Interference Archive: Cultural Production and Open Access

Interference Archive:
Cultural Production and Open Access

Wednesday, January 31 at 6:30 pm
Michelson Theater
Department of Cinema Studies
721 Broadway, 6th Floor

Interference Archive is a volunteer-run activist archive in Brooklyn; since 2011, they have been collecting the cultural production of social movements—print ephemera, film, literature, and more—made available in an open stacks collection completely open to the public four days a week. This open stacks policy and volunteer-run structure offers a welcome alternative to the power structures scholars tend to speak of in theorizing The Archive.

Interference Archive’s collection is activated through regular exhibitions and programming, as a way to engage with and learn from the rich history of social movement organizing. In January—April 2018, Interference Archive is pleased to partner with the Seattle-based collaborative If You Don’t They Will to host their installation of no. NOT EVER., a multi-media, interdisciplinary, immersive installation that provides an anti-racist, anti-fascist framework for understanding the rise of white nationalism in the current moment. This video-based “living archive” depicts a wide-range of rural and suburban organizing strategies from the 1980’s and 1990’s that say “no. NOT EVER.” to white nationalism in the Pacific Northwest.

This illustrated lecture—led by Interference Archive organizer Jen Hoyer alongside Molly Mac from If You Don’t They Will—will trace the history and current work of Interference Archive, sparking discussions about the nature of archives and collection management, and will focus on the role of video in the no. NOT EVER. exhibition.

Free and open to the public.