Workshop ‘Archival Research Practices’ with Artist and Filmmaker Onyeka Igwe

Workshop in the context of Onyeka Igwe’s presentation of her film ‘a so-called archive’ at the Africa Film Festival. In the film, she reflects on the value of archival film footage and its conservation – or rather neglect –  in abandoned archival institutions. Using this context, she criticises both the making of its footage as well as the preservation and collective forgetting of these institutions. The premise of this short film, her filmmaking technique and her other projects invite a discussion on her approach to archival practices and their value in decolonised arts-based and arts-inspired research for (doctoral) scholars in humanities, social sciences and beyond.

Critical proximity, a methodology Onyeka developed while working on a PhD has been employed as an artistic research tool. In this dialogical workshop Onyeka will expand on how she is using these methods on a new project on reparations for colonialism and transatlantic slavery.