Archiving Political Resistance - Woman Life Freedom

The Woman, Life, Freedom (WLF) revolution is an ongoing, inclusive, intersectional feminist movement in Iran, sparked by the Iranian government’s murder of Mahsa/Jina Amini in 2022. Led by women and marginalized communities across diverse ethnic, religious, and sexual orientations, WLF is a powerful expression of empowerment and resistance.

Our mission is to create an accessible archive that captures the power of performance and daily acts of resistance within the revolution. These acts serve as vital tools for communication, conveying knowledge, raising awareness, preserving collective memory, and nurturing a shared identity. Our artist-run platform functions as both an archive and a “repertoire,” following Diana Taylor’s concept of performances that, though ephemeral, continue to transmit meaning beyond traditional archival methods.

Current archival efforts for the WLF revolution often overlook its deeper potential—its repertoire. While documentation captures aspects of performance, it is not the performance itself, but rather a fragment of a larger, dynamic repertoire. The WLF archive emphasizes embodied memory, which is fluid and transcends the limits of traditional archives, echoing Taylor’s view of performances as iterative actions that convey communal memories, histories, and values.

This archive distinguishes between archival memory (documents, maps, texts) and the repertoire (embodied memories, practices, and ephemeral knowledge). The repertoire involves individuals in knowledge production and transmission, empowering agency. It includes gestures, rituals, protests, and other political performances, recognizing the crucial role of artists and activists in documenting and making visible their actions and broader movements, with a strong emphasis on self-historicization.