Archives are repositories for potential futures. Meticulously and laboriously assembled, they contain truths yet to be articulated, histories yet to be written. However, as the cinematic representation of dusty, overflowing archives attest to, the presence of a document in no way guarantees it being read. Archives need to be activated for their stories to be told. No longer confined to municipal storehouses and tied to governmental power, they are spaces whose design shapes access and whose assembly shapes their publics. What an archive can do is simply the question of what the archive could be.

Focusing on the evidentiary method of archiving, Ariel Caine presents Ground Truth, 2017–ongoing, a project that provides historical and juridical evidence on behalf of communities in the illegalized Palestinian Bedouin villages in the northern threshold of the Negev/Naqab desert. Jessica de Abreu presents The Black Archives’ work documenting the history of black emancipation movements and individuals in the Netherlands. Yasmine Eid-Sabbagh discusses her research and interventions which address the political implications of a collection of digital photography originating from Burj al-Shamali, a Palestinian refugee camp in Southern Lebanon.

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