The Living Archives

Credits: bureau zanko

The Living Archives is an online platform, which will primarily be used to document, archive and make available knowledge and content, that is generated within BIPoC communities. Integrating and referring to this knowledge, the platform will also be used as a learning space for these communities.

The aim of the project is to capture and make accessible content and knowledge generated within BIPoC contexts in past and present. xart splitta understands The Living Archives as a “Resistant Knowledge Project” (Patricia Hill Collins). Archiving and documentation is therefore seen as a decolonial act – concepts and practices of archiving are redefined in terms of their colonial, racist, and heteronormative context of origin and used as a medium of “counter-narration”.

The first content for the site will be provided by the ongoing work of xart splitta as well as by texts, conversations and content that was created in the context of the project “Passing it On”. A project that was carried out by xart splitta in 2019 by  Nicola Lauré al-Samarai and Iris Rajanayagam; and in the context of which the idea for the online portal was born. The website will however remain a work in progress and we are looking forward to the collaboration with a variety of individuals and communities in the further development of The Living Archives.


The Living Archives is funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb, here our special thanks go to Peggy Piesche.