The Archive as Sepulchre

What is an archive? How do we judge what is part of an archive and what is not?

When we were trying to answer these complex questions I could not stop thinking about Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s work, which reminds us of an additional question we need to raise: how is it possible to store someone in a world that had once erased them?

Brathwaite-Shirley is a trans woman and digital archivist, whose projects combine digital art, animation, game design and sound production.

Before moving ahead, I want to share some of her works, that I will cite later:

- Resurrection Land: https://www.resurrectionland.com/

- Black Trans Archive: https://www.blacktransarchive.com/

These interactive games have one main purpose: creating a digital archive which reflects the black trans experience. They are spaces meant to fill the enormous gap in black trans history we all suffer, emphasising that “WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF THOSE THAT ARE NOT”, embodying black trans ancestors in digital corpses. These experiences where not even considered worthy to be recorded, or were failed to be recorded in the ways they should have. All the stored memories we have today are white gaze centred and replicate the violence that has been done to this community throughout the centuries. This artist challenges what we commonly mean by “archive” in and out. She stretches it and shapes it however she wants it to be. I wonder what Steedman would say about it…

Although I do not love Freud’s intrusion in every single discourse, I would like to get back to Derrida’s claim of the archive as a negotiation between Thanatos and Eros. Thanatos, the death drive, is the threat of destruction and forgetfulness of memory. The act of collecting and documenting is an answer to this threat. However, the primary death drive is death itself. When we archive an artifact we imply that who produced the artifact is dead. Through the act of storing, a memory that has been stripped away of its vitality, awakes and returns to life. As Achille Mbembe suggests in The Power of the Archive and its Limits: “[the archive] is rooted in death as an architectural event”. He highlights how it is fundamental to respect the dead, to bury them along with their “debris”. And here comes the description of the archive as a sepulchre, where the margins between memory and time are blurred.

I find this notion deeply intertwined with Brathwaite-Shirley’s digital spaces. Resurrection Land’ s landscape in particular, visually reminds us of a cemetery. There is a palpable sense of religiousness and sacredness embedded in the environment these archives reproduce, intensified by the immersive sound and the psychedelic visuals. They are a glitch of the system, unbiased by the colonial and imperial lens, out of time and space altogether. Also the pace of the video-game is fixed, for the sake of accessibility but also as an exercise of patience, of respecting the artist rhythm in conceiving the project. Brathwaite-Shirley seems to remind us that bringing memories back to life takes time and care.

In conclusion, in a world where the narratives of queer experience seem to be constantly associated with violence and trauma, art and creativity represent a tool for liberation. They allow us to express our multifaceted self, smashing the logic imposed from above. These archives are a perfect example of this. They are a journey through transforming silence, resurrecting forgotten ancestors and giving black trans people a space to thrive. 

Because this is what we have always longed for: spaces, physical and digital, where we can hold ourselves and thrive, not just survive.

Photo: The Moment (2019) by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley.