ABSTRACT
This photographic essay proposes a ‘post-patriarchal archive’ as a mode of transformational thinking. This activist archive does not deal with the objects of the past, but rather anticipates future, ideologically obsolete material, which will require mediation after the fall of patriarchy. Objects (artefacts), whether trivial or profound, are selected from everyday experience and are stamped as evidence of the current, late-capitalist oppression of women. Once identified and stamped, they are placed back in circulation – labelled as hazardous for future generations. Usually presented through a workshop/demonstration format, this essay will operate in a similarly performative way, moving through a series of photographic images and instructions for the reader to expand the archive themselves. The post-patriarchal archive is concerned with experimentation and aesthetic disruptions to the material culture and modes of political domination that surround us, appropriating certain aspects of state bureaucracy (such as the archive) in order to critically reimagine it.
