Festival Schedule
Friday, August 2nd
Doors open at 5:30PM
6–8PM
Kinship within the Archive: On the Emotions, Vulnerabilities, and Personal Connection of Archives
Speakers: Emily Hooper Lansana (Storyteller & Community Builder); Haku Blaisdell (Kanaka Maoli; Newberry Library’s D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, Associate Director of Outreach and Strategy); Liú Chen (National Public Housing Museum, Programs Manager: Oral History Archive & Collective); Troy Gaston (National Public Housing Museum, Oral History Collective Member); and Samantha Hill (University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Curator of Civic Engagement at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts and Artist, Creator of the Kinship Project); Co-Moderators: Morris "Dino" Robinson, Jr. (Shorefront Legacy Center, founder); Kate Hadley Toftness (Sixty Inches From Center, Chicago Archives + Artists Project Director)
How might the concept of “kinship” inform collecting, archiving, and research practices? This discussion centers artists and archivists working with oral histories to explore kinship within the archive on a personal and emotional level. What does it mean to carry an archive in your own body and voice? The discussion will include broad concepts of kinship, including chosen family, artistic lineages, and beyond-human relationships. What is the experience of placing your family or community's stories in a public archive? What are the parameters that should be in place around these collections, including their use by artists? What other practices and alternatives exist to preserve your personal collections? Join us in an exploration of these questions and more. The event begins with a storytelling performance by Emily Hooper Lansana. Live CART (Communication Access Real-time Translation) will be provided.
Doors open at 5:30PM: Arrive early to peruse objects pulled from the collections of this evening’s speakers, sparking connections to your own stories and kin.
6PM: Storyteller Emily Hooper Lansana opens the festival with personal narrative and folktales that bring nuanced perspectives on kinship, memory, and generosity.
6:30–8PM: Panel discussion and audience response.
Saturday, August 3rd
Doors open at 5:30PM
5:30PM–6:30PM
Unfurling Hour with Patric McCoy, Ankit Khadgi, and Gerber/Hart Library and Archives
If you love the thought of getting up close and personal with the rarely seen materials from incomparable Chicago collections, this is your chance. We have invited some of our favorite archivists, collectors, and artists to choose a selection of materials from their archives that compliment the festival's themes and topics of conversations. For this night of the festival, we've invited photographer and art collector Patric McCoy, writer a curator Ankit Khadgi, and the caretakers of the Gerber/Hart Library and Archives–one of the largest repositories of LGBTQ+ content in the world–to choose materials from their archives and ephemera collections that speak to the rich history of queer life and culture in Chicago across time and generations. Join us prior to the roundtable to explore these materials and hear stories from the archives.
6:30–8PM
Archiving in Times of Cultural Erasure + Censorship: A Roundtable Discussion
Speakers: Maira Khwaja (Invisible Institute, Chicago Police Torture Archive), Jose Luis Benavides (Artist), Fawn Pochel (Saulteaux) (First Nations Garden), Rebelle (Heaux History Project), Anita Sharma (Visual Arts Archivist, Research & Archives Associate for What Is Seen & Unseen: Mapping South Asian American Art in Chicago); Co-Moderators: Erin Glasco (The Blackivists, Interrupting Criminalization, Shift Collective), Tempestt Hazel (Sixty Inches From Center)
How has embodiment been used as a strategy when a people's history, community, and culture is being displaced, erased, or suppressed? What embodiment and preservation strategies have been used to preserve the histories of communities that have experienced high levels of cultural erasure or censorship? What does preservation look like in the face of genocide, political aggression, and global devastation? What methods and strategies have communities used to ensure the safety of their material records, histories, and culture? What are the repositories for preservation that intentionally do not center institutions or their conventional material forms? We invite you to join us in a roundtable conversation with artists, archivists, writers, and community organizers to discuss these topics and more. Live CART (Communication Access Real-time Translation) will be provided.
