Unearthing the Archive!

Speech for a Melting Statue by Collectif Faire-part examines a social issue that has long been a concern in Belgium—in part due to activist campaigns—but only truly made its way onto the political agenda around the time of the Black Lives Matter movement: how should we best deal with colonial monuments in public spaces?

Love and respect for an archive cannot mean approaching it so delicately that one refuses to act upon it: every selection, montage, recollection or speculation transforms what it touches. Nor does openness mean withholding commitment. It means committing strongly enough for an encounter to answer back—for an image, voice or vanished life to resist the meaning prepared for it and perhaps alter the form built around it.

Adam Lewis Jacob’s Idrish (ইদ্রিস) (2021) dances between the present and the personal and political history of British-Bangladeshi community activist Muhammad Idrish. His longstanding opposition to deportation campaigns, beginning with his own, helps to understand both the anti-immigrant movement of the late 20th century and the resistance to it, at a time when echoes of these mechanisms resonate once again.