Archive/Counter-Archive (A/CA): Activating Canada's Moving Image Heritage is a seven-year research-creation project focusing on works by Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Métis, Inuit), Black communities and People of Colour, women, LGBT2Q+ and immigrant communities.
Led by Janine Marchessault and funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Partnership Grant, the partnership is composed of four universities (York, Toronto Metropolitan, Queen's, and Concordia), numerous communities, memory institutions, and policy advocates.
Our research is committed to finding solutions for safekeeping Canada's audiovisual heritage. We seek to activate and remediate audiovisual heritage that is most vulnerable to disappearance and inaccessibility, fostering a community and network dedicated to creating best practices and cultural policies.
The A/CA community includes over 60 participants, each with significantly diverse collections, access to technical resources, and expert archival knowledge.
What is a Counter-Archive?
For the purposes of this project, we have defined counter-archives as political, ingenious, resistant, and community-based.
They are embodied differently and have explicit intention to historicize differently, to disrupt conventional national narratives, and to write difference into public accounts. They seek to counter the hegemony of traditional archival institutions that have normally neglected or marginalized women, Indigenous, Inuit and Métis Peoples, the LGBT2Q+ community, and immigrant communities.
Goals
Enhance access of Canada’s citizens and Indigenous, Inuit, and Métis Peoples to their own audiovisual cultural heritage.
Innovate next-generation digital interfaces to facilitate collaborative stewardship for documentary heritage.
Advocate for an Audiovisual Action Plan that speaks to the various needs of community collections, shaped by Indigenous protocols around cultural property, sovereignty, and repatriation.
Objectives
Create practice-based knowledge through case studies tied to specific problems around audiovisual preservation and driven by community interests.
Train and mentor the next generation to advance Canadian moving image heritage preservation, accessibility, and presentation.
Build a sustainable open access media rich Book Series entitled Counter-Archives: Media and Material Practices available both in print and online as a media rich platform.
Foster an audiovisual archive network in Canada that will connect and mobilize smaller archival organizations, researchers, and policy-makers interested in determining the special needs of audiovisual preservation across different communities and contexts.
Land Acknowledgment
Archive/Counter-Archive is hosted at York University in Toronto, Canada. We recognize that many Indigenous nations have longstanding relationships with the territories upon which York University campuses are located that precede the establishment of York University. York University acknowledges its presence on the traditional territory of many Indigenous Nations. The area known as Tkaronto has been care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Huron-Wendat, and the Métis. It is now home to many Indigenous Peoples. We acknowledge the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This territory is subject of the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement to peaceably share and care for the Great Lakes region.
A/CA Team
Janine Marchessault
Janine Marchessault is a Professor of Cinema and Media Arts at York University, where she was the Canada Research Chair in Art, Digital Media, and Globalization (2003-2013). Dr. Marchessault is the author of ten monographs and edited volumes, and over fifty articles in books, journals, and catalogues devoted to cinema, new media, and contemporary art. She is a past President of the Film Studies Association of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her recent monograph is Ecstatic Worlds: Media, Utopias, Ecologies (2017 MIT Press) and her monograph in preparation is Archival Imaginary: Expanded Memory. She is the Principal Investigator of Archive/Counter-Archive: Activating Canada’s Moving Image Heritage.
Michael Zryd
Michael Zryd is Associate Professor in Cinema & Media Studies at York University in the Department of Cinema & Media Arts (School for the Arts, Media, Performance, & Design), and is appointed to the Graduate Programs in Cinema and Media Studies, Humanities, and Communication & Culture. Zryd is a researcher in experimental film and media (including video art, installation, and new media) with foci on its institutional ecologies, and the history of its intersection with the academy and the art world. He was founding co-chair of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) Experimental Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group (ExFM), and the Toronto Film & Media Seminar. In 2020, he was awarded the Faculty of Graduate Studies Teaching Award. He is currently undertaking SSHRC Insight Grant-funded research on the history of film co-ops in Canada.
Antoine Damiens
Dr. Antoine Damiens is a Project Manager for Archive/Counter-Archive. He holds a PhD in Film and Moving Image Studies from Concordia University. His first book LGBTQ Film Festivals: Curating Queerness, was recently published with Amsterdam University Press (2020). Antoine Damiens's research examines the cultural impact of LGBTQ film festivals, the role played by research-creation and research-curation in academic knowledge production, and the differences between Canadian and French modes of queerness.
Erika Biddle
Erika Biddle is a Mitacs Accelerate Postdoctoral Fellow at York University, working with Archive/Counter-Archive and PUBLIC. She received her PhD in Communication and Culture from York University, where her dissertation, “Plastic Publics,” examined historical uses of “neuroplastic power” in shaping modern publics. Since January 2024, Erika has been collaborating with PUBLIC to produce Arcana, a special project led by artist Christine Davis with four contemporary artists and librarians at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (University of Toronto), culminating in a limited-edition multiple of four artists’ books. She is also developing PUBLIC Online as a broader platform for PUBLIC’s work. Erika is senior editor at Common Notions press and co-editor of Constituent Imagination with David Graeber and Stevphen Shukaitis. She is currently working on a book based on her doctoral research.