Domenica Landin

Archives are fundamentally concerned with time. Traditionally, they preserve the past—historical records, cultural heritage and collective memory. Yet archives also serve as repositories for the future, exemplified by the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway, which safeguards seeds for generations to come. Beyond temporality, archives are increasingly entangled with questions of justice, particularly those arising in response to extinction threats posed by our planetary polycrisis. This is evident in the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, projected to be 90% submerged by the end of the century, and in Ripanu, a Sápara Indigenous territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where multispecies cultures and lifeways face constant pressure from extractive industries. 

Although archives are not solutions in themselves, they have emerged as responses to these existential challenges. In Tuvalu, for example, an online repository and metaverse are being developed to preserve both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Such initiatives underscore the role of archives in safeguarding identity and continuity, while simultaneously raising critical questions about the limits, ethics and implications of archiving in the context of planetary crisis. 

Grounded in the premise that justice is a situated and relational practice—shaped by entanglement (Barad, 2007), reciprocity (Despret, 2013) and pluriversality (Escobar, 2020)—my research examines how multispecies relationships can be archived in precarious contexts as artefacts of resistance. Drawing on artistic fieldwork, intercultural collaborations and decolonial as well as nonrepresentational theories such as open semiosis (Kohn, 2013), this inquiry traces the contours of justice as it unfolds across species boundaries, archival practices and lived encounters. 

Names of Supervisors: Professor Natasha Lushetich and Dr Undine Sellbach.