April Carlioz

Into the Filing Box/Arch(I’ve)

_{2025, Bard College Berlin}

Mixed-media installation, 45x35x130cm

Archives are far more than just institutions, or collections of documents; they embody a practice. There always remain gaps to be filled and contexts to be (re)worked – they are in constant flux. Our understanding of what form an archive can even take is constantly expanding. This piece explores the archive as an embodied experience and as possibility, rather than just a vessel. What is it like to sift through history to find something of yourself and others? How is this history made within the archive in the first place?

My research specifically looked into the complex questions surrounding how Migration and Diaspora can be archived and experienced in the archive. Archival practice in relation to these themes faces the unique challenge of (re)building a history away from where it was lived and made; it must record a locality, while also remaining connected to a global assemblage. To approach these questions, I compared two projects – the Schwules Museum Archive and Library in Berlin and the Iranian-American Digital Archive Project in San Francisco. They differ radically on many modalities – their primary subject matter, their size, their institutional realities, their resources, their formats, their categorization logics, their audiences, their intimacy with stories. Each of these diverging factors compound into narratives that shape how documents are found, viewed, and understood. Imagine what mysteries may lay in the stack of boxes below – things are not always where they are supposed to be, or you can see their edges and not grasp them. Look into the filing box, past strange labels and complex webs and smudged traces, and see your fractured face reflected back at you.