About the part that art plays in a globalising society

Framer Framed

Graphic Design: Marius Schwarz

14 Nov 2025
17:00 - 19:00

Re:Use Clinic #5: The Question of Culture

As part of the Open Archief Residency, Framer Framed is happy to host a new Re:Use Clinic, a space to explore creative reuse of archive collections. The first clinic for Open Archief 4.0 with resident Wassila Abboud critically examines the question of culture in this present moment, drawing also on the limitations and possibilities of archiving.

This conversation between Wassila Abboud and Bahar Noorizadeh will revolve around questions that have emerged from recent collective reflections following the Missed Dialogues summer school and conference, on the legacies of the MENA and Iranian Left, whose interlinked histories are marked by unfinished revolutions and enduring colonial entanglements. The dialogue will trace the links between the MENA and Iranian Left—examining their shared trajectories — in an effort to revive a shared revolutionary consciousness and bridge the divide that history has imposed. The conversation will also explore how we might anchor ourselves politically and intellectually in this moment of paralysis, drawing on a recent text, Exit from English: Iran in the Political Economy of Translation and the 1987 seminar Culture and Revolution   الثقافة والثورة by the Lebanese Marxist philosopher, Mahdi Amel.

Register here.

About

Wassila Abboud is a cultural worker and writer researching in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Her work engages with critical theory, philosophy, and visual culture and takes on a speculative and materialist approach, examining the conditions of past and present historical struggles – particularly through the works of Mahdi Amel. Through intergenerational archives, essays, film, and diagrammatic forms, she examines how the histories imposed on us in the present can be read through past fragments and inheritances. Wassila co-runs the study programme Remove the Dot.

Bahar Noorizadeh looks at the relationship between art and capitalism. In her practice as an artist, writer and filmmaker, she examines the conflictual and contradictory notions of imagination and speculation as they collapse into one another. Noorizadeh is the founder of Weird Economies, a co-authored and socially-connected project that traces economic imaginaries extraordinary to financial arrangements of our time.


Open Archief

Open Archief is a multifaceted, collaborative project that explores the potentials of what can be inspired by making archival material accessible to artists for creative reuse. It was initiated by three Dutch heritage institutions: Nieuwe Instituut, Sound & Vision, and the International Institute of Social History. Framer Framed joined as a partner in 2025. Open Archief urges and supports residents to make use of digitised and open archival collections. Open Archief brings artists, researchers, and heritage institutions together to discuss the importance of creative reuse of heritage and of making digital collections available.




Artist Talk / The living archive / Iran / Middle East / Contested Heritage /

Network


Bahar Noorizadeh

Artist

Wassila Abboud

Researcher

Magazine