Lexicon for an Affective Archive – Book Launch

To study an archive or archival materials is to engage in an affective and critical practice involved in the construction of memory. The Lexicon for an Affective Archive, edited by Giulia Palladini and Marco Pustianaz, is an international collection of these encounters, offering glimpses into the intimate relations developed in the process of finding, remembering, imagining, or creating an archive. Bringing together artistic and scholarly voices from a variety of fields, this beautifully designed volume proposes the idea of “affective archive” as a conceptual tool to interrogate an expanded notion of archive and its central role in the contemporary visual and performing arts.

This event, hosted by LADA, aims to “launch” the project both effectively and metaphorically: launching its core idea into the future, like a stone producing ripples in a lake. The aim is to foster a broader conversation about archives, their affects and reverberations. The book will be explored as an exhibition of archives by tracing a number of alternative paths leading from one archive to another. These will be explored in a dialogue with contributing authors, such as Joe Kelleher (University of Roehampton), and with invited guests: among the latter, Tara Fatehi Irani, a London-based performance artist who will be invited to respond to the project in a performative way, and Lois Keidan (LADA), who will address issues of archive and affect in relation to LADA’s Study Room collection.  

The full editors’ Introduction to Lexicon for an Affective Archive is available as a PDF download  

Lexicon for an Affective Archive is published by Intellect Books, NInA and the Live Art Development Agency. The book will be available to buy at the launch event, and can be ordered now through LADA’s online shop Unbound.