Hearing room: Ghosts of the African Democratic Assembly is an art research project on the forms of restitution, editing and transcription of the narrative of a historical trial; that of the militants of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain held between 1948 and 1951, between Abidjan, Dakar and Paris. Inspired by the spatiality of transitional justice mechanisms, the aim of the project is to explore the role of archives in the way we think about issues relating to the colonial "past". More specifically, the research focuses on 1) examining what in discourse manifests a close relationship between political and affective states; 2) experimenting with forms of (re)mediation of these affects, hauntings and colonial survivals in assemblies (of witnesses) and installations (of evidence).
By displacing the notion of "montage" into a practice of documentary and narrative installation, the research begins with an initial question: what is the basis for thinking about montage as a means of restoring the framework of a polyphonic narrative, between voices of the past, present, family history and politics?
It draws on a hybrid conceptual methodology, from Ann-Laura Stoler's proposals for a "treatment of archives as an ethnographic exercise "¹ and a study of the relationship between affects and colonial governance, to the way in which a diasporic approach to narratives can open up paths of resistance to colonial geographies and postcolonial nationalisms.

1Stoler A.-L. Au cœur de l’archive coloniale. Questions de méthode, Paris, EHESS, coll. «En temps & lieux», 2019, 392 p., préface d’Arlette Farge.