Fiction(s) in Archives
A symposium accompanying the exhibition Two Moons and Two Suns taking place at the Malta Society of Arts from 3 July – 20 August 2025
Convened by Claire Ducène and Margerita Pulè
4 & 5 July 2025
Concert Hall, Malta Society of Arts, Palazzo de la Salle, Republic St, Valletta
Fictive Archive Investigations
Fictive Archive Investigations (FAI) is a fluid collective of artists and researchers from a variety of locations and artistic disciplines, whose questions converge around fiction in the archive. The research-based project, which included a residency at Dingli, Malta, has provided a space for the participating artists to work towards an exhibition titled Two Suns & Two Moons at the Malta Society of Arts.
The project centres around the archive as a fictive body; whether referring to false manufacture of archival material, the repositioning and juxtaposing of archival material to create new and alternative narratives, or the interpretation of the archive itself as something apart from its conventional meaning. The duality of thinking that has emerged from the pursuit of fictive or fictional archival thinking, has led to the exhibition’s title which reflects a tension between the real and the unreal, in its turn leading to a sense of the uncanny.
The Symposium Fiction(s) in Archives is supported by Arts Council Malta, Wallonie-Bruxelles, the Conference Scheme of the Ministry for Finance of Malta. It is hosted by the Malta Society of Arts.
Two Moons and Two Suns is supported by Arts Council Malta and Wallonie Bruxelles International, and hosted by Malta Society of Arts.
PROGRAMME
4 JULY 2025
16:00 – 17:00 Roundtable
The Institutional Approach – Claire Ducène (moderating); Dr Joan Abela, Notarial Archives Foundation; Kris Polidano, Magna Żmien
Foundation Institutional archives are increasingly opening their doors to the public, reinforcing encounters, residencies and exhibitions. Thus, the public discovers the archive through
the eyes of visual research, enmeshed in fictions and other representations. This panel discussion examines how artists and artistic practice appropriate archives today.
What is the place of the institution and the archive in these approaches, and how can institutions build bridges between different modes of research?
17:00 – 17:30 Presentation
“An Impulse to Digitise” – Aphrodite Andreou, Heritage Malta
Sharing the Horizon funded project IMmersive digitisation: uPcycling cULtural heritage towards new reviving StratEgies, that engages with the digitisation processes of cultural heritage and archival material, Aphrodite broadens the conversation to include artistic practice in the digital realm, as well as games, meaningful mechanics and player agency as an artistic medium.
18:00 – 19:00 Roundtable
“Messy Archives” – Sarah Chircop, Omar NShea, Noah Fabri
Queer histories rarely arrive neatly packaged; they are partial, scattered, suppressed, and improvised. Within the conventional logic of the archive—as a site of “truth, “fact,” and “evidence”—queer memory is often misread as fiction, or dismissed entirely.
This panel explores mess as a queer method: not something to be cleaned up, but something to be worked with. Leaky facts are survival technologies of self-making.
Can queer messiness make visible what institutional, colonial, and binary logics obscure?
Can fiction be a legitimate and necessary mode of archival intervention?
19:00 Join us for a drink at Ġugar across the road.
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5 JULY 2025
09:30 Guided Tour – Claire Ducène
Proximity and the Viewer
A tour of the exhibition Two Moons and Two Suns.
10:15 Performance Lecture
“What Order of Things? Exploring the Logic of Inventories” – Elise Billiard Pisani
Working in the field of anthropology, Elise Billiard Pisani is set to challenge the fabric of the archive, delving into its creation and the very idea of its arbitrariness.
She points out the incredible impact of inventories in the narratives that emerge from archives, which, in her view, are collections of scattered, nameless fragments that have been ordered through labelling and listing. She will take the example of the collection of early photographs of Albert Kahn’s museum to shed light on the implicit order at play, highlighting the issue it raises and the surprising artistic potential it has.
11:00 Discussion
“The Tourist Experience as Archive” – Celine Cuvelier, Dr Marie-Louise Mangion
An exploration of the island as a tourist experience, from an economics, archival and artistic point of view. How is Malta seen by the tourist, and does it align with a tourist’s search for utopia?
Céline Cuvelier will present her methodology in collecting new archives on the phantasmagoria linked to the islands, particularly those generated by advertising and the tourist industry. Dr Marie-Louise Mangion will discuss how policy and economic decisions, including those of the past, deeply shape the tourist experience, memories and interpretations – what is archived – with consequential opportunity costs – what is not allowed to be archived.
11:45 Coffee-break
12:15 Performance Lecture
“Tidelines and Wonky Holes”- Josephine Burden
During a long life, Josephine Burden has constructed her own archive, drawing on the found objects presented to her by land and sea. Now she tells a story that may be real.
Created with the help of Niels Plotard and Neil Grech
12:45 Performance Lecture
“Caves as Underground Archives and Spaces of Fiction” – Balthazar Blumberg, Dr Sophie Verheyden
Visual artist Balthazar Blumberg will present his collaboration with environmental geochemist Sophie Verheyden about how they approached archival geology from an interdisciplinary position.
The study of caves lies at the intersection of multiple disciplines, including geology and archaeology. The formations found within them — particularly stalagmites — crystallise multiple geological, climatic, and human histories. How can we approach these overlapping narratives that unfold on entirely different timescales?
