Anarchival Practices

Where is the past? It is not really behind us, but with us, constantly imagined and re-imagined in public discourse through historical narrations. Using the Clanwilliam Arts Project as a case study, this volume is founded on the ‘anarchive’, a conceptual constellation that positions the past in relation to the present, bringing into view strategies to facilitate remembering beyond the colonial archive.

Carine Zaayman is an artist, curator and scholar committed to critical engagement with colonial archives and collections, specifically those holding strands of Khoekhoe pasts in South Africa. She is a Researcher at the Research Center for Material Culture (NMvW) in Amsterdam. The main focus of her curatorial work is the project Under Cover of Darkness, which included an exhibition staged at the Iziko Slave Lodge in Cape Town, exploring the lives of women in servitude, especially slavery, in the early Cape Colony.