Indisciplining the unknown: community-curator-researcher micro-collections of art between Europe and Africa

Micro-collections of art without known authorship are emerging in small community spaces across Europe and Africa, yet their dynamics remain under-examined. The article analyses three interconnected initiatives in which community members, curators, and researchers collaborate to salvage, organise, and circulate unknown artworks. A qualitative, multisited case study design combines ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and participatory workshops to trace how objects move from near discard to recognised collections, how curatorial criteria are negotiated, and how modest digital infrastructures support translocal circulation. The findings show that curatorial authority becomes shared and unstable, that uncertainty about authorship is treated as a productive resource rather than a deficit, and that socio-technical arrangements are continually improvised at the edges of institutional systems. The article proposes the concept of indisciplinary micro-collections to describe these small yet consequential configurations of collaboration, knowledge, and value.