© Archival Textures
Archival Textures: A Conversation on Publishing Archival Traces of Transnational Queer Feminist Solidarity
Participants: Tamara Hartman (co-editor and writer for Archival Textures), Tabea Nixdorff (founder and series editor of Archival Textures), tbc (tbc)
A conversation at SAFI FAYE STAGE (HKW)
Archives can inform our current vocabularies of resistance and solidarity, by enriching them with knowledges that are continuously obscured by normative perspectives on our bodies, desires, forms of cohabitation and expression. The publication series Archival Textures seeks to make those kinds of knowledges more accessible by way of (re)assembling, translating, transcribing, annotating, and supplementing archival texts.
Join us for a conversation on queer feminist archives, framed by the artist-initiated project, intergenerational network and publisher Archival Textures, of which the first season consists of five books that make texts researched in Dutch queer and feminist archives available in print, and globally accessible by providing English translations.
Co-editors and contributors will introduce Archival Textures and read excerpts from the books.
A special focus will be set on the most recent publication "Republishing: Umoja Zwarte Vrouwenkrant," a book that derived from the Black Women’s Magazine "Umoja," published between 1985 and 1986 in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and whose legacy has gotten no recognition. The book aims to bring about change here, as the revolutionary magazine was foundational for Black feminist thought in the Netherlands, and documents the pioneering work of Black and queer feminist solidarity-building in the 1980s. The political term Black used by the women of the magazine "Umoja," as well as many other Dutch collectives in the 80s and 90s, does not refer to skin color, but rather is an act of solidarity of those who were othered and discriminated against by Dutch Society, resisting to be turned against each other.
Revisiting and reviving this term in the publication series Archival Textures is to honor this historical act of solidarity and the power of language, and the intergenerational knowledge we gain from it. Besides, the Archival Textures books trace transnational alliances and friendships, such as Audre Lorde’s visits to the Netherlands, Germany and the UK and her indispensable impact on Black feminist thought in Europe.
A red thread throughout this conversation will be the question: How can publications become low-threshold archives, and help weave an intergenerational fabric of belonging?
Archives can inform our current vocabularies of resistance and solidarity, by enriching them with knowledges that are continuously obscured by normative perspectives on our bodies, desires, forms of cohabitation and expression. The publication series Archival Textures seeks to make those kinds of knowledges more accessible by way of (re)assembling, translating, transcribing, annotating, and supplementing archival texts.
Join us for a conversation on queer feminist archives, framed by the artist-initiated project, intergenerational network and publisher Archival Textures, of which the first season consists of five books that make texts researched in Dutch queer and feminist archives available in print, and globally accessible by providing English translations.
Co-editors and contributors will introduce Archival Textures and read excerpts from the books.
A special focus will be set on the most recent publication "Republishing: Umoja Zwarte Vrouwenkrant," a book that derived from the Black Women’s Magazine "Umoja," published between 1985 and 1986 in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and whose legacy has gotten no recognition. The book aims to bring about change here, as the revolutionary magazine was foundational for Black feminist thought in the Netherlands, and documents the pioneering work of Black and queer feminist solidarity-building in the 1980s. The political term Black used by the women of the magazine "Umoja," as well as many other Dutch collectives in the 80s and 90s, does not refer to skin color, but rather is an act of solidarity of those who were othered and discriminated against by Dutch Society, resisting to be turned against each other.
Revisiting and reviving this term in the publication series Archival Textures is to honor this historical act of solidarity and the power of language, and the intergenerational knowledge we gain from it. Besides, the Archival Textures books trace transnational alliances and friendships, such as Audre Lorde’s visits to the Netherlands, Germany and the UK and her indispensable impact on Black feminist thought in Europe.
A red thread throughout this conversation will be the question: How can publications become low-threshold archives, and help weave an intergenerational fabric of belonging?
© Archival Textures; Cover design by Mirelle van Tulder
Saturday, 12.10.24, 13:00
Stage (HKW)
English
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