Reframing the encounter: From repressed colonial pile to a collaborative decolonial counter archive
Reframing the encounter creates a counter archive through working with photo negatives and films from Swedish colonial activities.
The artistic research project explores a repressed part of Swedish colonial history by unboxing and unfolding a hidden trove of historical glass-plate negatives and reels of film. These dispersed material remains of a missionary project will be collected and digitized together with two Congolese collaborators: artist Freddy Tsimba and art historian and writer André Yoka Lyé, with the aim of creating a new decolonial counterarchive.
The research is a groundbreaking intercultural collaboration in dialouge with Etnografiska museet in Stockholm and the National Museum in Kinshasa. It aims at proposing a new intercultural artist-led model for the re-evaluation and return of historical colonial photographs and films.
Project manager: Cecilia Järdemar, senior lecturer, Konstfack
Funded by Vetenskapsrådet
Project period: 2020-2024