E.G. Crichton, GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco, USA: Migrating Archives

"What is absent is sometimes just as powerful as what can be found tangibly in the archive box or folder."

Photo of one of E.G Crichton's former exhibitions: Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive II in San Francisco

The LGBTI ALMS 2012 will not only consist out of paper presentations but also involve creative projects. As an Artist-in-Residence at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco E. G. Crichton is inviting you to participate in her art project Migrating Archives.  Please contribute and help her "to create a kind of collective portrait of people who cannot be there, people we want to remember." 

To keep on reading about Migrating Archives please click "read more". 

Migrating Archives:

Greetings from San Francisco, California, U.S.A.  As Artist-in-Residence at the GLBT Historical Society here, my work involves creating frameworks for participation with archives and between archive communities. For ALMS in Amsterdam, I am building a project called Migrating Archives that involves archives and communities around the world. My hope is to involve all of you who are reading this blog.

Migrating Archives will be an exhibition of “delegate” archives from LGBT communities and historical societies. Each participant group, individual or organization will select 1 or 2 individuals from their community who have died to be represented in some way at the conference. This representation can be in the form of photographs, letters, diary entries, personal objects, items of clothing – anything that can be easily reproduced for exhibition.  The individuals represented do not have to be famous – they can be ordinary individuals.  The collective delegate archives will bring our historical memories to the conference; they will create a kind of collective portrait of people who cannot be there, people we want to remember.

As curator for this exhibition, I can offer help to make the process easy for participants.  For example, I can receive digital images and text via email, print them, and bring them to the conference. I can consult with you about what might constitute a “delegate archive.”  Some archives may be as simple as a photograph and brief description.  Others might include more extensive materials.  In my experience working with LGBT archives in San Francisco, I’ve realized just how inexact a science archives can be – which is partly what I love.  What is absent is sometimes just as powerful as what can be found tangibly in the archive box or folder.

A little background:  My archive work started to wander a few years ago when I presented my first project Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archives at a conference in Brisbane Australia. That led to a collaboration inspired by a particular archive that we carried to Evora, Portugal. Last November I carried 8 interpretive archives (also about individuals who have died) in a suitcase to Manila, Philippines for an exhibition called “Nothing to Declare.” And now I imagine archives from your communities forming a visible presence at the ALMS conference in Amsterdam.  To see some of the matchmaking work, you can access this link on my website:  http://egcrichton.ucsc.edu/recent/

I hope you will consider participating in Migrating Archives. THANK YOU, and please don’t hesitate to contact me with questions.

E.G. Crichton

egc@ucsc.edu