Spectres of decay: Anarchival approaches to decoding the palimpsest

Original Research

Abstract

In my practice-based research for the project, Decay without mourning: Future-thinking heritage practices, I employ decentering strategies to uncover aesthetic-conceptual potential within the marginalised material ruins of an archive. This involves scrutinising visual and sonic traces of decay to depict the “anarchival impetus” – that which threatens the archive may paradoxically liberate the captures of the past from the colonial confines of their conservation. In this article, I discuss my artistic exploration of decay across three personal collections of an enthusiast, an archivist, and a photographer. The Hidden Years Music Archive (HYMA) documents an alternative view of the South African music scene from the mid-1960s to the early 2000s, reflecting the countercultural impulse against apartheid. The Decay Anarchive consists of discarded elements of processing artefacts within HYMA while being incorporated into the Documentation Centre for Music (DOMUS) at Stellenbosch University. Finally, a collection of outdated photographic paper provided the basis for producing a range of lumen print experiments in collaboration with Jurie Senekal titled Spectres of decay I (2023). This series of chance compositions in a time-based medium captures the spectral qualities of archival detritus as fabricated palimpsests that illuminate the trajectory of decay.