The Tool-Shed: A Testing Ground for Tools and Methodologies

This online event will take place on 2 February, 7.30pm (CET) via Zoom. Click here to join directly.

Collecting Otherwise introduces its newest trajectory, The Tool Shed: A Testing Ground for Tools and Methodologies, following on from Seen/Unseen (2021) and Post/De/Colonial (2022). By sharing developments and plans during this public gathering, Collecting Otherwise opens the floor to collectively identify the tools that can be made in this Tool Shed that will ultimately help us imagine, build and collect differently. The evening will feature presentations on the Tools in the Tool-Shed, as well as a presentation by Working Group member Harriet Rose Morley on her research Hard Work/Soft Work.

Collecting Otherwise: "this year, we will take the Case Studies and Research from our previous years to the Tool-Shed, experimenting, testing out and implementing the methods we have been researching. In this iteration, we collaboratively transform Collecting Otherwise to the tool shed, a (set of) generative space(s), which we inhabit collectively to test out thus far developed tools and methodologies in an explicitly applied manner at Het Nieuwe Instituut. This means intervening onto case studies (archives, objects, photos, with archive donors) taken from our previous iterations Seen/Unseen and Post/De/Colonial, primarily stemming from Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut.

From our previous iterations, we also continue to engage with questions such as: how to go from methods and observations to practices, when dealing with (institutional) collections? Echoing Audre Lorde, can we reappropriate the “master's tools'' to rethink, reconfigure, and redistribute the (lived) spaces that keep our legacies? What is the role of institutions today in rebuilding heritage? How do we think — and most importantly, enact — redress? And "how can [...] moments of doubt and limitation transform into invitations for other knowledge carriers and agents to enter and reorientate the archive’s infrastructure and protocols?" (Uttering Visibility, Hannah Dawn Henderson, 2021)."

This online event will take place on 2 February, 7.30pm (CET) via Zoom. Click here to join directly.