Symposium Archival Interactions: Performing Intersectional Counter-Archives

Proposal deadline: Monday 2 May 2022
Event date: Thursday 30 June 2022
Location: DAS Research, Academy for Theatre and Dance, Amsterdam University of the Arts in Amsterdam Noord
Organized by: Eliza Steinbock, Associate Professor of Gender and Diversity, Maastricht University, together with Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca, Lector at Amsterdam University of the Arts, and supported by Wayne Modest, Director of Content at the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen and founder of the Research Centre for Material Culture

Archival Interactions: Performing Intersectional Counter-Archives

Closing Symposium for the expert meet-up series “Archival Interactions: Artists and Archivists for Intersectional Research” organized within the NWO Smart Culture project “The Critical Visitor: Intersectional Approaches for Rethinking & Retooling Accessibility and Inclusivity in Heritage Spaces” (2020-2025) led by Eliza Steinbock (Maastricht University) together with Hester Dibbits (Reinwardt/Erasmus) and Dirk van den Heuvel (TU Delft/HNI).

Background
The research program of Archival Interactions took place at museum/archive partner’s sites in mostly virtual meetings that brought together scholars, artists and archivists (Feb 2020-Oct 2021). Our overarching focus was on discussing how the practices of participants related to engaging with archives and counter-archives—curating, collecting, consulting, creating—in a manner that incorporated an intersectional critique of their formation and study.

We learned from each other’s experiences of facing loss and encountering gaps in collected or archived knowledge perpetuated by structural oppressions due to race, gender, class, age, sexuality, religion, residency status, as well as multitude emerging factors that influence personhood/subject positions. We discussed how to counter, sensitize, and shape the logic of archiving and its positivism (that which can only be scientifically verified) that discounts other knowledges of feeling and the ephemeral that are often key for historically marginalized groups who suffer from symbolic annihilation in the form of untrustworthy ‘evidence’ and representation.

The resources of counter-archival materials, knowledge, and affects are sometimes the only—or most trusted—sources for gaining access to these pasts and the felt historicity of the present. We explored how institutional archives might be hacked or molded differently to make a platform that gives space to formerly muted and excluded voices, and how to hold state and colonial archives accountable. We also discussed forms of exhibition-making, art and performance that are willfully crafted so as not to suit archival demands, opening up a field for the anarchival, embodied knowledges, emotions and liveness of experience, ephemeral evidence and speculative histories.

We were hosted by the Research Centre for Material Culture at the Tropenmuseum to think through Criticality and Solidarity in interpreting collections, at the Van Abbemuseum to discuss Urgent Visualizations of archived materials; at DAS Research at the Academy of Theatre and Dance to experience the Anarchive’s Excess in performance; at Het Nieuwe Instituut for [De-]Constructing Heritage by focusing on the labor of (precarious) heritage workers; at IHLIA
LGBTI Heritage to reflect on interventions and practices that honor Legacy and Speculative Archives.

MORE INFORMATION
CALL_Archival.Interactions. Symposium

IHLIA LGBTI Heritage, the Queering the Collections Network and STUDIO i organise a celebratory moment of launching the Baseline project’s result, which is a digital publication that brings together five queer or color perspectives on contemporary Dutch museum and heritage spaces. The online launch is on Wednesday 29th September, 4 – 5.30 pm CEST via Zoom. Registration by email: queering@ihlia.nl. Link will be sent to registrants on the morning of the 29th. Inspired by the Queering the Collections network’s initiatives, the chapters engage with different layers of cultural institutions that, borrowing from the Museum Association, are organized according to particular P’s: Programming, Partners, Personel, and two added by STUDIO i being Pronkstuk (Collection) and Persoonlijk (personal). The 46-page Dutch language publication Baseline is presented as a model for how the Dutch museum section could or might one day look like. During the online event, we will centre the discussion on the P’s addressed in the publication, by inviting each of the five contributors to make a 2-minute statement relating to their research. From there on we invite two respondents from the QTC network to open up for a conversation going deeper into each specific research, draw parallels between them, and eventually also bring the audience present into the discussion.

Contributors

Jo-Ann With (Persoonlijk), Michel Andrés Forero Parra (Partners), Joost Vormeer (Personeel), Daisy Lambert (Pronkstuk), and Liang-kai Yu (Programma).

Respondents from QTC

Setareh Nourani, R&D – Collecting Otherwise, Archive Explorations: Het Nieuwe Instituut and Henri Sandront, Content & Community Relation Manager: Hartwig Art Foundation.

Host

Jim van Geel, Curator Public Program: IHLIA LGBTI Heritage, together with Eliza Steinbock, Associate Professor Gender and Diversity Studies at Maastricht University.

