August 31, 2025, at 8:00 PM / Kruševac Park
(in case of rain, Petrović Castle, first floor)

From the looting of the Palestinian Research Center in Beirut during the Israeli invasion in 1982 to the recent bombings of cultural institutions in Gaza, Palestinian archives have repeatedly been subjected to acts of erasure aimed at destroying collective memory and disrupting the continuity of the Palestinian narrative.

This lecture offers a historical reading of Palestinian archives, with a focus on visual arts and cinema, tracing their fragile existence under ongoing Israeli occupation. Engaging with the politics of memory-making in the Palestinian context opens up a space for rethinking archives under conditions of continuous colonization. Alternative archival practices are highlighted, with emphasis on how the solidarity movement has contributed to preserving Palestinian archives as living spaces of memory, where the Palestinian narrative continues to be told and developed in various forms.

Rana Anani is a Palestinian curator and writer specializing in visual arts. Her research interests include the history of Palestinian art, the intersections of visual art with loss, erasure, and archives, as well as the role of art as a means of solidarity. She is currently a fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies and a board member of the Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah. She is the editor of artist Nabil Anani’s memoir Emergence to Light and artist Sliman Mansour’s memoir Darb Al Ghoul.

Rehaf Al-Batniji, The City that Drank the Sea; The Sea that Drank the City, photograph (2019).

The Summer School Revolutionary Routes / Destination: Comradeship is jointly conceptualized and organized by the curators of MSUCG, MG+MSUM Ljubljana, and MAO Belgrade.