Vanishing Traces: Reflections on the Digital Archive and the History of Contemporary Art – A discussion panel by the writer Ismail Fayed

Vanishing Traces: Reflections on the Digital Archive and the History of Contemporary Art. A discussion panel by the writer Ismail Fayed. 

As part of the public discussion program of the research project “Against All Odds: Towards a History of Contemporary Art in Egypt (2000-2022)”, the second event of the program comes in collaboration with Medrar for Contemporary Art to invite those interested and concerned with the history of contemporary visual art to discuss the role and meaning of the digital archive as a space for memory but also forgetting. The contemporary art scene emerged at the beginning of the millennium and was formed and engaged with a digital infrastructure of image and text that played a fundamental role in developing this scene and its practices, and this was also reflected in the ways in which these practices were received and disseminated, as well as remembered. It can be said that many of those involved in contemporary practices used digital means and tools in various ways, even if their practices were not concerned with specific digital mediums or with direct questions about digital media. Reliance on these digital mediums or structures has become self-evident and largely unquestioned. This was reflected in the methods of communication (starting with email and going on to social media) as well as the spaces for publishing and expression (electronic journalism, blogs, social media platforms, etc.) and this digital structure became an integral part of the presence of that scene and the ways of dealing with it despite the fragility of the digital medium and its seemingly inevitable disappearance. After more than twenty years of many institutions and spaces working in this scene and the “fading” and disappearance of many of those digital traces and their content, the question becomes what kind of archive can be imagined with that vanishing? What is the collective memory that can be saved or formed with this absence? And in the event that it is impossible to save that presence or this content, what kind of dialogue can we talk about as witnesses and agents? The discussion panel invites all those interested in the history of contemporary visual art to share their concerns, hopes, and aspirations and to think about an alternative archive or memory that goes beyond vanishing traces.

Join us on Thursday, November 21 1st, 2024, at 7 PM at Medrar

Address: Medrar, 10 Gamal Eldin Abo ElMahasen, Garden City, Cairo.