We are pleased to be able to share a recording of the Archive/Counter-Archive panel at the 2023 Eye International Conference. This year the conference was focused on the theme of "Activating the Archive: Audiovisual Collections and Civic Engagement, Global Collaboration, and Societal Change." The conference was held in Amsterdam from June 4-7th, and the A/CA panel took place on June 4th at 10:15 AM.
Watch the embedded video below to see A/CA Project Manager Antoine Damiens, Principal Investigator Janine Marchessault, Artist-in-Residence Nadine Valcin, and Co-Director Michael Zryd speak about different aspects of the project.
Video Credit: Thanks to the Eye International Conference and Eye Filmmuseum for providing this video recording.
Panel Description
Archive/Counter-Archive ( A/CA) – Activating Marginalised Archives in Canada
• Antoine Damiens (Archive/Counter-Archive, York University)
• Janine Marchessault (Archive/Counter-Archive, York University)
• Nadine Valcin (Archive/Counter-Archive, Sheridan College)
• Michael Zryd (Archive/Counter-Archive, York University)
Archive/Counter-Archive: Activating Canada’s Audiovisual Heritage (counterarchive.ca) is a partnership between over twenty community archives and artist-run repositories of audiovisual media in Canada. Funded through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the project is now in its fifth year (of seven) and is dedicated to creating counter-archives by activating and remediating archives created by Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Métis, Inuit), the Black communities and People of Colour, women, LGBT2Q+ and immigrant communities. For the purposes of this panel, we have defined counter-archives as political, Indigenous, resistant, and community-based. They are embodied differently and have explicit intentions to historicize differently, to disrupt conventional national narratives, and to write difference into public accounts. This panel includes four presentations tied to our artist residencies and the lessons we have learned about activating archives. We will engage with the methodologies and research questions of the Archive/Counter-Archive project.
About the Eye International Conference
The annual Eye International Conference is an opportunity for scholars, archivists, curators, filmmakers, students, artists, and film enthusiasts from across the world to gather together and explore contemporary professional and academic issues affecting audiovisual heritage today.
Following the first Activating the Archive conference in 2018, which looked at how audiovisual archives can stimulate people to engage with specific social and political causes, or support the efforts of advocates and activists, this second edition seeks to continue and expand this conversation by asking how audio-visual collections can be used and created as communal resources, through global and local projects and collaborations, from the stage of their inception to that of their re-appropriation, from inside as well as outside the archive.