Image: The Feminist Library on the move, 2019
11am-3:00pm, Saturday 19th June 2021, on Zoom
Before you can animate an archive, you need to secure its location and make it accessible. And then, location and modes of access affect how the archive can be animated. This one-day symposium looks at the ways grassroots organisations, artists and curators have been in dialogue with archivists and library staff as they seek to preserve, provide access to, and animate their archives. The title “Challenging Archives” refers to both the challenges that these archives bring, and the challenges to archival convention that they provoke.
Focusing on collections based in London, two round-tables reveal the often hidden stories of how these archives have been relocated, digitised, and made accessible, from collecting policies, to negotiations about cultural value through to artistic interventions. The archives that are explored include: the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive at Birkbeck, The Feminist Library, The Bishopsgate Institute, MayDay Rooms, the Panchayat Special Collection at the Tate Library; and the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths. These archives share urgencies around making materials secure, accessible and also making them known to an audience beyond specialist researchers. The roles of archivists, library managers, researchers, volunteers, artists, curators and activists all intersect in the stories of how these archives have taken their current shape and form.
The symposium is divided in two round-tables, which have overlapping focal points around the ways in which these particular case studies can talk to us about the politics of animating archives, and the work of preservation, relocation and cataloguing that takes place alongside.
Round-table one: The Politics of Preserving (11:00am-12:30pm)
This round table will think about the collecting strategies of archives and grassroots collections within institutions. The panellists are Shaheen Merali from the Panchayat Special Collection at the Tate Library, Stefan Dickers from the Bishopsgate Institute and Holly Argent from the Women Artists of the North East Library. Convened by Patrizia di Bello and Lily Evans-Hill from the Feminist Library.
Lunch Break (12:30-1:30pm)
Round-table two: The Politics of Opening up Access (1:30-3pm)
This roundtable will think about digital, collaborative and interventional strategies of groups using archives, with contributions from Gina Nembhard and Lauren Craig of X Marks the Spot, Barby Asante, and Rosemary Grennan from Mayday Rooms. Convened by Althea Greenan from the Women’s Art Library and Catherine Grant.
You are welcome to join us afterwards for a casual conversation and drinks afterwards from 3:15-4pm!
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