by Bianca Mantovani

if there was
an archive
of nows

a catalog
of happenstances

“Museu”, by Ana Martins Marques, in O livro das semelhanças

Can one legitimately think of “archives of nows” and “catalogs of happenstances” outside of a poem? Can happenstances and nows be stored in a systematic way? Let’s say it’s almost impossible, but there is a clear desire in some independent initiatives to archive and catalog their more autonomous, spontaneous experiences, which operate in the cracks and speak of non-hegemonic narratives. 

The Archivo de la Memoria Trans, the Zumví Arquivo Afro Fotográfico and the Projeto Arquivo Ateliê397 are independent archival organizations as well as proposals for mobilizing memory, and comparing them helps us understand which tools are currently being used to preserve the history of different groups. 

For me, as an Umbanda woman, Exu is a deity I worship and respect, because he is the orisha of communication, the guardian of information, the one who inhabits the crossroads and works in disorder-order, with the capacity for creation and transformation. So, if Exu killed a bird yesterday with the stone he threw today,¹ this shuffling, this crossing of information is pertinent to understanding the archives, using the idea of the crossroads as an epistemology of analysis.

Archive-crossroads

The crossroads here is not just a metaphor for an intersection, but the space-time in which possibilities emerge and dwell. Understanding it as an intersection of histories goes hand in hand with the idea of transgressing in order to “operate in the cracks”, as Luiz Rufino teaches us.²

I see archives as crossroads in the sense of provoking the creation of new narratives. It is at the junction that different stories can be generated. In dialog with the researcher of Afro-Brazilian cultures Leda Maria Martins, the crossroads is seen here as “a third place, the generator of diversified production and, therefore, of plural meanings.”³

From this braid, I arrive at the databases. What narrative do we create with information from a database? What do we understand about their specific collections – the history of Argentine trans women, the black population of Bahia, and contemporary art in São Paulo?

An organized database is made up of categories, filters, metadata, and keywords. A concern with systematizing this information and making it accessible to the public is evident in the three initiatives listed. As the database is a complex structure that interconnects according to the intersections we perform within it, it helps us transgress the linear narrative,⁴ placing it at a crossroads.

The archive-crossroads flirts with the non-linearity of archives, as a proposal for a critical reading of the stored histories. Crossroads of ideas, narratives, keywords denote the power of this junction of knowledge. Thus, situating archives in a dialog with contemporaneity, from the perspective of a junction, is what allows for the emergence of counterpoints, of new voices, of a history that has yet to be told.

Three contemporary experiences

Created by trans women activists María Belén Correa and Claudia Pía Baudracco, the Archivo de la Memoria Trans (AMT) is fighting for the visibility, history, and right to memory of Argentina’s trans community. The Zumví Arquivo Afro Fotográfico compiles images of Afro-Brazilian culture from the state of Bahia with the idea of being a ‘visual quilombo’, an archive that portrays the black population through the lens of black photographers. In turn, Ateliê397, which has been in existence for more than twenty years, shows a cross-section of contemporary art in São Paulo, with pioneering debates on political and gender issues. Created for different reasons, at different times and in different places, the three independent initiatives bear a strong political expression so that memories, struggles, and resistance are documented and preserved.

AMT defines itself as a “space for the protection, construction, and vindication of trans memory” in the Argentine context. The proposal is based on compiling photos, videos, audio files, newspapers, and other documents with the aim of preserving the history of the trans community and fighting transphobia. The curation of the archive separates into 13 series and has 44 documentary fonds, which total over 15,000 items. There are different metadata categories, such as authorship, date, documentary genre, among others.

With over 30,000 negatives, Zumví’s collection is organized by theme. Each image carries important information in its metadata, such as title, description, photographer, series, location, and year of production. In conversation with José Carlos Ferreira, the archive’s manager, and Bruno Pinheiro, a supporter, I understood that when Lázaro Roberto – one of the creators of Zumví – began to take photographs and become concerned about the conservation of this material, he created an arrangement that organized and catalogued his work according to subjects, which are still maintained by the institution today.

In order to explore the perspective of the crossroads in these archives, I browse through their databases, using a few key words. In AMT, when I click on the ‘catalog’ button, I see a menu with three navigation modes: Index, Documentary Fonds, and Search. Below, there is an explanation with hyperlinks indicating the series, other ways of exploring the platform. These series are both research guidelines and expressions of a curation of the AMT archive, raising themes that are important to the trans community represented in the documents.

Taken by further curiosity to find out what can go beyond this arrangement, I explore the index and find a nice surprise. There is information about the items in the table file – an organization that is usually behind the scenes in databases – with columns such as authorship, place, series, process, history, and date, the metadata for each item. In all, there are fifteen pages with this information. With the computer’s search command (Ctrl+F), I can type in words to find clues, relationships, possible encounters with “Brazil” in some descriptions, for example, or possible repetitions of categories, such as when a reader comes across a cross-referenced index at the end of a printed book, which here becomes totally customizable according to the interests of the searcher.

After spending a long time interrogating the pages with terms and names, I enter Mari Popi’s documentary fond, I scroll down, and a photo catches my eye: two women in party dresses with voluminous, swirling skirts. I click on it and read in the metadata that it’s from a carnival parade in 1970. I’m intrigued: are there any more photos on this theme? I go back to the top of the catalog, click on ‘search’, type in the word “carnival” and a plethora of photographs pop up on my screen. There are different ways of searching this archive, whether in the index, in the series, in the documentary backgrounds or in an unpretentious search that might bring up something new on your screen.

