The past two decades have seen artists, historians, ethnographers, and cultural analysts engage with archives in order to rethink the relationship between the past, present, and future. The act of 'reading' has been reoriented towards ‘performing’ the archives. This practice has focused on archives making and their emergence through multiple, indeterminate, ongoing, and shared processes. An archive is seen as a living body that intervenes in the politics of knowledge and shapes a new perspective on the world around us. 

The purpose of this workshop is to engage participants in the process of archiving. An archive will be created based on three interrelated concepts. Participants in a vertical contribution explore the possibilities that art practice might offer for performing archives. Together, we come up with a method 'to connect what cannot be connected' and offer a model for the future use of the archive. Groups will discuss the themes they are planning to make an archive of. Collecting, mapping, and writing a collaborative history/manual of the archive are the activities that will be undertaken during the workshop.

An artist-researcher, Arash Dehghani is currently completing his Ph.D. studies in Arts Plastiques at the Université de Lille, France. His artistic research focuses on the archives and histories of marginality in Iran. Specifically concerned with the complex history of petroleum and oil modernisation in Iran, he examines the new research possibilities that visual art opens up.