Jul 13, 2026 · 50 min · 14 segments
In this episode, we invite director of the V&A East, Dr Gus Casely Hayford, to consider the idea, influence and experience of the archive, with Fredrik Hellberg and Lara Lesmes of Space Popular…
Gus Casely-HayfordGuest
Lara LesmesGuest
Shumi BoseHost
Frederick HellbergGuestFederica ZambelettiHost
It's wonderful to be in conversation with you both, and, um, your work, your-- the, the ethos of, uh, of everything that, that you do, it, it really does chime with me.
The work that I've done across my career has taken me to many of the places that you have, uh, traveled in and always with an attention, a focus on archives and the work that I've done in Africa, you know, so many communities for whom the archive is so incredibly important, whether that's through the confluence of kind of, of oral discourse or whether that is through actual material collections.
You know, being in places like Mali during, um, the recent insurrections in which people actually targeted archives for destruction because they knew the power of archives to hold communities together.
They hoped that by destroying the archives, that they would destroy communities.
That sense that you have of the powerful, palpable connective tissue of archives and material culture across Africa in many communities that are themselves very fragile and vulnerable, but they recognize how the strength of narrative and archive is one of the things that holds them together.
So I'm absolutely delighted to be here and to have the chance to talk about the importance and the strength of archives, particularly in periods when, as we are today, suffering huge polarizations of young people feeling socially disconnected, the spaces where we might come together and convene and also to find connective tissue across our heritage become all the more important.
I've been so inspired lately by some of the texts of Achille Mbembe and, um, how he defines the archive even first as the building and then as the documents that are stored there.
Where, I mean, like as you are discussing now, basically the destruction of archives and then this, uh, in relation to what the V&A has just done with their archive now and making it accessible.
The place is as important as the content, and this is a big struggle of ours [laughs] when you are dealing with digital content and the placelessness.
Often I feel like that the place becomes a little bit the story when you're dealing with immaterial content.
The place can become the stories or the place can become the guide [laughs] or the person that is narrating, which was also very inspiring in looking at your work.
That's, you very often have been the narrator or, like, the conveyor of stories and your engagement with media at the same time as you are then dealing with very physical places.
I, I find that dichotomy very interesting in, at this moment in time when we have both the physical and the non-physical content.
There's the objectness of artifacts that might be found in a museum, and obviously questions as to what happens when those objects are made accessible to a visiting public but also removed from an original context.
And then I love what Lara just said now about the place becoming the story and really the storytelling seems to be at least as important as the thing in itself.
So maybe that opens up a few more doors for you to, to skip through as you are doing.
It's wonderful to be in conversation with you both, and, um, your work, your-- the, the ethos of, uh, of everything that, that you do, it, it really does chime with me.
The work that I've done across my career has taken me to many of the places that you have, uh, traveled in and always with an attention, a focus on archives and the work that I've done in Africa, you know, so many communities for whom the archive is so incredibly important, whether that's through the confluence of kind of, of oral discourse or whether that is through actual material collections.
You know, being in places like Mali during, um, the recent insurrections in which people actually targeted archives for destruction because they knew the power of archives to hold communities together.
They hoped that by destroying the archives, that they would destroy communities.
That sense that you have of the powerful, palpable connective tissue of archives and material culture across Africa in many communities that are themselves very fragile and vulnerable, but they recognize how the strength of narrative and archive is one of the things that holds them together.
So I'm absolutely delighted to be here and to have the chance to talk about the importance and the strength of archives, particularly in periods when, as we are today, suffering huge polarizations of young people feeling socially disconnected, the spaces where we might come together and convene and also to find connective tissue across our heritage become all the more important.
I've been so inspired lately by some of the texts of Achille Mbembe and, um, how he defines the archive even first as the building and then as the documents that are stored there.
Where, I mean, like as you are discussing now, basically the destruction of archives and then this, uh, in relation to what the V&A has just done with their archive now and making it accessible.
The place is as important as the content, and this is a big struggle of ours [laughs] when you are dealing with digital content and the placelessness.
Often I feel like that the place becomes a little bit the story when you're dealing with immaterial content.
The place can become the stories or the place can become the guide [laughs] or the person that is narrating, which was also very inspiring in looking at your work.
That's, you very often have been the narrator or, like, the conveyor of stories and your engagement with media at the same time as you are then dealing with very physical places.
I, I find that dichotomy very interesting in, at this moment in time when we have both the physical and the non-physical content.
There's the objectness of artifacts that might be found in a museum, and obviously questions as to what happens when those objects are made accessible to a visiting public but also removed from an original context.
And then I love what Lara just said now about the place becoming the story and really the storytelling seems to be at least as important as the thing in itself.
So maybe that opens up a few more doors for you to, to skip through as you are doing.
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