Koken Ergun will talk about After the Archive?, a series of curated talks and workshops on the urgency of maintaining archives in Turkey, organized by him and Hasan Ozgür Top.
At this crucial time of political unrest, when freedom of expression is threatened and severely punished by the government, the artists decided to interrupt their artistic practice and discuss the emergency of preserving public memory. From the archives of Turkey's oldest newspaper, Cumhuriyet, which is in danger of being closed down, to forced disappearances in the Kurdish regions of Turkey, the project seeks to develop techniques of urgent archiving. The artists' aim is to facilitate the production and distribution of knowledge at a time when solidarity is practiced more and more in small and closed groups, in order to “stay alive” and “stay sane.” After the Archive? is run by Köken Ergun, Hasan Özgür Top, Sarp Renk Özer and Doğa Yirik.