What do you remember from the work you were making five years ago? What do you want to tell your future self about the work you’re making today? In the face of the alienating and exclusive structures of PWI institutional archives and the surveillance and precarity of the “archives” on the commercial platforms where many of us document our lives, what methods are available to us to collect and preserve personal and community histories?

This drop-in archives workshop will be a space to talk about self-preservation and archiving as a form of care, centering the needs of artists of color. We will share strategies, tools, and resources, and dream about the future together. You’ll have the chance to consult with two archivists—bring your questions and your ideas!

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Facilitators

Zakiya Collier is a queer, black feminist archivist and librarian dedicated to recognizing and documenting black life and survival as revolutionary. She currently works as a Processing Archivist at Barnard College and a Project Archivist at Weeksville Heritage Center. In 2019, she received both her M.A. degree in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University and her MLIS from Long Island University. Interfacing cultural and information studies, Zakiya's work, research, and writing draws on Black studies and queer theory to interrogate the archives’ historically exclusionary relationship with communities of color and study the self-curated, collaborative, archival practices that have developed in-spite of that antagonistic relationship.

Martha Tenney is a white archivist and librarian trying to follow Fred Moten and Stefano Harney's invitation to "sneak into the university and steal what one can." [1]

1. Harney, S. and Moten, F. (2013). The undercommons : fugitive planning & black study. Port Watson: Minor Compositions.