Tapping Into Archives as Creative Vectors will be an intergenerational gathering and reflection around archival practices and community initiatives meant to preserve and render accessible knowledge of black cultural presence and experiences in Montreal and beyond. This speaker series is curated by Josephine Denis and presented by SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art and will be hosted virtually on Zoom.
Throughout the four programs, we will be identifying incredibly important initiatives that the community and its allies should and can get behind through more substantial and long term gestures. In doing so, we will also discuss each initiative’s mission and needs in pursuing and seeing their projects through. This is a program that offers a moment for recentering, to remind ourselves of all the resources that are available to us, and that we can engage with. This works to dispel the myth of “starting from scratch,” illuminating the necessity of communal support, to create through inheritance and continuity, with a cultural sensibility that feels urgent and necessary to this particular moment.
PROGRAMME
– 12.02.2021 / 17:30 EST –
Right where we are: CIDIHCA’s Extensive Afro-Canadian and Caribbean Archive
(Facilitated by members of the CIDIHCA)
We will first be doing a workshop about how to use the online archives and search engines at CIDIHCA, one of the world’s most extensive archives of Afro-Canadian and Caribbean archives.
*This event will be offered in French.
RSVP: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcpd-yrpjwiH91_nQuCPFCfkTp0sOIrUOdF
– 16.02.2021 / 17:30 EST –
In conversation: Michaëlle Sergile and Laurent Lafontant, co-curators of "Data Thieves: What Our Archives Tell Us," organized in partnership with Nigra Iuventa, Massimadi and Never Apart.
We will explore how archives are foundational to world-making in collectively determined temporalities.
*This event will be offered in French and English.
– 19.02.2021 / **18:30** EST –
We index our memories so we can shape our imaginations: A conversation with GLOWZI and Monica & Morina Blain
A conversation with emerging art historians GLOWZI and Monika and Morina Blain of Dakamomo, three of them being archivists of digital archives, named “Caribbean Archives” and “The Black Book Initiative,” respectively, will show us a younger perspective and ingenious ways in which they are engaging with and activating archives in creative and scholarly contexts.
*This event will be offered in French and English.
RSVP: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrdO6vqD8vEtFsCWDCyAeX01BAd9IMuHdL
– 26.02.2021 / 17:30 EST –
History in the Making: Little Burgundy’s Negro Community Centre's Continued Impact, with David Shelton
We will speak with David Shelton regarding the reopening of the Negro Community Centre and the historical impact it has in the Little Burgundy neighborhood and Black community in Montreal more broadly.
*This event will be offered in English.
RSVP: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pfuygrD0tHtLzvFLGDEAQqVsauEyG6dMG