---
title: Troubled Archives
subtitle: The story of how an individual artistic research into archives becomes a collective and at times community driven project
papersize: a4
---

Author biography: Troubled Archives is a collective name for the collaboration between [Rokia Bamba](https://www.mixcloud.com/leabel/), Brenda Bikoko, [Loes Jacobs](http://nadine.be/), [Michael Murtaugh](http://vandal.ist/), [Peggy Pierrot](http://peggy.pierrot.work/), and [Antje Van Wichelen](http://primitives.constantvzw.org/).

1997\_
------

ANTJE: I find in a newspaper a story of a taxidermied man exhibited in a
museum. The story sticks with me and in 2011 it is the first story in my
research blog on how racist stereotypes are constructed. [^PRIMITIVES]

2012\_
------

Visiting institutional archives I discover large collections of
pre-colonial and colonial 19th century photographs made by western
photographers in an ever failing attempt to categorize people into races
and an hierarchical order.

*Together these collections form the 'filthy' archive of how the
colonizing west has been busy constructing a dehumanizing portrait of
all peoples that were to be dominated. Today this filthy archive is more
a witness of the mechanisms of this construction than that it could ever
pretend to be a portrait of any of the photographed individuals or
societies; it tells us more about the people behind the camera than of
what they were staging in front of the lens.*

That is my starting point when dealing with these archives. My aim is
to, as much as possible, corrupt the original objectifying goals of
these photographic series.

2015\_
------

While looking for ways to work with these photographs as an animation
filmmaker, I research into the materiality of collodion and silver print
photography, which leads me to black and white celluloid filmmaking.

I become a member of Labo BxL and learn the methods of manual
flatprinting that allows me to develop the artistic language of
21C/19C\_Procedures for Anthropometric Image Reversal.

That artistic language has become one of taking and giving information,
allowing light grey forms to appear in a white image, quickening the
pace and slowing down again, lingering on images with almost nothing to
see, activating the eye searching for information, activating the brain,
inciting it into a very personal train of thought about these old
photographs and what they mean today, in a tactile experience. The
manual production methods steer the experience away from the judging
gaze of our education, and animate the haunted figures towards a new,
resilient liveliness.

![A rephotographed portrait, Antje Van Wichelen]( images/00589_PRM_1998_166_16_2-O.o.jpg )

The struggle with my position as a white artist tackling this sensitive
material - how to work with these photographs without repeating the
violence they behold - leads me to a series of conversations with
scientists and artists who are already working with these topics.

> People of colour are not sitting waiting for you and your initiative,
> you have to be aware of that. (**Bambi Ceuppens**)

> The viewing of these images will enter differently into different
> bodies. The impact on a black body can be very violent. (...) The
> problem is not, that you as a white artist create this work, (...) the
> problem is that in the meantime a black artist might be asking for this
> same access and funding, and not get it. (**Pascale Obolo**)

ANTJE: Shyly, I confront sound-artist **Rokia Bamba** with the images
from the archives I found. She later says : "It took me three months to
recover from seeing those images".

ROKIA: J'étais très heureuse de la proposition de collaborer avec Antje,
j'avais l'impression que nous nous étions attendues, notre relation
demeure particulière, je pense, nous nous connaissons depuis tellement
d'années, notre amitié a perduré avec le temps et nos parcours de vie
nous ont amené à nous revoir, j'ai la forte impression qu'elle m'avait
attendue...

Trois mois pour m'en remettre, trois mois ou je voyais les images, les
photos, défiler devant mes yeux, les unes après les autres, portraits,
visages, corps nus de femmes, d'hommes, d'enfants, dirigés, manipulés
comme des marionnettes, des pantins désarticulés, mais toujours vivants,
sur le moment. Trois mois pour comprendre ou du moins essayer de
comprendre... pourquoi?

*Des objets, ils et elles n'étaient plus des humains faits de chair et
d'os, des objets animés au bon vouloir de l'homme blanc pour en tirer le
maximum de profit, pour construire os par os, une certaine idée de
"race" qui ne sera pas égale mais bel et bien dominée par lui.*

Comment digérer les photos, ces nombreuses photos. J'en ai pleuré...
J'ai eu mal, très mal... Ce fut brutal et ce jusqu'à aujourd'hui, cette
douleur n'a pas disparu. Je me suis dit qu'il me fallait me servir de
cette brutalité, de cette colère, je me suis donc penchée sur mes
émotions pour pouvoir composer des sons. Je voulais me servir donc de
cet évènement et surtout des états cognitifs qui se bousculaient dans ma
tête et ne demandaient qu'à être expulsés, de mon corps, de mon être.
Cette situation m'a permis d'associer mes émotions aux archives vues.

