In 1969, in Les Guérillères, Monique Wittig advocated for a strategy of creating archives through fiction and imagination, when the act of remembrance alone could not prevent erasure: “Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent.”

An exhibition, taking up this invitation, was conceived based on a proposal by Aliocha Imhoff and Kantuta Quirós at Bétonsalon in 2013. Drawing on the work of Gloria Anzaldúa, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Giuseppe Campuzano, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Carola Dertnig, Cheryl Dunye, Renée Green, Marge Monko, Roee Rosen, and Monique Wittig, it offered numerous reflections on the process of dehistoricization in which women have been, and continue to be, caught. Through semantic tools such as the neologism herstory, brought to light by American poet Robin Morgan, or through the invention of new technologies of writing (mythology, auto-history-theory, fictionalization of archives, reenactment), the writers, poets, and artists in the exhibition challenged the linear narrative of history. Beyond simply celebrating one or another forgotten female figure, this reconstruction of herstory more ambitiously lays the groundwork for a feminist and queer rewriting of History.

It is today, fifty-seven years later, that we return to these words and to this exhibition. As part of the “Parties prenantes” programme, a regular opportunity to explore our archives, we take the time to remember, or, failing that, to collectively invent. This effort of remembrance will take the form of a shared discussion and will take place in the company of Aliocha Imhoff & Kantuta Quirós, curators, art theorists, filmmakers, and founders of the curatorial platform le peuple qui manque.

This session will provide an opportunity to revisit these questions of situated historiography and to open a dialogue with the current exhibition, “Magnanrama: Media, Technologies, Identities, Networks around Nathalie Magnan.”