Keti Koti: Not My Archive

Join us for ‘Not My Archive’, a public programme on colonial archives, heritage and forms of knowledge that often remain out of sight. Who decides what is preserved and what is allowed to disappear? On Keti Koti, artists, researchers and community voices come together at the Allard Pierson to explore these questions over a panel discussion, poetry, a creative workshop, and heri heri. Come think along and join in.

Context

Although archives are often presented as neutral, they are shaped by colonial power structures that have long silenced non-Western realities. Not my Archive connects directly with the exhibition Not My Knowledge (VOX-POP). This exhibition builds on the foundation of the earlier exhibition Not My Soul at the Allard Pierson, which critically re-read the UvA’s colonial Surinamica collection through the eyes of enslaved people. While that previous exhibition exposed the gaps and violence within the official archives, the current exhibition Not My Knowledge and this Keti Koti programme explore how history lives on outside institutional walls and question why these vital forms of knowledge are so often excluded.

Programme

• 13:00–16:00 Collage workshop with archival material from the Surinamica-collectie, hosted by Suelae Robinson
• 11:00–16:00 Continuous heri heri distribution point & livestream of the Keti Koti commemoration
• 14:00–14:40 Panel discussion with Kelvin Dijk and Emily Clark
• 14:40–14:45 Poetry performance by Dean Bowen

Throughout the afternoon, artist Suelae Robinson leads a continuous collage workshop, working with copies of archival material from the Surinamica collection. This creates space for personal stories, family histories, and collective memory to come together.

Kelvin Dijk and Emily Clark engage in a panel talk on colonial archives, Surinamese and Caribbean heritage, and contested forms of knowledge. The conversation is moderated by heritage specialist Maja Hillhorst and concludes with a poetry performance by Dean Bowen.

Visitors can attend the different parts separately and are welcome to walk in and out of the workshop. You can also stop by the museum to pick up heri heri and follow the Keti Koti commemoration via a live stream.

Contributors

Workshop host

Suelae Robinson is an Antiguan artist of English and Guyanese descent, based in Rotterdam. Through patchwork, collage and embroidery, she creates textile works that give voice to Caribbean narratives, often from an ethnobotanical perspective that connects people, roots and landscape.

Panel talk

Kelvin Dijk is a Surinamese-Dutch artist and facilitator from Amsterdam. His practice focuses on the (re)production and deconstruction of marginalised histories, working between personal experience, communal memory and questions of cultural heritage and belonging.

Emily Clark is an ethnomusicologist and Assistant Professor of Contested Archives, Media and Memory at the University of Amsterdam. Her work examines how sound and listening shape ideas of self and other, with a focus on Dutch colonial histories, migration and media archives.

Dean Bowen is a poet and performer, and the former city poet of Rotterdam (2019–2020). In his work, he explores how identity is constructed and negotiated, using poetry and performance to open up alternative perspectives on power, history and community.

Moderator

Maja Hillhorst is a freelance collection and heritage specialist, previously working as a networked collector at Imagine IC, a pioneer in participatory collecting.