#1 Discussion – Why this archive?
Before any of these words are put down on the work of archiving, particularly of archiving revolution, we need to start with a disclaimer: what matters, is having bodies on the street. I don’t want to fall into the trap of giving images more power than they are due. Let us not over-celebrate archives. Archiving revolt is a critical act, but it is a secondary one. First and foremost comes the revolt, taking the risk, confronting state violence, the pain of loss, the sleepless nights, and facing your own fears. Before I begin, I want to make clear that this act of archiving is not the revolution, nor can this collection be the memory of that time. It entails traces of events, particular angles and selected excerpts of a coming together, of rage, marches, chants, rocks thrown, desires enacted, screamed and spoken. Every archived moment entails the lack of a lot of others that aren’t. We could not access the torture chambers, we could not lay bare the military tribunals, nor can any archive relay the effect of years of economic policies that privileged a few at the expense of the majority, this invisible thing we call neo-colonialism that keeps re-inventing itself in the most brutal of ways. Now, in spite of all this, why the archive?
Mosireen is a volunteer media activist collective that came together to document and transmit images of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.
The Counterrevolution Will Be Televised: Propaganda and Egyptian Television since the Revolution