Les conditions de prise en compte des questions sonores nous montrent
d'un côté la grande diversité des approches, des outils et des démarches
existantes, les bonnes conditions d'écoute débloquent les nombreux
cadenas cognitifs, le sonore est un moyen qui peut orienter les
comportements, infléchir les positions..., les sensations pénètrent le
corps, la peau, l'esprit... Je savais que je vivais une expérience qui
allait être complexe et intense.

*Comment montrer l'inexplicable, comment montrer ces horreurs, car oui
elles méritent d'être vue?*\
*Comment expliquer ce concept européen basé sur la différence humaine
qui contribue à légitimer le paradigme justifiant la prise en otage d'un
continent entier, légitimant le colonialisme, systématisant l'esclavage
et la déportation des Africain(e)s, réduisant l'autre à être inférieur
dans les inconscients collectifs, tout en se construisant une identité
positive, une position de supérieur basée sur le principe des races?*\
*Comment endiguer ce processus?*

2016\_
------

ANTJE: Wereldculturen.nl hands me 2800 high-resolution images. Other
archives finally follow, each with their own variety of thresholds to
overcome. I never paid for images; they belong to the public. **Michael
Murtaugh**, of the same opinion, builds a scraping tool in software.
That is our first collaboration.

![An "original" image as displayed on the Pitts River Website. Though
originally denying alteration of their images, they later decide to permit
it. The photographer, John William Lindt, died in 1926 thus
legally placing the photograph in the public domain.]( http://activearchives.org/mw/images/f/fe/Troubeld_archives_archive.png )

The photographs were then taken out of their 'original' or institutional
categories (often geographical) and regrouped into my work chapters
defined by striking similarities in how they were composed. Each chapter
comprises photographs from all colonized continents. The chapters get
called Strong Looks, the White Man in the Group, Awkward in the Studio,
Exoticism, etc.. some of these names became the later Chapter titles.

\[ VIDEO: https://recognitionmachine.constantvzw.org/media/roots-and-routes/20200623\_Chapter3\_veryshortfragment7050-8160.mp4 \]

ROKIA: J'étais curieuse de savoir comment Antje allait re-classer,
re-classifier, re-catégoriser ces hommes, ces femmes, ces enfants,
comment allait-elle les phagocyter, comme une amibe, et comment
allait-elle les montrer pour que tout un chacun puisse les voir, pour
que les gens puissent se poser ma question, POURQUOI?

Je me suis synchronisée à elle, je l'ai observée dans son travail au
labo, j'ai capté les sons de ses machines, de sa voix, de sa respiration
dans le noir quand elle manipulait sa matière, je savais que c'était la
partie la plus importante pour elle et pour moi. Je me suis imprégnée de
ses doutes, de ses victoires, de ses expériences ratées ou réussies, je
l'ai écouté faire, je l'ai simplement écoutée créant ainsi ma propre
base de données sonore.

Ce temps long et lent fut nécessaire pour construire mon propre socle.
La base de ce que j'allais produire pour dialoguer sonoriquement avec
les films, avec les images, avec ces archives. Il m'a fallut me nourrir
de sa pratique pour trouver mon fil conducteur, retrouver mes sens
auditifs pour simplement lui répondre et compléter notre dialogue, notre
narration.

PEGGY: Cette question de la taxonomie est au cœur de cette démarche de
réappropriation de ces archives. Les anthropologues, souvent
entrepreneurs religieux ou économiques de la colonisation, dans la
première période de construction de ces savoirs ethnologiques, n'ont
cessés de classer, ordonner, nommer, construisant des réalités, les
détournant, les figeant, avec des conséquences, mortelles souvent,
pensons au Rwanda, autre territoire de colonisation belge, délétères,
toujours. Pensons aux hiérarchies de la noirceur et comment elles ont
servies à donner corps aux hiérarchies sociales en associant les classes
mulâtres aux classes moyennes et aux contremaîtres des plantations et en
reléguant au fond des champs, sous le joug des sévices les plus
déshumanisant, les personnes les plus noires. Recatégoriser, c'est aussi
réinvestir ces images de leur historicité, redonner une humanité, un
agentivité à ces personnes figées sur papier. Je pense notamment à la
catégorie regards forts/strong looks. Sur cette question des catégories
et leur matérialité, il est difficile de ne pas penser aussi à leur
utilisation par la dictature sud africaine durant les longues années
d'Apartheid.

