibition of the interventions produced as much as the structure of an archive. I borrow the concept of unlearning from decolonial and postcolonial theorists who discuss it as a practice that challenges the value-based, hegemonic apparatus of knowledge production such as the archive from the inside. There is a slight irony, seemingly a paradox in name of this archive: The archive that I imagine to unlearn the archive. Unlearning something while repeating, practising, constructing it? The idea is not repetition, unless it is always considered repetition in variance and in motion, never settled, never fixed.The method of constructing an archive to unlearn archive imperialism and historicism is a self-reflexive move that embraces and inhabits a problem by playing it out and finding the moment and movements of change and transformation from within. By inhabiting the archive as my research problem, I was faced with the challenge of archiving differently. As a work-in-progress the archive is going to change. New images might be added, images might be removed or differently contextualised. Current elaborations will evolve. Structural changes of the archive design might occur. This artistic investigation was realised as part of the project PerformArquivo hosted by Corpo Raíz – Associação Cultural in partnership with Teatro de Ferro, Sekoia – Artes Performativas and the Research Institute in Art, Design and Society (i2ADS).
Melina Scheuermann - the archive that i imagine to unlearn the archive - 2025
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