Language

English

Registration

By email: queering@ihlia.nl Link will be sent to registrants on the morning of the 29th  

On 31 March 2021, at 15.00 CET, Queering the Collections and the Het Nieuwe Instituut research project Collecting Otherwise are organizing a webinar to share thoughts, insights and experiences on developing intersectional awareness in heritage collections and collection policies.

Collecting Otherwise is a project that focuses on developing speculative, critical and artistic research based on material in the Het Nieuwe Instituut collection and its collection policies. For its first iteration, Collecting Otherwise will focus its theoretical and practical inquiries on fostering intersectional awareness in the national collection and future acquisitions. By looking at the archives through specifically feminist, queer, and decolonial lenses, Collecting Otherwise aims to highlight the often minority perspectives that are generally obscured by standard architectural and archival practice. Working with these initiatives and their archives as case studies, Collecting Otherwise hopes to shed light on the objects, systems and processes entangled with intersectional, international and intergenerational notions of feminist and queer spatial practice, and to re-inscribe them into the national collection and disciplinary history.

Het Nieuwe Instituut aims to increase the appreciation of the cultural and social significance of architecture, design and digital culture and to strengthen the interaction between these disciplines. Collecting Otherwise is one of the research projects currently being developed by Het Nieuwe Instituut as part of the Rethinking the Collection initiative, and under the umbrella of Disclosing Architecture.

In this meeting, Setareh Noorani, Delany Boutkan and Carolina Pinto will discuss Collecting Otherwise’s inquiries into the HNI collection, in conversation with Eliza Steinbock and Olle Lundin, who will represent similar efforts conducted by the Dutch Queering the Collections initiative and the research project the Critical Visitor.

Free online event
Wednesday 31^st of March
15.00-16.00 CET
Language during the event will be in English

For registration to this Zoom webinar, send an email to queering@ihlia.nl
You will be send a link to the zoom meeting on the morning of the event.

Note: During this meeting, we encourage you to keep your camera turned on if you would like to, but ask you to keep your mic muted. You can engage with the speakers during this interactive event using both your microphone as well as the chat. When you join our Zoom room, feel free to let us know where you’re from and whether it’s your first time joining a Queering the Collections Network meeting.

Nicole Moolhuisen wrote ‘Queer identities and heritage: Current developments and hopes for the future,’ for the special issue of Root Routes Fluid Heritage.

“As heritage practitioners and researchers, we live unquestionably in fruitful but also politically crucial times in which to study, to experiment and to advocate queer activism in the heritage sector. LGBTQ equality is gaining increasingly public and political attention and much is changing also in the heritage sphere, as institutions are growingly engaging with sensitive and challenging subjects breaking the boundaries between traditional cultural work and activism (Janes and Sandell, 2019). Yet, activists purposefully remind us, that change – both in theory and practice – should happen at a fast pace as cultural institutions aim to mirror and shape the social environment where and for which they exist. This essay stems from a research promoted by IHLIA LGBTI Heritage[1] on the current developments and ethical challenges in the field of LGBTQ+ activism and culture. The research has looked at the Dutch scenario in relation to the wider international realm – most notably the UK – as cultural practices develop also through international influences[2]. The methodology of the paper, unavoidably exploratory and qualitative, has intertwined desk based research, interviews with heritage professionals[3] and case studies. What follows is a critical analysis of how debate and practices in this field are evolving and it highlights areas of possible tensions, and ethical challenges, as well as areas asking for future developments.”

Read the full article or use this link for the entire publication.

Image:  What a genderful world @Tropenmuseum

After the success of our previous Queering the Collections Network (NL) with Michael Andrés Forero in May, we are happy to meet again this September! Continuing with our new format of virtual meetings, we are organizing another webinar, which is open for everyone to join. During this meeting, we will have another inspirational session with our speaker.

Our guest will be Dan Vo. Dan Vo is an Australian radio broadcaster, who moved to London is now a freelance museum consultant. He developed LGBTQ+ tours at the Victoria and Albert Museum, University of Cambridge Museums and National Museum Cardiff. He is the project manager for the UK Queer Heritage and Collections Network launched in May 2020.

Moderator: Riemer Knoop
Interviewer: Jim van Geel
After the interview there’s ample time for interaction with the zoomers.

Free online event
Monday 28th of September
15.00 hour  – duration 40 minutes
Language during the event will be in English

For registration to this Zoom webinar, send an email to queering@ihlia.nl
You will receive a link to the event and password on the morning of the 28th

Note: During this meeting, please keep your mic and camera turned off, so you (and everyone else) only hear and see the speakers. We do like an interactive meeting, so please react and ask your questions in the chat. When you join our Zoom room, let us know where you’re from and whether it’s your first time joining a Queering the Collections Network meeting.

