Histories “Made out of Pictures and Words Just Kept”

Abstract

futures. These futures include both alternative futures stemming from the archival past and new futures whose potential is opened up through reapproaching, subverting, intervening in, and engaging with the archive. As Hochberg remarks in her afterward, “What I think these films and the works I engage with throughout the book teach us is that we must move beyond the investment in saving the past (from being forever lost) and that we must learn to read and engage the present itself as an archive: a set of testimonies of a possible future and a possible becoming” (emphasis in original, 133). Overall, the examples Hochberg brings forward to demonstrate how the archive, typically seen as evidence of the past, is utilized by artists to explore futures are compelling. I look forward to additional scholarship from Hochberg and others in the field that expand on these ideas—examining interventions with the archive in other mediums and exploring other throughlines in the future-facing visions of many contemporary Palestinian artists.