Voicing the Archive

Date to be announced

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THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED! Please register and we will send out a new date when it is confirmed, ideally early October.

About this event

A discussion between Ofri Lapid and Jessica Nevo, inspired by the archival and activist work of the Haifa Feminist Institute.

The discussion “Voicing the archive” is inspired by the archival and activist work of the Haifa Feminist Institute, which is based in Haifa, Israel. The HFI is a non-governmental feminist establishment of the activist group Isha Le’Isha (‘woman to woman’ in Hebrew) and home to the first and only queer-feminist archive in Israel. Among many important materials kept by the HFI are records of court trials of domestic violence. These were written by voluntary members of HFI, who were trained to enter the courtrooms and to formulate their own extra-institutional, subjective accounts. The discussion will engage with the position of the outsider observer in the court system; a position that undermines formality and promotes a subjective critical approach toward justice.

Sociologist and activist Jessica Nevo will speak about the HFI program ‘Tribunal’ and the work that the Institute conducts in order to make visible and decrease gender-based and intersectional violence in Israel/Palestine. Artist Ofri Lapid, will present her recent reflections about working with the HFI documents of court observations from the 1990s, and excerpts from Maggie Nelson’s book “The Red Parts.” The exhibition curators Maria Veits and Anna Bitkina will moderate the event.

This event is presented as a part of Voicing the Silence, an apexart International Open Call exhibition curated by Creative Association of Curators TOK. The exhibition will be on view online and in Moscow from July 18 – September 19, 2021.

BIOS

Ofri Lapid (b. 1983, Haifa) is an artist and a PhD candidate at the school of visual arts in Hamburg. Her work concerns the composition, activation and dissolution of private, scholarly and independent archives. Her manner of working is based on site-specific and collaborative practices, which often provide her the basis for installations of objects, photographs and videos. Additionally, she develops a series of orchestrated lecture performances: these combine oral narrations, field recording and objects and function both within academic conference settings and in exhibition spaces. She exhibited in various venues globally, her latest publication was featured in Archive Dekolonialisieren’, Transcript Verlag, 2018.

Jessica Nevo is a sociologist expert on Gender and Conflict Transformation. She has been working for years in the non-profit sector and civil society NGOs as a consultant & external evaluator. Being an independent researcher on transitional justice, she co-founder Justice in Case – The Center for Alternative Justice. Jessica is actively involved in development of People’s courts and civil truth commissions on gender-based violence and Israel/Palestine.

Image: Haifa Feminist Institute, 2020