Conversations on Archival and Collection Care Practices

4-5 July, 2025, Alliance Française de Katmandou, Lalitpur

The conference explored the dynamic life of archives, tracing the nuances between institutional and non-institutional, ephemeral and enduring, interactive and embodied forms. It considered how archives intersect with lived experience, creative practice, and cultural memory, acknowledging oral traditions and informal networks as vital modes of remembering that challenge dominant archival frameworks. The conference also foregrounded archives that exist outside formal institutions, often in fragile, fugitive, or resistant forms.

The gathering also created space for inter-archive dialogue, inviting encounters across disciplines, temporalities, and geographies, and opening up new ways of sharing, relating, and collaborating across archival contexts.

Although the event grew out of an archival project on Lain Singh Bangdel’s personal archive, the conference became a broader platform for thinking critically and imaginatively about what an archive is, who it is for, and how it continues to live beyond preservation, toward relation, reactivation, and possibility.

Grateful to all the speakers Nipun Bajrachayra, Smarika Phuyal (Nepal Music Archive), Chaksita Rana (RN Joshi Musuem), Rahul Muni Bajracharya (Kathmandu Insitute), Suzana Shrish, Nyima Dorje and Prashanti Bishwakarma (The Confluence Collective) and moderators Noopur Desai (Asia Art Archive - India) and Anudeep Dewan for their presence and contributions.

Design: Nipun Bajracharya
Documentation: Mekh Limbu, Lavkant Chaudhary & Hit Man Gurung

This program is supported by the ASAP Archiving Grant, and organized in collaboration with the Bangdel & Shakya Foundation, with Alliance Française de Katmandou as our event partner.

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