I dedicated my secondment period to conducting research around the liberatory potential of (an)archival materials and their capacity to foster contemporary political struggles. During my placement period at the University of Modena, I engaged in practices of collaborative education, archival inquiry, collective research, and interdisciplinary exchange.
In the framework of the SpaceX programme, I collaborated with URBANER – Culture Urbane Emilia-Romagna, AFOr- Archivio delle Fonti Orali, Collettivo Amigdala, Istituto Storico di Modena, AISO – Associazione Italiana di Storia Orale on a series of events and workshops with artists, local residents, researchers and activists around the topics of urban displacement, depopulation and memory.
Working specifically in the context of the „Villaggio Artigiano” – a semi-autonomous, self-sufficient suburb of Modena – I, alongside researchers from the host institution, attempted to create a collective spatial memory of the village. After the conclusion of the first edition of the School of Oral History, we proposed a public meeting on the theme of archives from their constitution and creation to their possible (re)use. Starting from the sharing of the outcomes of the School and the practices developed so far for the construction of the digital archive of oral sources of the AFOr project, the discussion aimed to develop a critical dialogue on the topic thanks to the comparison with other projects that were presented during the event.
During the second part of the secondment, in the framework of the To Echo/Fare Eco and in collaboration with AFOr – Archivio delle Fonti Orali, we discussed and put into practice the ideas around reimagining and reconfiguring the archive as an accessible, shared resource for local communities. During the Fuori Dal Tracciato festival, I co-organised a collaborative workshop aimed at creating an ephemeral and itinerant archive of the history and memory of the Villaggio Artigiano. During the event, by valorising the importance of grassroots printing and publishing, we produced various publications, zines and pamphlets that presented a community perspective on Villaggio Artigiano and the work done by the host institution in recent years.
The overarching theme of my secondment was devoted to verifying and exploring different approaches, practices and reflections linked to the collection of sources which, through their archiving, generate new possible recontextualisations