Maintaining and (re)inventing Archives

25.10.2025 1pm-9pm

Archives promise access to the past, yet they reveal just as much about the present and future. The Confluence Maintaining and (re)inventing Archives during the opening weekend of the exhibition Loving Shedhalle – Abundance, brings together different archival approaches. We are interested in the extent to which archives can contribute to the resilience of an institution (or any other entity, group, form of organization or existence.). We ask who and what is involved in preserving archives. In feminist discourse, the English term “maintenance” is often associated with invisible, little-recognized forms of reproductive work. What does it mean to take on responsibility in a back room that promises little prestige—and what does it take for maintenance to work? Against the backdrop of an increasingly unresolved infrastructural question of data storage and the growing connection between autocratic nation states and the monopoly positions of global tech companies, the question of archives and their accessibility is once again becoming relevant in the present moment.

A roundtable discussion brings together voices from different contexts of archival work. In the activation of artistic works from the exhibition, positions that deal with the emergence of embodied forms of knowledge are given a voice.

13:30 Tour of the exhibition

14:30 Activation with Valentina Desideri and Denise Ferreira da Silva on the exhibition contribution “Reading with Echo”

16:00 Discussion on archiving as resilient practice and care with Elke aus dem Moore, Mo Diener, Lucie Kolb and Stefan Länzlinger, moderated by Michael Hiltbrunner. In collaboration with the Swiss Social Archives Zurich

17:30 Activation with Paloma Ayala on the exhibition contribution “Karaoke Readings”

(with texts by Gloria Anzaldúa)

18:30 Dinner

20:00 Activation with Shruti Belliappa und Kiraṇ Kumār on the exhibition contribution “Marginalia”

CONFLUENCES gather practices, archival fragments and people linked to the Shedhalle. During conversations, meals, performances, listening sessions, discussions and workshops, works of the exhibition and the archives get activated. Confluences (re)visit concerns and questions that repeatedly appeared in different time periods at Shedhalle.

Confluence describes an “estuary”: both end and new beginning. This cyclical quality shapes the encounters, tracing resonances in divergent strategies across time and generating collective knowledges.