Publications:
Politics of the Archive: The Fragile Memory of the Objects of Catastrophe (2025) DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.13405.32486
The Ephemeral: Archives and The Politics of Disappearance (2025) DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.19987.18724
This research group investigates the role of everyday objects as carriers of collective memory in contexts shaped by war, displacement, and historical rupture. Moving beyond traditional conceptions of the archive as an institutional repository of documents, the group approaches the archive as a material, affective, and visual field in which memory is preserved through fragments of lived experience. In periods of catastrophe, when official records are destroyed, censored, or rendered incomplete, memory often migrates into ordinary objects, photographs, ruins, and personal artifacts. These objects become silent witnesses to violence and survival, functioning as informal archives that sustain collective memory across generations.
The research focuses particularly on the Lebanese Civil War and its long aftermath, examining how trauma persists not only in narratives and monuments but also in domestic materials, urban spaces, and artistic practices. The group explores how visual culture, including photography, installation, film, mapping, and digital media, transforms objects into sites of remembrance and testimony. Through this lens, the archive is understood not as a static collection of historical facts, but as a dynamic process of reconstruction, interpretation, and negotiation between past and present.
A central dimension of the research involves the study of artistic and institutional practices that engage with memory and archival absence. Initiatives such as the Arab Image Foundation, Beit Beirut, and UMAM Documentation and Research demonstrate how grassroots archives and cultural institutions preserve fragile histories through photographs, testimonies, and material artifacts. These initiatives provide models for alternative archival practices that resist erasure and support collective remembrance in post-conflict societies.
The research group also examines the work of contemporary Lebanese artists who have developed innovative approaches to archival memory. Projects such as Objects of War by Lamia Joreige, the fictional archival constructions of Walid Raad, the photographic and documentary practices of Akram Zaatari, and the exploration of latent images and unseen archives by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige demonstrate how art can function as a critical form of archival inquiry. These practices blur the boundaries between documentation and imagination, revealing how memory is constructed through both factual evidence and speculative interpretation.
In parallel, the group will explore how contemporary technologies, including artificial intelligence, digital imaging, and networked media, are transforming the nature of archives and the politics of memory. As visual data becomes increasingly automated and algorithmically organized, new questions emerge about the preservation, interpretation, and ownership of collective memory. The research will examine how digital systems filter, compress, and reproduce information, and how these processes may shape the future of historical knowledge and cultural identity.
Ultimately, this research group aims to position the Institute of Visual Communication as a platform for interdisciplinary inquiry into the relationship between objects, memory, and visual culture in times of crisis. By combining artistic research, critical theory, and community engagement, the group seeks to develop new methods for documenting fragile histories, preserving collective memory, and understanding how societies remember after catastrophe.