Up until recently, cultural institutions such as museums, libraries and archives, were considered as places for the conservation of tradition, often disconnected from the actual needs of society at large and therefore far away from the urgent issues of the present. Nowadays the awareness of their social responsibilities towards current inequalities, disparities and discrimination is higher than ever, also in the light of a lively international debate on accessibility, which has contributed to repositioning the attention on people’s needs and their diversities.

In recent decades, several publications on activism in the context of heritage organizations have highlighted multiple possibilities for action on complex and politically controversial issues in the present, such as climate change and migration. They have emphasized how silences and positions of presumed neutrality result in complicity in creating inequalities. The 34th number of Roots-Routes focuses on LGBTQ+ issues in this scenario of nascent activism that invests with responsibilities contexts and institutions traditionally more reluctant to take position.

How can institutions devoted to training (such as schools of all levels, museums, libraries and archives) play a role in challenging stereotypes around gender, sexualities and love?
What forms of violence against Queer and LGBT + people are there in media narratives and mainstream visual culture? What are the responsibilities of language?
How to identify and contrast different forms of violence and discrimination against diversity through activism in art and culture?
What silences, stereotypes and omissions of points of view are there in the representations and interpretations of cultural contents in museums, libraries and archives?
Which stereotypical imaginaries and which discriminatory formalisms in the world of performing arts?
What are the possible contaminations and collaborations between bottom up cultural productions, cultural institutions and the world of education?
How to encourage diversity in the approach to themes around the expression of gender identity, affectivity, sexuality and the body as diversified and identity aspects in the life of everyone?

roots§routes is a magazine with an editorial vision announced by its editorial board, which guarantees the quality and coherence of its contents. We consider it crucial to maintain an ongoing receptivity towards any submission of quality, provided it corresponds with the final vision shared among the editors. We therefore not only solicit work from artists and scholars, but also encourage submissions from contributors working in contexts that we do not know directly.

Next issue

Year X, n°34, September – December 2020
+ Fluid Heritage
curated by Nicole Moolhuijsen e Viviana Gravano

roots§routes announces a Call For Proposals, asking artists and scholars to submit proposals, beginning with the magazine’s theme for the upcoming quarter. Submissions should be sent in the form of an abstract, with a maximum of 350 words, to the following email address: redazione@roots-routes.org, with the subject heading “Article Submission.” Abstracts written in English, Italian, French, Portugues or Spanish are acceptable. In case of interest on the part of the editorial board, an email requesting the full paper will be sent to the author of the abstract. The paper is to be written in the language of the author’s choosing. The editorial board, upon receiving the full paper, reserves the right to request partial edits, or to reject the piece, in the case that it does not align with the earlier proposal.

For those interested in submitting materials, the themes for the upcoming issue of the magazine will be announced on this section of the website.

More information

Writer and philosopher Simon(e) van Saarloos extends an Open Call to remember the current Corona era. The launch of this call is part of a research trajectory, initiated by TAAK, on alternative forms of commissioning art in the public domain. 

Everyone is invited to contribute a commemoration. All submitted memorials will become part of a growing body of performative work by Van Saarloos.

Open Call: How will we remember the Corona era?

If you think of the current moment, looking back from the future, what do you see, feel, touch, hear?

We encounter the present through graphs and charts, divided by country, showing an increase or decrease of death rates and IC intakes. But what is the story here, what is our experience of history? This Open Call invites you to remember the present in a different way than we are currently pushed to understand it.

In Western tradition, commemoration and history depend on selection and categorization. the spread of a mo(nu)ment will exist of your submitted monuments. There is no selection: all proposals will be honored and enacted. This memorial grows from a philosophy of abundance, proposing that there is enough space for all stories, that we do not have to select and dysselect.

Why do we need historical references to understand the present moment? Do we gain from understanding ourselves within a lineage? When people say we live in historic times, we expect to differentiate between one time and another. We identify a now and then, implying a timeline that can be defined by separate phases. Dates mark beginnings and endings.

Narrating the current moment as a historic event can contribute to a feeling of understanding, of agency – taming the chaotic illegibility of reality. At the same time, the enactment of your collection of monuments aims to question the demand for visibility and transparency in exchange for a promise of safety and security. The work that will be generated from your submissions will not attempt to better understand these ‘historic times’. Instead, your contribution demystifies and collectivizes the present. Focusing on our plural experiences is an act of disobedience against the  disaster politics in response to Covid-19.

