Posterity and Expatriation

Description:

In conjunction with the online exhibition The Upper Side of the Sky and Recollective: Vancouver Independent Archives Week, curator Dana Qaddah and artist Jawa El Khash discussed the significance of Palmyra—a site destroyed by ISIS during the Syrian civil war—in personal and global history, and the larger implications of such a loss. Drawing on concerns of posterity within majority-diasporic populations, the conversation illuminated their use of technology and art to synthesize the experience of personal and institutional archives. El Khash explored the four pillars of her research while she worked on The Upper Side of the Sky: agriculture, architecture, philosophy, and technology. The conversation concluded with a question and answer period. 

An illustrated transcription of the conversation was completed by Emma Metcalfe Hurst and Kate Woolf. This document can be made available upon request.

Presented as part of Recollective: Vancouver Independent Archives Week, a joint initiative of 221A, Artspeak, grunt gallery, Rungh Magazine, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, VIVO Media Arts Centre, and Western Front, with support from the Canada Council for the Arts.