CHRISTINE TOHMÉ

THE ARCHIVE AS A FORWARD-THINKING MODE OF OPERATION

Beirut, originally made in 2020, reviewed in 2025

WHAT IS AN ARCHIVE?

An archive, for me, is a repository of objects, events, documents, gestures, and utterances that held a particular meaning in a past time and bear the potential to shape our future. 

THERE IS A SUBSTANTIAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ARCHIVE, A DOCUMENTATION CENTER, AND A COLLECTION THEN…

It’s tricky because the lines between these categories are often blurred. An archive can hold contradictions, or even antagonisms, and express differing subjectivities that oftentimes might not fit within the aims of a documentation center. A collection, on the other hand, might function as an archive—or eventually become one—even if it initially serves more strictly economic purposes.  

INDEED. LET’S FOCUS ON ARCHIVES IN LEBANON.

In Lebanon, archives—or rather, their absence—have been central to discussions on collective memory in the aftermath of the civil wars (1975–1990). Many critical art practices that emerged in the 1990s examined the entanglement of archives and historical narratives. Some of these figure artmaking itself as a form of archival practice, such as the work of Akram Zaatari and Lamia Joreige, while others—such as Walid Raad’s work—use parafiction to rethink history and its writing.  

Today, we’re seeing contemporary art practices take on a forensic, even archeological, turn. Artists and filmmakers in Lebanon and the wider region—such as Ghassan Halawani, Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, and Ala Younis—are digging into forgotten histories to understand past grievances, present impasses, and future potentialities.  

WHAT CAN WE LEARN, OR UNLEARN, FROM CURATORIAL ARCHIVES?

Archival practices allow us to unearth peripheral histories and challenge dominant historical narratives, but also invite us to consider how we engage with these histories today. 

In recent years, museums and institutions in the US and Europe have revisited the Arab modernist period in major exhibitions. But I can’t help but wonder, beyond academic curiosity, what long-term impact will these initiatives have? Then there are projects like Past Disquiet (2018) by Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti—a documentary and archival exhibition centered on the 1978 International Art Exhibition for Palestine in Beirut—that go beyond treating the archive merely as an object of study or a resource for exhibition-making. They offer a blueprint for reimagining transnational solidarity through the arts. These curatorial efforts do more than historicize; they look to the past to imagine a future we might collectively seek, asking how the archive can be used in the present. 

WHAT WOULD YOU WISH FOR THE FUTURE OF ARCHIVES AND THEIR UNDERSTANDING?

I hope that archival practices continue to integrate historical reflection with speculative thinking. I’m especially interested in efforts that use archives to uncover sidelined artistic, cultural, and intellectual movements.  

Archives can do more than just look to the past—they can be pushed forward to support radical learning and new ways of producing knowledge. 

WHAT ABOUT YOUR OWN PERSONAL ARCHIVE?

My personal archive is deeply tied to Ashkal Alwan’s. Over the decades, I’ve collected publications, audiovisual materials, and ephemera, all of which now live in Ashkal Alwan’s public library.  

It began with me frantically collecting whatever I could. Then I started inviting friends, colleagues, and partner institutions to join in. Today, you’ll find all kinds of things in that archive: newspaper cutouts from the 1990s documenting (or even condemning!) the artistic interventions we staged in Beirut’s public spaces; theory and literature manuals from my studies at AUB and Goldsmiths; artists’ sketches; unfinished manuscripts; videotapes of abandoned film projects; and letters exchanged with artists, curators, activists, and scholars over the years. It’s less my own collection and more a shared memory—messy, always evolving, and open to new additions. 

HOW DO YOU USE YOUR ARCHIVE AND FOR WHAT?

I don’t see our archive as something to be “used” in the conventional sense. It’s not a static repository to be set aside and consulted when needed—it’s living proof, a dynamic witness to history. And I don’t mean history as a sequence of past events, but as an ongoing seeking. I return to that archive regularly to situate myself and Ashkal Alwan’s work within broader socio-political shifts. So, more than a record of the past, it’s an index of the present. 

YOUR RELATION TO IT SEEMS TO BE ONE OF DAILY DIVINATION THEN…

It’s an intimate form of divination, in many ways—one based on mutual exchange. Ashkal Alwan has always been about facilitating and sharing artistic and cultural initiatives in Lebanon and across the region. Everything we organize or take part in becomes part of our archive.  

That ongoing accumulation allows my colleagues and me to trace the relevance of our work—to understand whether we’ve made meaningful contributions and alliances over the years.  

What was produced, what was said, what sparked conversation, and what was dismissed is not just a record of the past. It actively shapes the horizon we move toward. 

LAST BUT NOT LEAST: HOW DOES ASHKAL ALWAN USE ARCHIVES?

Over the past three decades, Ashkal Alwan has built a sizeable audiovisual archive—tapes, DVDs, and digital files—documenting films, performances, and recordings from the Home Works forum, Home Workspace Program seminars, and other public programs.  

This material can now be accessed online through aaarchive. We created aaarchive for scholars, artists, and researchers engaged with contemporary art and discursive practices in the region. The platform publicly presents Ashkal Alwan’s archive as a space for knowledge exchange—especially vital amid increasing displacement across the Arabic-speaking world.  

Following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and after many of our colleagues had left Lebanon, we created two more online platforms, Perpetual Postponement and aashra, to allow space for continued engagement. These platforms are also archival in themselves, inviting guest editors and curators to devise new discursive and aesthetic proposals by building on Ashkal Alwan’s archive, and beyond.  

For anyone who’s in or passing through Beirut, I’d really encourage you to come by Ashkal Alwan and visit our archives on Mar Mikhael Street. And if you’re not in the city, you can still explore a lot of what we’re doing online at archive.ashkalalwan.org and perpetualpostponement.org.