Archives and Crimes

A text by Iman Mersal inaugurates the Howdunnit series – part crime literature, part archival research – exploring how different modes of investigation intersect and diverge. To enter a collective archive is to bear an anonymous corpse on your shoulders. The aim is not so much to uncover how this body met its end, but rather to feel compelled to fill the gaps that have rendered it nameless. Whether or not you intend to tell its story or share it with others, you might be able to give the corpse a name, and in doing so, restore meaning to its life. The corpse is the researcher’s question: urgent, elusive, fragmented, perhaps even contradictory – a question born of the present moment, yet lacking the language with which to express itself.