"Rumble in the Archive. Interventions on Postcolonial Zurich"
Collaborative Museum Practice: New Forms of Curation, Engagement, and Participation
"Rumble in the Archive" explores the possibilities and limits of institutional change through collaborative curation. Bringing together social anthropologist Rohit Jain as guest curator, invited residents and museum curator Alexis Malefakis, the project asks how established practices of knowledge production and representation might be questioned and reworked within the ethnographic museum.
From December 2025 to September 2026, the project develops a walk-in archive shaped by different voices and perspectives. Four residents — studiyo filipino, Alkebulan association, Salim Umar and Eva De Souza — engage with the museum’s collections and archives, connecting them to Zurich’s colonial history and postcolonial present. Their artistic and research-based contributions form the basis of a jointly curated programme of performances, discussions, concerts and workshops.
The project builds on Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of the "contact zone" (1991), James Clifford’s understanding of museums as places of encounter and contestation (1997), and Nora Sternfeld’s notion of the "radically democratic museum." These approaches understand museums and their collections not as neutral repositories of knowledge, but as shaped by social relations, historical narratives and political structures. Taking curatorial practice as a form of research, "Rumble in the Archive" examines what participation can achieve within a museum, where its limits lie, and what this might mean for institutional change.
Duration:
March 2025 – September 2026
Project lead at the museum:
Alexis Malefakis
Co-curator:
Rohit Jain
Residents:
studiyo filipino
Alkebulan Association
Salim Umar
Eva De Souza