ANTJE: I get the chance to show work in the Vitrine of Constant vzw[^VITRINE],
an organization for art, media and feminism. To project film there is
not an option, so I decide on an installation form. I take the many
rushes of my tests and hang the filmstrips behind the window, installing
fluorescent lights in the back. On the street side, cables are strung
carrying magnifying loupes. The installation provides a private, active
way of looking which suits the material well.

![Image: Femke Snelting, Free Arts License]( images/vitrine.jpg )

A first version of Chapter 1 Strong looks is ready. I ask the public's
help to identify images I am not allowed to use, and burn these images
on the projector. The resulting action feels very violent and is never
repeated. As Constant's **Femke Snelting** put it: "It puts the
agression in the wrong place".

2017\_
------

ANTJE: In February I'm showing rushes at l'Etna, an artist-run lab with
a rich debate culture in Montreuil. I invite Paris artist-activists
Pascale Obolo and Michelange Quay. This night turns into a lively debate
which triggers the next move.

With **Loes Jacobs** I set out a research path to reflect and debate my
work with the public. We get some funding and I set out to handpick
atmospheric places where these debates will take place. As every debate
will present a new chapter, with a few weeks in between, the work
advances at high speed.

LOES: Antje asked me if nadine[^NADINE] wanted to be a partner in the process
of presenting her films to an audience. The idea of organising debates
around the viewing of her films, interested and - at the same time -
scared me. Would we be able to reach a diverse enough audience (in terms
of cultural background, class, age, etc) to hold such a discussion?

From the very beginning it was clear this was going to be a collective
process, gathering as many voices as possible around a theme that
concerns everyone, but is hardly addressed in our society. The archives
from the musea including the Africa museum in Tervuren are silent and
hidden witnesses of a history that is barely addressed in Belgium.

*If society fails to address colonial history, and structural racism,
can artworks, and the spaces where they are presented, offer the
necessary openness, empathy, generosity, and care for dialogue?* Where
were relevant spaces that could hold a conversation on images from the
past having an impact on lives today? We connected very organically to
different cultural spaces that were willing to host our screenings and
debates. All evenings were fully booked. There is a need in Brussels to
talk about colonial history and the artworks by Antje and Rokia
triggered intense debates.

\[ VIDEO: <https://vimeo.com/288161390> \]

ANTJE: I look for speakers and a moderator who are not white. I feel a
strong need to discuss the topics of this work with a public as mixed as
possible. I meet with **Peggy Pierrot** who is already deep into the
studies of antiracist activism and art. I am impressed. She agrees to
moderate the debates. The aim is to discover the work through the eyes
of the public and to know what forms and elements of contextualization
are needed. We learn from the most urgent questions, often about the
intention and positioning of the artist, the need of a framework. These
questions lead to adding the chapter titles and subtitles in the work,
and the writing of an exhibition text.

PEGGY: Throughout the process of the creation and presentation of the
artworks the question of regaining power, shared among the race and
colonial power lines have been at the center of the work. Regaining
power on the black bodies, regaining power on history, regaining agency
on both sides of the color line. I've been struck by Antje's parents
comments at the first debate: "At the time (of colonialism), seeing
those images was normal. Seeing them today is just terrible." I felt
like they also have been denied agency about the big Others as their own
relations have been mediated by the colonial power gaze through schools,
press and other dominant culture apparatus. *How can an artist work on
these filthy hidden image archives, in a way that is collective,
questions (lack of) power, and at the same time tries to build new
collective agency for a shared future?*

ANTJE: In this same period of time Rokia creates a soundpiece reacting
on Chapter 03\_Numbers and Comments.

\[ AUDIO: <http://www.primitives.constantvzw.org/wp-content/uploads/RokiaBamba_21C19C_Soundwork.mp3> \]

ROKIA: J'étais fascinée par ce chapitre 3. Les chiffres et les
commentaires m'ont beaucoup choquée! Les annotations descriptives encore
plus... que faire avec ce trop plein d'émotions? Mon processus de
création s'est enclenché comme une évidence, je voyais mes sons
apparaître clairement devant mes yeux, et oui, c'est une méthode assez
particulière! Je construis une ligne de sons. Cette ligne sinusoïdale,
je la visualise d'abord pour la reconstituer point par point.

