Encounters in the Archive: Reflections on archives in artistic practices

Dr David Bate works across cultural theory and the visual arts, specializing in photography and critical theory. He studied film and photographic arts at the Polytechnic of Central London (1980-1983), the MA social history of art and a PhD at the University of Leeds with Griselda Pollock. He taught photography at University of Creative Arts, Farnham (1988-1997) and then led the MA Photographic Studies programme (1998-2015) at the University of Westminster. His numerous publications include the monograph of his visual works and shorter essays, Photography as Critical Practice: Notes on Otherness (University of Chicago, 2020); Art Photography (Tate Publications, 2015); Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social Dissent (IB Tauris, 2024); Photography After Postmodernism: the Art of Memory (Routledge 2022); ZONE (London: Artwords, 2012), and the widely translated book Photography: Key Concepts (second edition, Routledge, 2019). His research and visual works explore the intersection of culture and subjectivity, memory and technology, informed by psychoanalysis, philosophy, literary theory, cinema and visual studies. He is emeritus professor at University of Westminster, London, UK and visiting professor at Haikou University, China. He is also a founding co-editor of the theory journal Photographies and is currently based in London, UK.

Nina Mangalanayagam is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Photography at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her research and visual practice explore hybridity, postcolonial histories and decolonial image making. She is currently working on a collaborative research project with Louise Wolthers at the Hasselblad foundation, ‘Photography and the Glitch’, which includes the co-curated exhibition and publication Bugs and Metamorphosis (2025). She is also working on a three-year artistic research project, “Colouring-In Sweden,” funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet), focusing on stories of women in Swedish colonial histories.

She has a PhD from Westminster University and a MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, UK. Mangalanayagam exhibits and publishes her practice and researchwidely internationally. Recent publications include co-editing with Louise Wolthers the special journal issue of Philosophy of Photography on Photography and the Glitch (2023) and co-editing the section on Decolonial Practices in The Routledge Companion to Global Photographies (2024) together with Emese Mucsi.

Jyoti Mistry is Professor in FILM at Valand Academy and works in film both as a research form and as a mode of artistic practice. She has made critically acclaimed films in multiple genres and her installation work draws from cinematic traditions but is often re-contextualized for galleries and museums that are outside of the linear cinematic experience. Select film works include: When I grow up I want to be a black man (2017), Impunity (2014), 09: 21:25 (2011), Le Boeuf Sur Le Toit (2010) and I mike what I like (2006).

Select publications include: we remember differently: Race, Memory, Imagination (2012) a collection of essays inspired by her film which explores the complexity of racial identity in South Africa. Gaze Regimes: Films and Feminisms in Africa (2015). Places to Play: practice, research, pedagogy (2017) explores the use of archive as an exemplar entry to rethink colonial images through “decolonised” film practices. She has co-edited a special issue of the Journal of African Cinema: “Film as Research Tool: Practice and Pedagogy” (2018).

She has taught at University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), New York University; University of Vienna; Arcada University of Applied Science Polytechnic in Helsinki, Nafti in Accra and Alle Arts School at University of Addis Ababa. Mistry has been artist in residence in New York City, at California College of Arts (San Francisco), Sacatar (Brazil) and a DAAD Researcher at Babelsberg Konrad Wolf Film University (Berlin). In 2016-2017 she was Artist in Residence at Netherlands Film Academy. In 2016 she was recipient of the Cilect (Association of International film schools) Teaching Award in recognition for innovation in practices in film research and pedagogy.