Traditionally, archives have been perceived as collections of given things—objects, papers, testimonies—and, above all, as official containers of collective memory. Yet not all memories can be contained or stored within archives. Tracing songs, traditions, rivers, mountains, bodies, and waste offers alternative modes of memory activation.
This series engages with these non-objectual archives—entities that hold memory outside institutional bounds, legible to those attuned to their languages. By tracing them, we aim to articulate an infrastructural critique of archiving that bridges technical design, ethical reflexivity, and epistemic justice. Through conversations with community-driven practices, we explore unarchiving as both method and politics: a way of making visible the tensions between memory, mediation, and control.
Editors and Creators
Camilla Falanesca, History PhD student at UCSB
Jairo Melo Florez, Digital Humanities Research Facilitator at UCSB
Rita Jiménez, Independent researcher
Eduardo Castro, History PhD student at UCSB