argos is home to Belgium’s largest collection of over 6,000 moving image works and artist films. Every month, we dive into our audiovisual archives to curate a work that resonates with current affairs or exhibitions, free for you to watch and enjoy on our website.

This month, we present Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo’s Undead Voices. The documentary investigates the absences that the archive encompasses, politics of knowledge and possible alternative ways of writing history.

Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo, Undead Voices (2021)
38'30''
Italian spoken
English subtitles

This project is part of an ongoing research into feminist historiography, investigating how archives can recover and dialogue with history. Focusing on a Super 8mm amateur film, Donne emergete! (1975) by filmmaker Isabella Bruno, the artists explore the effects of the marginalisation of ‘minor cinemas’ and the dissemination or destruction of the material culture related to the counter-movements of 1970s Italy.

The reel, recently rediscovered and consigned to the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia ANCI, is damaged beyond repair. Nevertheless, it manages to retrieve the ghostly sequences documenting feminist demonstrations and to reveal the invocations of unheard voices from the past calling out to us. By combining different generations and registers of images, as well as narration and songs, the documentary evokes gestures of feminist resistance and love. In this way, the artists not only reveal the spectral, hauntological quality of such archival material but also its potential to reanimate past and present feminist artistic practices.

This project was realised in collaboration with film historian Annamaria Licciardello and performers Alessandra Eramo and Anna Frei— also known as DJ Fred Hystère — and continues with additional research, screenings and with talks with cine-clubs and feminist movements in Rome.