Viewing our current time as history, disrupts the linear notion of time. Why wouldn’t we be able to commemorate the present? We can even remember a future that hasn’t happened yet: our anticipation and imagination of what could happen, also shapes and influences our lives.

Submit your memorial

We welcome you to submit a short story, description, an image, a ritual, score, choreography, song or any form you’d like. Your memorial will become part of a performative act in public space – a larger body of work – potentially ephemeral, potentially documented.

Please feel invited to submit your memorial at: monument@taak.me

When the file is larger than 12MB, we recommend sending it via a WeTransfer link.

You can submit by name or anonymously, but please provide your contact details so that we can keep you updated about the commemoration. The question of individual crediting in a collective work, will be taken up in the performative process.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to get in touch via info@taak.me.

the spread of a mo(nu)ment is a collaboration between Simon(e) van Saarloos and TAAK, Amsterdam.

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Simon(e) van Saarloos (1990, Summit, New Jersey) is a writer and philosopher based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. They published several books in Dutch including a novel and a collection of columns. In Enz. Het Wildersproces, Van Saarloos shares a feminist and queer report of the trial against the Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders. To learn a bit more about this book, check out a recent essay on the Gezi Park Trial in Turkey. In Het monogame drama, Van Saarloos critiques monogamous living and false notions of safety, proposing a nonmonogamous love life and a different take on ownership and property. The book was recently translated into English and published by Publication Studio, titled Playing Monogamy. If you want to hear more about their philosophy of nonmonogamy, check out this conversation at the MultiAmory podcast.

Their most recent book, Herdenken herdacht, is a non-fiction work about queer forgetfulness, whiteness and embodied commemoration. You can watch an introduction to this book on IGTV, in a lecture on ‘Rewriting histories’ at The University of The Underground. Dutch speakers can view the book launch in Compagnietheater here.

Van Saarloos curates collaborations between artists, activists and scholars and regularly appears on stage as a lecturer, interviewer and performer.

TAAK researches, develops and realizes new forms of art in the public domain and alternative ways of commissioning. The image of the government as the primary commissioning authority of public art belongs to the past. Anyone can own the question that leads to an art project. TAAK consciously situates itself within that context by democratizing curatorship and providing expertise to face collective challenges. With its art projects, TAAK strives as much as possible for co-creation, sustainable structures and shared ownership – to make space public (again).

First of all, we hope you are all well.

The advisory board of the Queering the Collections Network (NL) is happy to continue our meetings. Corona clever, we will do that in the form of a webinar.

Free online event
Monday 25th of May
15.00 hour – duration 40 minutes
Language during the event will be in English.

In the next such virtual meeting, which is open for everyone to join, we’ll give you a brief update on the status of the network. Most of all we are looking forward to an inspirational session with our speaker. Our guest will be Michael Andrés Forero, architect, museologist and cofounder of Museo Q, a Columbian initiative that started in 2014. Museo Q is an abnormal, queer museum, without walls and collections, but with the mission of enhancing the memories and identities of LGBTQ+ people in the Colombian cultural public realm.

Moderator: Mirjam Sneeuwloper
Interviewer: Riemer Knoop
After the interview there’s ample time for interaction with the zoomers.

For registration to this Zoom webinar, send an email to queering@ihlia.nl. You will receive a link to the event and password on the morning of the 25th.

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Note: during this meeting, please keep your mic and camera turned off, so you (and everyone else) only hear and see the speakers. We do like an interactive meeting, please react and ask your questions in the chat. When you join our Zoom room, let us know where you’re from and whether it’s your first time joining a Queering the Collections Network meeting.

Afgelopen drie maanden liep Nicole Moolhuijsen stage bij IHLIA. Nicole is onderzoeker en freelancer, gespecialiseerd in museumstudies die ze aan de Universiteit van Leicester (VK) gevolgd heeft. Zij heeft ruime ervaring met het werken met en voor tentoonstellingen en musea, en wilde zich meer gaan verdiepen in gender en lhbti-inclusiviteit in de erfgoedsector. 

In de afgelopen periode heeft ze zich verdiept in onze geschiedenis en community en in onze organisatie: hoe wij werken, en wat en hoe wij collectioneren.

Naar aanleiding hiervan heeft ze twee artikelen geschreven over de rol van musea met betrekking tot activisme en gemarginaliseerde gemeenschappen in Amsterdam. Deze artikelen zijn in Italië verschenen op de website Artribune. Voor de gelegenheid heeft Nicole ze vertaald in het Engels.

Lees het artikel ‘Museums and activism: a journey to The Netherlands’

Lees het artikel ‘Communities and museums. A look at Amsterdam’