Queer Collections is a series of interviews and photographs exploring the eccentric and carefully-curated manners of collecting within self-identified queer communities. Zoe Rosenblum and Tristan Crane, alongside the collectors themselves, explore how the objects we hold dear inform our construction of identity and belonging—our vulnerabilities and anxieties, our joys and fantasies.
Read moreContemporary Cryptozoology: Problematic Legacy Of Cabinet Of Curiosities
Cryptozoology is part of fringe science or pseudoscience along with ufology, numerology, transcendental meditation, electrogravitics, and more. These include different communities that often seem to be fun, harmless, and open-minded, but can be quite misogynistic, transphobic, homophobic, racist, and sexist.
Read moreAgainst the Best Possible Sources
”Against the Best Possible Sources presents the latest chapter of my ongoing project involving extensive research of the TIME, Inc. corporate archive and an investigation of the earliest history of the first professional journalistic fact-checkers, a role created by TIME in 1923 and held exclusively by women until 1971.”
Read morehome / place
I created this collection of video portraits of women in eastern Kentucky nearly ten years ago while pursuing my Masters in Fine Art from the University of Kentucky. It’s both comforting and humbling to revisit past work, but I find this timing especially poignant. I moved from Kentucky to New York City shortly after completing this film. I now find myself confined to a small apartment with my husband and baby in the midst of a global pandemic, in a universal holding pattern of our usual lives, contemplating how we want to shape our future life and home with our daughter.
Read moreHow the West was Lost: On Archiving Sex in the Mountain West
During my visit to One Archives in LA last summer, I found a wide range of materials across lines of class, sexuality, gender expression, and race, however there are still gaps in representation: there is less working class material and the collection still favours big coastal cities.
Read moreSocial Distance (a photo project)
“Social Distance (a photo project)” serves to reclaim the way we will talk about this “history-book” time. I am still actively working to broaden my scope of subjects, making sure that this project not only reflects my world as a young white person with access to financial support, but reflects the realities of those without that privilege and safety net as well. What will be the story we tell about this pandemic? How do we make sure it’s not remembered as ‘the great equalizer’, but rather, as something that is playing upon systematic inequalities that have existed for centuries?
Read moreA Comic Book Guide to Archives for Artists and Makers
In 2017, the Providence Public Library published a comic book called Lizard Ramone in Hot Pursuit: A Guide to Archives for Artists and Makers. Written and illustrated by Jeremy Ferris, it forms the core of a simple toolkit for archivists.
Read moreArt: Yinka Shonibare - The American Library
The American Library by Yinka Shonibare CBE is a celebration of the diversity of the American population. It aims to be an instigator of discovery and debate. On the spines of many of these books are, printed in gold, the names of people who immigrated, or whose antecedents immigrated to the United States. On other books are the names of African Americans who relocated or whose parents relocated out of the American South during the Great Migration.
Read moreArt: Jason Krekel's "Asheville Black History Matters" →
“I was inspired by lectures of Dr. Darin Waters of UNCA about “collective historical memory” and as a white Ashevillian felt like it could be a learning experience that I could pass on through this work and inspire others in my community to take a look at the rich history that is in danger of becoming forgotten as our town becomes more homogenized.”
Read moreArt: Poet Jaki Shelton Green
Mebane-based poet Jaki Shelton Green challenges us to think about community legacies, lineage, land, and ancestors in her 2019 poem, 'who will be the messenger of this land.'
Read moreAiR Honey Simone: Process & Progress
My experience navigating the world of digital collections… A few tips to navigating archives:
Start off with no assumptions
Collection: Harold Fisk’s Maps of the Mississippi River
Harold Fisk’s maps of the Mississippi River’s meanders, traces and shifts over time were produced as part of a report for the Army Corps of Engineers in 1944. But where are they now?
Read moreAiR Honey Simone: (Black)Art
It's a little past eleven in the evening on a Monday night & I guess this felt like the best time to lay out some of my thought process so far in this residency. I am not going to sit here and talk fluff, I want to be honest. I had no idea how challenging this would feel exploring this unknown world of digital archives with a trained mind that tells me I need to envision my end goal and work backwards.
Read moreNC Freedom Road Sites
Explore “Freedom Road Sites” related to Black Liberation across North Carolina through the African American Heritage Commission’s digital archives, or make plans to view these historic sites for when life goes back to semi-normal, like the Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony in the Outer Banks, Orange Street Landing in Wilmington, or the Mendenhall Plantation in Jamestown.
Read moreBe Prepared: (Emergency) Resources on Preservation, Conservation + Care
Need resources on archive preservation, conservation, and collections care? Is your archive, library, or special collection prepared for a natural disaster? Do you have digital documentation of your collection… or need tips where/how to start?
Read moreRevisiting Scrapmettle's living archive: 'Survival Stories'
On-stage documentation of Survival Stories. Images of play courtesy of Scrapmettle Entertainment and The Shaw Photography Group.
Greensboro, NC based Scrapmettle Entertainment Group took a breast cancer awareness event in a historically Black neighborhood as an opportunity to explore this subject on stage.
Read moreTerremoto's "First Notes for a Proposal for the Decolonization of the Archive"
Archivos Fuera de Lugar publication image courtesy of t-e-e.org.
“..we were interested in discussing the concept of custody. It was vital to articulate how, from the point of view of the institution and as subjects, we were asking ourselves about the limits between guarding and possessing a collection..”
Read moreArt: Jessica Moss talks curating Chris Watts’ “Blahk on Blahk on Blak” on HappeningsCLT
Image courtesy of Chris Watts.
“Through a process that begins with the artist exposing himself to the footage from body cameras, public surveillance tapes and pedestrian iphone footage, Watts experiments with creating visual representations of suspended historicity and trauma.”
Read moreAiR Honey Simone: You Don't Know Me & Neither Do I
I want you take a moment and find a physical image or bring up an image in your head of your parents or grandparent. Now I want you to think about a story you were told about your family or those that came before you.
Read moreResource: archives, Archives, or archives?
What Are Archives?
The word archives can be used in three different ways: archives, Archives, and archives. Confused? We can help.
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