J'ai enregistré le chuchotement, les cris de ma fille scandant des mots
et des chiffres ainsi que la mienne, je les ai mélangé aux bruits
d'enregistrement de Antje en plein travail, on entend des respirations,
des sons de la nature également, des oiseaux surtout pour nous préparer
à découvrir un chapitre au défilement de photos particulièrement
difficiles à voir!\
Il me semblait important d'y faire contribuer ma fille car sa voix douce
et fragile s'intégrait parfaitement à cette nouvelle narration
naissante.

2018\_
------

ANTJE: From the question 'how to engage the viewer even more with this
material?' and the thought that recognition is an important step,
combined with the desire for a public inquiry into the archives, the
ideas for a new installation, The Recognition Machine, are developed. It
should be a photobooth that turns out *the wrong picture* and creates a
special bond with somebody from the colonial past. Instead of your own
portrait, you receive a translated image from the troubled archives. You
are then invited to do research on this image.

Michael Murtaugh agrees to develop this installation, together with
Nicolas Malevé under the collective ICV[^ICV]. After a public test with a
few existing models combined (age, gender and emotion) we decide to
focus on the emotional recognition.

This is the first time in my life that I think of archival material in
terms of emotion. (Visiting artist **Gosie Vervloesem**)

MICHAEL: Antje knew of my work with the collective ICV and we had both
exhibited in the same streetside gallery. In that installation, we had
used facial recognition to replace the faces of passersby with
"misrecognized" faces from the photos of the objects of another archive.
For us the inclusion of "misrecognitions" and errors are an important
way to talk about what these algorithms actually are doing, beyond
simply what they claim. For the Recognition Machine, the model we ended
up using, FER2013, takes an image of a face, and gives a "prediction" of
what emotion that face appears to be displaying. These models are not
"pure algorithms" but in fact are the product of a being trained with
thousands of examples, images that have been given labels like "happy,
neutral, angry, and disgusted". FER2013 itself is a troubled archive,
created by university students for a computer science competition that
stipulated that the images not be part of an already existing
collection. As a result, the researchers used Google image search to
perform automated searches to produce the collection. But who has made
these subjective judgments? To answer why exactly is it that, among the
30,000 collected images, a photo of actor Samuel L. Jackson appears
among the examples of "angry" is complex. When producing an
interpretation of a new image, the data model reflects the training data
and how and who created it. In this work, we wanted to draw a parallel
between contemporary data and surveillance practices with those of the
colonial photographic projects Antje was critiquing.

ANTJE: The translation of the racist archival images into portraits is a
thrill. I turn the Bolex camera to obtain a vertical portrait format. I
look for the frame in which each person gains agency: to put a face
higher, lower, more to the left or the right makes a dramatic
difference. I undo the exoticizing elements: I want the portraitees to
become timeless and universal - I want the visitor to feel as if they
could meet this person around the corner.

I ask **Brenda Bikoko** to rename the images to preserve the link to the
archive in the Recognition Machine. As a trained Art Historian and
someone from a mixed background, having confronted racism in her own
life, her involvement was important.

BRENDA: Having the opportunity and privilege to dive into that many
images from different renowned archives, I was able to look at pictures
the way Ariella Azoulay proposes in *The Civil Contract of Photography*.
Every picture is worth being questioned.

*What's the gaze of the subject(s)? What's the position of the mouth?
Can I interpret some kind of body language? What's the topos in the
image? Who's absent in the image?*

I have seen pride and I have seen deep sadness.

Capturing the gaze of the portrayed, I never perceive someone less than
me. The portrayed is someone different from what we're used to looking
at. He or she is mostly from another period in time. As photography is
not that old, we're talking of a recent past. When archive images find
their way into an artists' creative strategy like Antje's there is the
opportunity to be a graceful subject, to be examined, to be meaningful,
to be recognized, to be reconciled.

Graceful as in being different and beautiful. Examined as a study object
the archive image also provides a personal experience. The archive image
is meaningful in the shift from being part of a static data collection
to being part of different dynamic contexts, recategorization, debate,
engagement, processes, affection, .... The shift explains the archive's
root of existence if the institution allows it. Going through positive
manipulation Antje helps us discover or remember a hidden construction
of a colonial and imperial past through acknowledging and shaping. Using
traditional black and white celluloid filming for re-photographing or re-filming, the
images and portraits often get blurred or imperfect. When looking
and asking yourself "what's the gaze? what's the position of the mouth?
etc.", there will not always be an answer. Some of us experience it as a
frustration, others may interpret it as colonial history and like the
fair re-use even better than the original. Antje uses bits and pieces of
archives, and in a way it helps us to better understand reality. Going
into the *Recognition Machine* and taking part in it, may result in an
appointment with your present -self, the past and our future ruled by
computers and algorithms.