I also spent hours browsing Zumví. On the home page, there’s the ‘collection’ button, and I begin my intersecting. One can browse by “photographers” and discover each photographer’s own style, their authorial mark. There are also well-defined specific categories at the start, such as black artists, afro blocos, black brotherhoods, LGBT, religiosity, among others.

I open an image from the “black women’s movement” category, start browsing and click on the photo of a smiling child holding a sign that reads “Yes to life! Against the sterilization of black women!”. I enlarge the photo and click on ‘details’ in the top left-hand corner of the screen. I see that it’s a demonstration from March 8th. I’m curious to know if there are other photos documenting this march and if the Black Women’s Movement has also been photographed on other days of struggle. Also in this category, you can use the search engine and type in “March 8”. A selection of sixteen photos appear on the screen. I go back, type in “march” and come across 51 other photographs, making the search more specific when I cross-reference the movement category with other keywords. In this way, I understand that the words in the subject field are also search mechanisms, enhancing the crossings of this archive-crossroads.

I realize that the intersections can go beyond the initial organization of each file, meaning the metadata plays a genuine part in constructing junctions. After AMT and Zumví took part in the 35th Bienal de São Paulo – choreographies of the impossible, in 2023, they also became items in the database of the Wanda Svevo Historical Archive, kept by the Fundação Bienal itself. When I search for their names, I find mentions of their presence at the show. In other words, it’s important to think about the cross-referencing of archives, a notion of collectivity and meta archives that go beyond their own method of systematization, but that draw other initiatives in, allowing for the creation of a network between archives. If history can be understood as a collective perspective on the past, it is interesting to think of the very collective formation of memory repositories – especially independent initiatives – such as the crossroads serving as the basis for the unfolding of the writing of history.

The Projeto Arquivo Ateliê397 brings together a cross-section of Ateliê397’s history and uses Tainacan,⁵ the free collection management software. It brings together part of 397’s history, divided into collections, revealing an archival curatorship, just like its peers mentioned above. Each item has metadata so that entries have as much information as possible. Fields such as title, year, synopsis, funding, artist, and keywords are important for cross-referencing and searching this archive.

I notice that, unlike AMT and Zumví, where searches have to be directed – in other words, I have to actively type in a word to run a search, a bit of trial and error – in the 397 archive there is an exploratory search, with lists of items so that the person can click and come across category options even if they don’t know what they’re looking for.

I click on ‘exhibitions’. On the left-hand side of the screen, there is a bar with defined filters and I start some exploratory cross-referencing. The first filter is curator and, from the list of names, I choose Thais Rivitti. On clicking, the file tells me that five items have been found. Now I’m curious to see which of these exhibitions featured the artist Raphael Escobar. I select his name and the result is the item “À noite, o mundo se divide em dois” [At night, the world splits in two]. I click on it and find information such as the synopsis, the curatorial text, keywords, and photos of the exhibition.

Encouraged by the search results and possible cross-references, I realize that there is a desire for collectivity and a project for the future in all three archives. They are all independent initiatives that recognize the political and social strength of their stories. They are proposals for narratives to be disseminated and mobilized for research and the generation of knowledge.

Making a collection available online is also a way of ensuring the democratization of memory, its intelligible, free and friendly access, not only for the social groups represented there, but also for the organizations that lead them. A cultural institution that thinks about its own present also needs to think about its own past in order to fulfill its wishes for the future.

“We who are from the crossroads distrust those on the straight path”⁶

Placing the archive at the crossroads, in the middle of the whirlwind, means not following the straight and linear path, but realizing that stories are crossed by others, and that the paths are multiple. Therefore, I would like to provoke with this thought about the crossroads so that we can broaden the possibilities for building memory and optimize the development of databases as accessible tools, with a view to intersecting knowledge and practices.

Independent initiatives that are committed to reflecting on their trajectory, organizing their memory and making photographs, audio, texts and other information available to the public contribute not only to preserving their own history, but perhaps encourage other organizations to do the same, expanding access to collective narratives. In the age of algorithms, artificial intelligence, image and text generation, safeguarding your memory allows the protagonists and authors of each autonomous institution, each marginalized group, to narrate in their own voice.

As stories are not one-dimensional, we can question single interpretations based on documents. I return to the poem by Ana Martins Marques so that the desire to archive nows and happenstances, to cross instants and bring new perspectives allows us to access, rescue, and understand narratives through their collective power.

¹ Yoruba saying.
² Luiz Rufino. Pedagogia das encruzilhadas. São Paulo: Mórula, 2019.
³ Leda Maria Martins. Performances do tempo espiralar: Poéticas do corpo tela. Rio de Janeiro: Cobogó, 2021.
⁴ Priscila Arantes. Re/escrituras da arte contemporânea: história, arquivo e mídia. Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2015.
⁵ Tainacan is a free software program designed to make the digital collections of Brazilian cultural institutions available. https://tainacan.org/
⁶ Luiz Antônio Simas; Luiz Rufino. Fogo no mato: a ciência encantada das macumbas. Rio de Janeiro: Mórula, 2019, e-book.

About the author

Bianca Mantovani is a cultural administrator, curator and researcher. She holds a master’s degree in Museology from USP and has experience in the cultural sector in various institutions. She writes entries for the Itaú Cultural Encyclopedia and curates the Festa Lítero Musical de São José dos Campos – FLIM.