Downey, Anthony

Featuring writing, interviews and original artwork by internationally renowned academics, curators, activists, filmmakers and artists, the book explores the relationship between contemporary art and the archive. It examines how artists in North Africa and the Middle East produce speculative visions of the future through archival practices. The work questions whether these artistic engagements foster nostalgia or reveal institutional archiving crises, while investigating what such practices reveal about global cultural production politics. Throughout the volume, the archive emerges as a "troubled, dissonant and performative space" central to critical artistic vision. Contemporary artists engaging with archives—whether alternative, interrogative, or fictional—unlock the archive's "regenerative, radical potential" rather than merely questioning its authenticity and authority.