Artistic Intervention – Werker Collective

Amator Archives (from the Latin amātor: lover) is a citizen-led archival method developed by Werker Collective to support the production of emancipatory political imagination through processes of self-publishing and collective study.

In Kosovo, a country whose archives are particularly vulnerable and often absent, destroyed or invisible, Amator Archives has been set up at the Centre for Narrative Practice. The project is durational and will continue in some form beyond the 100-day programme of the biennial.

Amator Archives extends an invitation to friends, lovers, families, amateurs or hobbyists to share, discuss and edit personal archives. The project calls for collections of pictures, writings and drawings, documents, scrapbooks, magazines, flyers and posters, newspaper clippings, videos and audio files (original documents or reproductions) from which to create intersecting collective memories.

In order to activate the archival process in Prishtina, Werker Collective has contributed 200 documents from their collection in Amsterdam, which focuses on self-organised radical documentary practices and media critique on topics such as labour, feminism, sexuality, ecology and social movements.

To get involved with the project contact: info@werkermagazine.org.