Employing visual tactics that attempt to express a year and half of trans-disciplinary discussion across a diverse range of topics undertaken within the Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative African eras immediately preceding colonialism (that would be typically illustrated with fragments of potsherds) confront visually the legacy of Fanon’s radical critique of colonialism embodied in the images of the body of the murdered Steve Biko. The potsherds in turn are released from duty as markers of cultural identity, and their images wander into essays where they exert pressure as objects of wonder in the contemporary. In the visual curation of the volume and in the various analytical moves developed within essays, the volume explores the capacities of contemporary visual and material archival and curatorial interventions to institute forms of care. 

Proposed Contributions 

C. Hamilton and P. Skotnes: Introduction 

D.Cohen: A Curator's Fingers: Photographers, Subjects, and The Third Thing 

J. Berndt: On the spectral life of posters in the archive 

D. Herwitz: Sustaining Heritage off the Road to Kruger Park 

C. Zaayman: On an-archive 

A. Dodd: Awakening mortified imperial legacies in The Funnyhouse of a Negro 

F. Langerman: Of wood and trees: locating Eden and Noah's Ark within displays of natural history 

P.Skotnes: On bone books 

N. Liebhammer and C. Hamilton: Salutes, Labels and other Archival Artefacts 

K.Thomas: On the deaths of Biko and the archives of apartheid 

M.Winburg: On reading the art of the !kun boys 

M.Nixon: Getting the Picture? Making Sense of Percival Kirby's Photographs 

L. Modisane: On cinema as archive 

M.Buthelezi: On Ndwandwe and archival performance 

N. Shepherd: Archaeology and 'regimes of care'