The M(N)STRY: Activating the Archive Through Poetics

With everything happening in the news that frightens me about the future of this country and world, I turn back again to the importance of the archive, storytelling and truth-telling for marginalized communities. Last month, I went to archivist and writer Joyce LeeAnn and researcher and writer Akeema-Zane’s workshop In the Middle of Things: The […]

The M(N)STRY: The Legacy of Black Arkives

Etymology of Legacy: late 14c., legacie, “body of persons sent on a mission,” from Medieval Latin legatia, from Latin legatus“ambassador, envoy, deputy,” noun use of past participle of legare “send with a commission, appoint as deputy, appoint by a last will” (see legate). Can the archive be our arsenal and the archivist our warrior in this current war on memory and information? […]

The M(N)STRY: The Arkive

The Arch. The Ark. The Archive. The Arcane. The Archon. The Architect. The Archangel. The ArchAndroid. The Chief Holder of a Culture’s Knowledge for Future Recollection. The Cybernetic Helms(wo)man of the Ship Sailing to a New Horizon. Last weekend, I attended Summoning the Archive at NYU. Attending it inspired me to think of the “archive” […]

Otherworldly Videos: Transmission Series

Ekari (Ashleigh Ekari) is developing a series called TRANSMISSION: Afrofuturism as an Archive as part of her senior capstone project for the class Re-Imagining the Archive. She describes it as “exploring the ways in which speculative fiction, namely Afrofuturism, functions as a ‘future archive,’” or in other words, “a collection of speculative future possibilities, a collection […]