After the Archive: A Talk on the Ethics of Archiving

Description

Ergun is part a group of artists who initiated After the Archive?, an Istanbul-based, artist-run initiative. In 2016, they began researching the archives of newspapers under threat of closure by the government in Turkey. Since then, the initiative has organised talks and workshops with people and institutions that build archives about cultural heritage, LGBTI+ communities, as well as displaced and disappeared people, among others—including the Centre for Asia Minor Studies, which focuses on oral histories of Greek Orthodox communities who were displaced from Asia Minor in the 1920s, as well as the Truth Justice Memory Center, an NGO that documents data about forced disappearances in Turkey’s recent history. Ergun will also discuss situations that resist archives, such as the impossibility of archiving during times of ethnic cleansing, or the problematics of global seed archives collected and controlled by certain countries.

Ergun completed his postgraduate studies in ancient Greek literature at King’s College London and in performance studies at Freie Universität Berlin. His multi-channel video installations have been exhibited internationally, while his film works have received several awards at film festivals including the “Tiger Award for Short Film” at the 2007 Rotterdam Film Festival and the “Special Mention Prize” at the 2013 Berlinale. Ergun’s works are included in public collections such as the Centre Pompidou, the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens), as well as the Kadist Foundation.

Please note that registration is required for this free event.

Image: Photograph from “An-Archive,” a public talk by academic Zeynep Sayın, organised by After the Archive? at Studio X, Istanbul, October 2017. Courtesy of After the Archive?.