This iteration of Marco Scotini’s Disobedience Archive focuses on the significance of human gathering
Initiated in 2005 by curator and critic Marco Scotini, the Disobedience Archive is an expanding collection, with no fixed location, of more than 100 videoworks that intersect artistic practice and political activism. The selection here has been made by Raqs Media Collective, who’ve also constructed the scenography. Five canopylike structures, inspired by the shamiana, a South Asian ceremonial tent, and made from a variety of materials including fabric, acrylic glass and LEDs, are paired with ‘chapters’ of the archive. Breaking the space into what the collective describes, in the exhibition brochure, as ‘small worlds of attention’, the canopies designate sites where visitors gather to watch films about the power of media in cultivating human belonging. The quintet of chapters contains, in total, 50 films, under the rubrics ‘Archives in Revolt’, ‘Insurgent Communities’, ‘Diaspora Activism’, ‘Radical Ecologies’ and ‘Gender Disobedience’, and is complemented by three further works from the museum’s collection. A sixth canopy features no films, functioning as a space to talk, listen and gather.