Recognize if you can, look, question and debate. Feel related by far,
closely, or not at all. Past, present, and the consequences for the
future have a political dimension. In essence, it should be looking for
justice, a better world and last but not the least transgenerational
reconciliation in its very own way. Dealing with these issues is at the
same time as easy and as hard as it can get. *Troubled Archives* became
a model for reconciliation, but only if you're willing and aiming to.

2019\_
------

ANTJE: I was invited by curator Lucia Halder from the
Rautenstrauch-Joest museum, to take part in the Photoszene festival in
Cologne, Germany. together with Michael and Rokia we presented the
installations NOISY IMAGES and The Recognition Machine.

![]( images/IMG_1313.l.jpg )

![]( images/IMG_1476.l.jpg )

![]( images/IMG_1487.l.jpg )

![]( images/IMG_1432.l.jpg )

![Images: Massimiliano Di Franca, Free Art License]( images/IMG_1467.l.jpg )

![Response posted to the website[^TRM]]( images/Screenshot_2020-06-01_The_Recognition_Machine.png )

![Detail from uploaded PDF]( images/TRM_Never_again.png )


MICHAEL: When testing The Recognition Machine in Köln, Rokia and Antje
enter the photo booth and have their picture taken together, but only
Antje's face is recognized; Rokia exclaims: "your machine is racist". I
think: yes, this is what we want to talk about, but not like this. On
the morning of the artist talk event, before leaving for Köln I log in
remotely to the exhibition computer to make a backup of the collected
photographs. In this "archive" of digital photos, each visit to the
installation is recorded as a digital photo, with a super-imposed
rectangle indicating where faces were detected. Though not intended as
such, the installation acts as a surveillance device, each visit
dutifully recorded and named using the date and time. I click through
image after image, each time with a rectangle highlighting the face,
until, the face of a woman, in a head scarf leaning slightly back away
from the camera. Her face is not recognized. Then again, scores more
images as before, young faces, older faces, each recognized, but
predominantly white. Finally, I reach the end of the photos and the very
last is of a black man who's face I recognize as a guardian who works
for the museum. His photo was taken around 7 in the morning before the
museum had opened. Though he stares directly into the camera lens, his
face is not recognized. For one with a lived experience of racism, the
failure to be recognized repeats a violence, however inadvertent,
echoing earlier exclusions now embedded into a software model. The
confirmation that an algorithm has racial biases built into it, may seem
a "revelation" to me, the white programmer -- in the repetitive use of
the software I've been trained to accept the algorithm's claim of "face
recognition" and as something "natural" and "working".

For me, you can leave out the photobooth entirely, the panels with the
displayed images of the visitors is the strongest element. **Cédric
Kouamé**, participant in the Artist talk, Rautenstrauch-Joest museum

ROKIA: Mon expérience au musée fut très confrontante, avec Antje nous
avons construit la salle d'expo avec des legos, pour ensuite la
transposer scénarifiquement sur une échelle réelle, avec des enceintes
en stéréo et en mono, elles étaient placées à des endroits stratégiques
en dialogue avec les projecteurs, toujours en dialogue une cacophonie
choisie, voulue et assumée. Nous étions tous ensemble, Antje, Michael et
Loes... Nous ne formions qu'un! Chacun étions occupés et conscient(e)s
de l'enjeu de nos créations dans un musée colonial! La déconstruction
était en marche. La mise en place sonore ne fut pas à mon sens parfaite,
j'aurais voulu plus de bruit et plus de considérations sur la nécessité
et l'utilité des moyens sonores! Le son, le bruit, n'ont malheureusement
pas encore leurs places dans les musées; c'est aussi un art, et qui ne
demande qu'à se déployer. Ce genre de contexte s'y prête bien, encore
faut-il qu'il soit compris, entendu. Notre but était de surprendre, de
faire émerger, ressentir, l'état émotionnel de ces gens photographiés
par la force, mon but était de faire surgir ces états internes pour que
les visiteurs puissent s'exprimer et débattre par la suite...

