Women and Invisible Labour: Re-Imagining the Archive

This workshop offers to reflect on archives as sites of contested knowledge, and to envision avenues and methodologies to open them to more inclusive decolonial and feminist perspectives.

Dr. Lola Rémy examines how the archives of experimental filmmakers rest on the invisible labour of their wives and daughters, whose affective work is rooted in kinship and care. Her presentation reflects on how a mixed methodology of close archival research and oral history can recentre archival margins and rewrite a history of film more inclusive of women’s diverse and central roles.

Varda Nisar reflects on the notion of archives itself within the context of Pakistan, and how social media platforms provide community and grassroot movements a space to counter military regimes. Understood as countervisual sites that challenge the master-narrative of the nation-state, her presentation brings forth examples of these emerging archives and how they have become spaces of both record-keeping and of critical pedagogy.

Together, these presentations bring attention to the gendered labour that goes into building archives and how oral testimonies and interview can offer an alternative reading of these institutions.