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Thefirst week of the Transregional Academy “Fragment – Power – Public: Narrative,Authority and Circulation in Archival Work” has passed with inspiringpresentations and discussions on archives, film screenings, a walking tourthrough the Jafet Library, exhibition visits at the Beirut Art Center andOrient-Institut Beirut, a lecture performance and panel discussion withscholars and artists. The Academy takes place from August 26th toSeptember 6th at the American University of Beirut (AUB).Inaddition to the project presentations, thematic discussions and film screeningsprepared and organized by the participants and extending into eveningdiscussions in Beirut’s bars and restaurants, Rana Issa, Assistant Professor inthe Department of English at AUB, introduced the participants on the second dayof the Academy to the holdings of the AUB’s Jafet Library known for its hugecollection of Nahda materials. She hinted at unexplored sources in the archive awaitingexcavation and their potential in shaping new views on certain aspects ofhistory writing.Inthe evening, the group visited Ala Younis’ (artist and member of the steeringgroup) and Maha Maamoun’s (video artist) exhibition “How to Reappear: Throughthe Quivering Leaves of Independent Publishing” at the Beirut Art Center. Thisexhibition on independent publishing initiatives questions the access and rightto publish and thus, the archive of what is published from the “margins”. &#160;&#160;OnThursday evening, the group was invited by the Orient-Institut Beirut for the exhibitionopening of “Contested Landscapes, Emergent Archives” curated by Liliana Gómez,director of the research project “Contested Amnesia and Dissonant Narratives inthe Global South: Post-Conflict in Literature, Art, and Emergent Archives” incollaboration with Iris Fraueneder (both University of Zürich). The opening wasfollowed by Gómez’ lecture on “Critical Ecologies: Aesthetic Practices and theArchive” and a reception in the garden of the institute. Both the exhibitionand the lecture addressed landscape as archive and memory repository ofenvironmental and political violence, as well as of economic history. Theprogram of the first week concluded with Ala Younis’ lecture performance “HighDam, 2016 – ongoing” and a panel discussion on “Arts, Humanities and theArchive” with independent researcher and writer Kristine Khouri (Arab ImageFoundation), historian Pascale Ghazaleh (American University in Cairo / EUMEFellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation 2017-19), anthropologist LamiaMoghnie (EUME Fellow of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation 2019-20) and artist AlaYounis and chaired by Rasha Chatta (EUME Fellow 2017-20). It addressed some ofthe most vibrantly discussed questions raised during the first days of theAcademy, especially what we consider an archive, what the limits of archivesand archiving, but also of accessibility of the archive(s) are, and what themultiple ways of approaching archives are. These questions will be delved intomore deeply in the second week of the Academy to which we are looking forwardnow. Keep on following the blog to discover more. 