Maria Ganem made the short film “Tabu, Proprietada Privada”, using 8mm films from our archive. These films originate from a collection of reels purchased at a flea market in Paris, where the predominant theme is films by French families traveling through the islands of Tahiti in the 1960s.
“Taboo, Private Property” a film by Maria Ganem. Created from archival images of French tourists, who traveled to Tahiti during the 1960s, Tabu problematizes the encounter of these individuals and the island’s native population, in a reflection on tourism and colonialism.
The Ideias no Escuro Archive came together through a joint work by João Farelo and Rui Luís with researcher Catarina Simão for the R-Humor exhibition on Archives of Mozambique with an audiovisual piece featuring two videos edited with materials from the collection of Zoom production company that integrates our Videographic archive.
Due to the state of the country due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, the exhibition will end on June 30th unless future changes.
The R-Humor exhibition is centered on a collection of 245 photographs from the archives of the Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde in Leipzig, one of Saxony’s internationally renowned Ethnographic Museums. These photographs today recover a unique testimony to the history of the Makonde art collection of the National Museum of Ethnology in Nampula (Mozambique) gathered in colonial times. At the same time, and in a critical and satirical way, they are a paradox as proof of the foresight about the behavior of the white colonizer.
Catarina Simão is an artist and researcher who has been working with the notion of the archive since 2009, engaging especially with Mozambique’s colonial and anticolonial history. The unsteady disposition of the archive is a central aspect of her work, as is the criticism attached to custodian registry. R-humor is a project that emerges from years of observation on the involuntary memory of archives, understanding specially the interrelationship of time with text and the objects.
How to support our Archive. The Ideias no Escuro Archive is a Family, Personal and Family, Commercial and Industrial Photography, Film and Video file, originating from donations, materials found and other purchased (auctions, purchases from individuals, etc.)
Our aim is to ensure that these types of files that normally disappear or never end up coming out of a drawer, or that often end up destroyed or in a waste bin, do not disappear, and are kept as a document with the historical value that is in it associated.
These materials that make up our archive are cleaned, organized, digitized, and packaged. Its use has been diverse, from academic research, to reuse by artists and directors. We also have an editorial project with the publication and edition of Author’s Books and Films based on the archival materials.
The archive has been growing with acquisitions and already many donations, which raises some problems, logistical, human resources, material resources and facilities to accommodate everything in the best possible conditions.
The sources of income of the archive are very scarce, we only get some return on the sale of publications that we make based on the Archive, and some services of digitalization of photography and video.
In order to try to continue this project in a sustainable way we decided to join Patreon, where you will be able within your will and possibility to support us in this project that we want to continue to see grow and develop.