LOES: The setting of the Rautenstrauch Joest museum was very different
from the small spaces in Brussels that hosted the debates. In this
enormous museum the colonial history feels static to me with the
collection of objects displayed in glass vitrines. Presenting Troubled
Archives here was a big step and offered the artists and the works an
important platform. Yet I still wonder. *Was enough effort given to
highlight the importance of dialogue?.. Does the presentation of
contemporary artworks in this context not also become yet another object
alongside those in the sealed display cases?*

2020\_
------

ANTJE: Both installations - Noisy Images and The Recognition Machine -
are selected to the Dakar Biennal and will be on view at Fondazione
Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, 17 September to 18 October 2020.

ROKIA: Nous sommes les seuls Belges à avoir été sélectionnées pour la
Biennale de Dakar, nous en sommes fières; une autre porte s'ouvre à
nous, d'autres narrations vont pouvoir se créer, se raconter à travers
notre travail respectif et collectif.\
Les rapports aux corps de l'Autre, de la nature de l'Autre, de l'image
de l'Autre vont faire surgir des cadres de références multiples, j'ai
vraiment hâte d'entendre les récits qui se dégageront à la vue de notre
exposition.\
Le plus important à mon sens, c'est d'assister aux échanges sur les
perceptions, sortir de sa zone de confort...

PEGGY: Le travail proposé par Antje ne peut et ne doit pas être diffusé
de manière morcelée. Les discussions, les cartels, les textes, les son,
tout a son importance et l'oeuvre c'est le tout, ce dispositif
discursif, cet appel du pied à remettre du contexte et du sens, ramener
les âmes flouées à la vie en 2020 en insistant sur ce qui a permis la
production de ces images, ce à quoi elles ont servies. On oublie souvent
l'ampleur de leur diffusion, à travers la presse, les cartes postales,
et comment elles ont conditionné le regard des populations
colonisatrices, mais aussi celui des colonisés.

LOES: A work of art based on colonial archives can become a vehicle for
discussion and transformation. What is important, I think, is that the
work itself embodies a certain openness for change, and therefore must
be willing to (or the maker must be willing to) absorb the comments it
triggers. Every moment of presentation therefore becomes a new version
of showing the work. Each new version also transforms the archives it is
based on. We cannot know where this will lead (possibly to the erasing
of the archives). Where the archives offer us a passive and static
testimony from the past, an artwork is a producer of meaning, and
therefore has the power to (re)tell the story of that testimony, and can
become an active witness.

These 'transformative works' form to me an ideal basis for collectivity.
Inviting other people to join the artistic process can eventually lead
to the structure of a platform, as it happened for Troubled Archives.
The artwork as a static object then shifts to a collection of multiple
pieces, and the artistic process becomes a collective discussion. I hope
this article will inspire others to demand access to the archives, as
filthy as they can be, and use them to tell new stories.

PEGGY: La valeur ajoutée du regard artistique sur l'archive (et on
entend le regard artistique vu comme un processus collectif, dynamique
et relationnel initié et médié par une personne dont la qualité
d'auteur est reconnue sans qu'il soit question d'une exceptionnalité
originelle, mais bien le fruit d'un parcours, de pratique, de techniques
et de positions sociales) nous intéresse en ce qu'il permet de pointer
du doigt et d'ouvrir un espace de prise de conscience, de mise en lien
et de discussion que les territoires dominants de la conflictualité
politique se refusent d'adresser, pris qu'ils sont dans la toile du
système de justification des rapports de production capitaliste. Nous
pensons par exemple à la place de l'exploitation du corps des Autres, et
la division corporelle et raciale du travail dont la réalité crue n'est
dénoncée que par quelques syndicats ou associations militantes. A
travers les dispositifs mis en place dans le projet Troubled Archives,
des activistes décoloniaux croisent des amateurs d'art, des passants
désœuvrés, des travailleurs subalternes de passage (etc.). Et tous
peuvent voir se dérouler sous leurs yeux le continuum qui lie les corps
exploités d'hier à ceux d'aujourd'hui.

> (...) Maybe then one day my work can lay forgotten in some archive.
> Transforming into something else. (Antje Van Wichelen)


[^PRIMITIVES]: <http://www.primitives.constantvzw.org/2011/02/20/the-nigger-is-in-the-shrank/>

[^VITRINE]: <http://constantvzw.org/site/21C-19C-Procedures-for-Anthropometric-Image-Reversal-Finissage.html>

[^NADINE]: <http://nadine.be/>

[^ICV]: Institute for Computational Vandalism <http://vandal.ist/>

[^TRM]: <https://recognitionmachine.constantvzw.org/#6/-164.008/63.719>