Decolonizing archiving practices is about emancipatory actions rather than databases. It is about conveying a multitude of actions where conflictual narratives exist. The process of democratization of societies in conflict could take place by increasing the degree of access, of the constitution and of interpretation of archives that have to do with collective memory and urban knowledge. In spaces of conflict, however, any kind of public archive, and collective memory are under the control of the dominant political powers. They use them to sustain divisive status quos. ‘Contested Fronts: Commoning Practices for Conflict Transformation’ challenges such control. It is the curatorial project of the Cyprus pavilion, curated by the author, for the 15th Venice Biennale of Architecture. It is an open-source archive, part of an agonistic architecture, that assembles international spatial practices, networks and pedagogical programmes. They are complementary to an activist Cypriot project, the ‘Hands-on Famagusta’ project. They all offer methods, inspirations and imaginaries about constructively transforming conflicts by encouraging the emergence of emancipatory commoning practices to support the commons during a potential reunification of the divided island of Cyprus. In the article, I shortly discuss the political dimensions of archive and its use by critical spatial practices. I further on, discuss issues concerning conflict and how its transformation can have constructive or destructive consequences. Additionally, I unpack the three notions constituting the ‘Contested Fronts’ commoning practices, those of countermapping, threshold and controversy. I examine how ‘Contested Fronts’ constitute an open-source archive thanks to its content, to its performativity as well as to its manifestation in the form of exhibition-on-the move.
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