Date with The Archive | Indigenous Archives and Narratives | A Presentation by Rahi Soren | December 06, 2023

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA)
invites you to
Date with The Archive:
Indigenous Archives and Narratives
A Presentation by Rahi Soren

Wednesday, December 06, 2023 | 06:30 PM IST onwards | Zoom and Facebook Live

How does one trace the transformation of oral cultures to written cultures? What does archiving indigenous knowledge mean, and how is it performed?

Join us for a conversation with Rahi Soren, as she speaks about the possibilities and challenges of archiving indigenous narratives and stories, and the efforts to conserve endangered cultural heritage. She will also share her own experience in archiving indigenous culture, especially while working with the Santali Archives in Norway, Britain and India, concentrating on a project that digitised Santali texts from 1890-1975 in Eastern India, as part of the British Library funded project EAP 1300. The materials she refers to in the talk will be in English, Bangla and Santali.

Rahi Soren is an Assistant Professor at the School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University. She is interested in understanding the effective use of scientific information for conserving culture, habitat and biodiversity in the face of the growing threats of extinction. Alongside her scientific work, she engages with indigenous culture and actively participates in the documentation and preservation of the endangered cultural heritage.

Launched in 2018, The IFA Archive is a space that holds the diverse materials of the projects supported and implemented by IFA over the years, currently featuring materials from over 500 projects online at theifaarchive.org/

Date with The Archive is a series of talks by artists and researchers across different practices who have used archives extensively for their creative work, to bring to focus the potential of the archive as a significant resource for artistic and scholarly explorations.

The IFA Archive is built with support from Indorama Charitable Trust.

Click here to register for the discussion on Zoom.

The discussion will also be streamed live on our Facebook page, for which no prior registration is required.