Archives are Hot!

The Contemporary Art and Social Transformation (CAST) research group, based in RMIT’s School of Art, hosted a day-long gathering at the Garden Building, RMIT City Campus, bringing together artists, archivists, researchers, and students to reflect on artistic activations of archives.

Through a series of presentations, discussions, workshops, walking tours and creative exchanges, the program examined how archives can be activated as living, relational sites of memory, care, and resistance. We delved into themes of caring for archives and collections, the vulnerability of archives, decolonising archival practices, and community-based approaches to storytelling and preservation.

The day begun with Sofi Basseghi who hosted a morning tour of Make Believe: Encounters with misinformation, and ended with an engaged presentation by Torika Bolatagici and Vasemaca Tavola from the Community Reading Room Archive. Throughout the day, we were joined by other artist researchers, members of the CAST community and affiliated industry partners. Together, we considered how contemporary artists are reshaping relationships to archives, challenging dominant narratives, and creating new ways of thinking about cultural memory and its future.

Jenna Lee, Sofi Basseghi, Salme Geransar, Linda Short, Dominic White, Amy Spiers, Savannah Smith, Nick Devlin, Ange Bailey, Ana Tiquia, Jacina Leong, Alexander Williams aka Pug, Nataša Čordašić, Fayen d’Evie, Salote Tawale and Torika Bolatagici.

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