[Ingezonden mededeling]
Parallel Archive (PA) is compiling lists of current independent and freelance curators and mediators with exemplary tandem relations with artists and progressive makers who could join the platform with parts of their archives. A minimum of five years of collaboration experience and sustained dialogued is required to guarantee a relevant show and tell of the work life of a maker and mediator tandem relation. Get in touch via info@parallel-archive.com if you want to share about your personal parallel archives or know of relevant role models you would like to bring forward.
The Parallel Archive (PA) is a non-profit, curator-run initiative dedicated to researching, collecting, digitizing, representing, exhibiting, and analyzing collaborations between makers and mediators. Focusing on process over results, it makes invisible labor and ongoing exchanges tangible, giving gradual access to a forthcoming online publication.
Whereas museums and institutional archives primarily focus on finalized, physical works of art, design and architecture, with an emphasis on individual outcomes, Parallel Archive (PA) aims to support the counter preservation of informal knowledge and experiences in the ongoing developments and exchanges between active practitioners.
Founding Editor-in-Chief, Jules van den Langenberg:
"We seek exemplary partnerships in contemporary culture that resist singular truths and instead dwell collectively in indeterminacy. From actively working side by side to conversations that slowly unfold over time, Parallel Archive is drawn to makers and mediators who weave living networks where ideas, questions, and inspiration circulate freely, in tandem. PA turns away from fixed hierarchies and hard borders—between curators and artists, institutions and national representation. Towards people ready to continue working in longevity with landscapes, on gradual material developments, with long-term politics and historical accountability.”
Following a soft launch at Wiels in Brussels and with the (Nelly&)Theo van Doesburg Foundation in Amsterdam in 2025, the Parallel Archive (PA) gathers again during Art Basel Paris on Friday 23rd of October in 2026.
The Parallel Archive research and publication is supported by Mondriaanfonds, and made possible thanks to the participating critics, curators, collectors, artists and makers. With special thanks to Sumaya Kassim and Laurens Otto for joining the editorial process and digital publication testing.