Archives of Oblivion

Which stories become part of our shared history? Whose words get to form the story of Malmö? Archives of Oblivion is a suite of poems by Felicia Mulinari and Athena Farrokhzad written in dialogue with social movements about memory, grief and racist violence, with Malmö as the backdrop. Directed by Saga Gärde, the piece features an accompanying video portraying children and youth leaders from the organisation Helamalmö, who perform the poem and examine the role of memory and forgetting in the anti-racist struggle. 

Archives of Oblivion, originally a large-scale performance piece produced by Amfi in collaboration with Malmö Konsthall, was part of the group exhibition The Whole City is a Monument (Hela staden är ett monument). Commissioned by the City of Malmö 2022–2023, the exhibition explored how structural racism and implicit bias affect which experiences and memories jointly create a city’s collective history. More information about Amfi’s contribution to the project can be found at glomskansarkiv.se.

The film screening on Sunday afternoon is an adaptation of the original performance piece made especially for Nordisk Panorama. 

Talk: Art and Collective Memory: The Politics of Remembrance

Following the screening of Archives of Oblivion, Athena Farrokhzad and Saga Gärde join director Suvi West in a conversation about the challenges of working with remembrance projects. With her film Homecoming, Suvi West portrays the anticolonial struggle of returning Sami artefacts from museums worldwide back to Sápmi. The talk will connect both pieces, Homecoming and Archives of Oblivion, by handling topics such as the oppression of the voice of a collective, reclaiming the ownership of personal narratives and the transformation of a community’s memory culture. The panellists will explore remembrance beyond trauma — who gets to be remembered, how, and by whom? Whose stories are permitted to endure and in what contexts?

Moderator: C. Grace Chang / curator and artist