We are thrilled to announce that the work presented at the Global Audiovisual Archiving (GAVA) Conference—held in July 2024 at TIFF in Toronto—now lives on in PUBLIC 71: Against Oblivion: Community Archives, Building Alliances, edited by Susan Lord and Janine Marchessault.

This special issue of PUBLIC builds directly on the urgent conversations ignited during the second GAVA conference, co-presented by A/CA, the Eye Filmmuseum, and the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). It mobilizes these exchanges into lasting scholarly and artistic contributions, ensuring that the dialogues begun at GAVA continue to circulate, expand, and inform emerging archival practices.

PUBLIC 71: Against Oblivion brings together artists, archivists, curators, and scholars whose work challenges institutional forgetting and reclaims histories marginalized or threatened by dominant regimes. Through essays, dossiers, case studies, and artistic interventions, contributors mobilize archival practice as resistance, care, and possibility. Through essays, dossiers, case studies, and artistic interventions, this issue highlights practices that deliberately work against oblivion, showcasing how audiovisual archives are being redefined by the communities who steward, use, and activate them.

In the twenty-first century, new approaches to archival collections are shaping collective histories informed by regional, local, activist, and cultural communities—rather than solely by nationalist frameworks. These practices are advancing a decolonial understanding of “memory institutions” (public archives, galleries, museums) and the ongoing, underresourced yet critical work of “accidental archives” (media distribution centres, co-ops, academic institutions, public libraries), as well as private and personal collections. Across these spaces, transformative knowledge mobilization is taking place: community organizations, governmental bodies, and academic archivists are working together to extend access, deepen collaboration, and build new models for shared memory.

Editors: Susan Lord and Janine Marchessault

Contributors: Nazli Akhtari, Edwina Ashie-Nikoi, Marcel Beltrán, Yasmine Benabdallah, Amrita Biswas, María Fernanda Carrillo Sánchez, Martino Cipriani, Amalia Córdova, Brenda Danker, Axelle Demus, Sara Diamond, Jennifer Dysart, Nada El-Omari, Andrea Fatona, Maeve Hanna, Melanie Hardbattle, Mona Jiménez, Jin Sol Kim, Karen Knights, Nathaniel D N Majaw, Summer Megarelli, Julia Minne, Julie Ann Nealega, Abisola Oni, Judith Opuku-Boateng, Lalu Esra Ozban, Nikolaus Perneczky, Julia Polyck-O’Neill, Mikhel Proulx, Aboubakar Sanogo, Eliza Steinbock, Juana Suárez, Carmen Victor, Mahardika Yudha

For more information, read the special issue's Introduction and Contents, available for download here. 

To pre-order a copy of PUBLIC 71: AGAINST OBLIVION ($20 CAD), please visit PUBLIC’s website: https://publicjournal.ca/product/71-against-oblivion/.

As a thank you, conference attendees receive 25 percent off with the code GAVA25 at checkout.