Editorial for 'Re-writing the Archive'

Archives are sites of exploration and discovery for all kinds of practices. They are also reinforced structures. Whether as a library of manuscripts, museum store or personal collection, the ‘archive-as-repository’ catalogues and categorizes, houses and buries, its items. Bringing the contents of an archive to life requires that one ignite what is dormant so as to draw archival materials out into the space of the world to be received and experienced in new ways. Designed to stimulate collaborative conversations and exchanges, in and around the archive, with a view to presenting new approaches to archival experiences, and with them, styles of writing that resonate with the ‘archival’ as a concept and as a practice, this guest-edited issue expands the field of the archive to incorporate a variety of different practitioner perspectives. Whether through animation, art education, contemporary art, costume, creative writing, information retrieval studies, performance, sculpture, sound and textiles, re-writing the archive from these positions can inform how historical and material remnants of the past may be re-thought in creative practice.