Sunday, August 4th
Doors open at 9:30AM
10–11AM
Extending Life: On Writing for the Archive and the Value of Somatic Preservation (Panel)
Speakers: Britt Julious (Chicago Tribune), Aaliyah Christina (Performance Response Journal), & Nicky Ni (Sixty Inches From Center), Moderator: Tara Aisha Willis (Dancer, Writer, Curator)
The cycle of presenting art can be fleeting, especially for time-based media. A performance opens and closes, leaving those who witnessed the work the keepers of this experience. But what if we could extend the life of a piece? Can arts writing capture and prolong this moment? In this conversation, we’ll explore how arts writing can act as both critique and archive of this somatic experience--the act of witnessing art Join us in this discussion as we ask: What does it mean to write for the archive? How is writing for the archive different from other kinds of arts writing? What is the value of preserving the emotion an artwork elicited? For practices that don’t have archives that exist in conventional forms, what is the role of writing in its preservation? Live CART (Communication Access Real-time Translation) will be provided.
11:30AM–2PM
Unfurlings: Digging into the Personal Collections of Drag, Burlesque, and Sound Artists
Featured Artists: Ále Campos (a.k.a. Celeste), Jenn Freeman | Po'chop, and Trqpiteca (a.k.a. Natalie Murillo & Jacquelyn Carmen Guerrero)
Take a look behind the stage through the personal materials of Chicago nightlife royalty! In this unfurling session we move our lens from day to night through the materials of local DJs and drag performers. Join us for a chance to dive into the archives, ephemera, and materials that surround the practices of artist and performance maker Ále Campos whose studio practice is anchored in the history and current vernacular of drag and their persona, ‘Celeste,' movement-based performer Jenn Freeman | Po’Chop whose work pulls from drag and burlesque, modern and praise dance, spoken word and hip hop, and artist duo and production company Trqpiteca who together create incomparable cultural and sonic experiences through art and dance music.
12:30PM–1:30PM
Remember Me: Oral History + Storytelling Workshop
Facilitator: Sierra King, Founder and Principal Archivist (Build Your Archive)
This free workshop is limited to 20 participants. Sign-up will be available on site beginning at 12pm.
Understood to be one of the oldest forms of historical preservation, oral histories are a powerful way to gather and preserve the memories and stories of our communities. They can also be a powerful tool for social justice. Grounded in Black Feminist teachings, Sierra King, Founder and Principal Archivist of Build Your Archive will lead this workshop, specially designed for artists. We will gather to share stories, learn best practices, and discuss guidelines for trauma-informed approaches, and more. Utilizing your personal photographs as your guide, you will create an audio recording of memory as it appeared to you. You will also receive tools and resources to continue to Build Your Archive in real time and create a personal workflow that you can replicate in your Grandmother’s living room.
Participants: please bring a printed photograph, album, or digital version on your phone or other device. You are encouraged, but not required, to register with a storytelling partner.
For further study, read: “Memory Creation and Writing” by Toni Morrison: https://attachments.are.na/20875764/d973b67bb658417a4b070771cd226844.pdf?1678841129
Live CART (Communication Access Real-time Translation) will be provided.
2:30–3:30PM
Ask An Archivist Group Advisory Sessions
Featured Archivists: Jehoiada Zechariah Calvin (Johnson Publishing Company Archive, Sixty Writer), Sara Chapman (Media Burn Archive), Leslie Guy (CONDUIT Project), Angelica Hernandez (Digitizing the Barrio, Puerto Rican Cultural Center), Haruhi Kobayashi (Experimental Sound Studio), Nicholas Lowe (Goat Island Archive, SAIC), James Wetzel (Experimental Sound Studio)
Our Ask An Archivist Advisory Sessions are an invitation for artists, archivists, curators, memory workers, and community preservationists of all experience levels to sit down with a small group of professionals and peers to get your archiving questions answered. During this hour you will have a chance to hop from table to table to ask your burning questions and listen in on questions from other attendees that you may not have thought to ask.
We've hand-selected a few of Sixty's favorite archivists and memory workers who will bring to each table a wide breadth of knowledge in community archives, artist archiving, preserving time-based practices, audio/visual preservation, digitization planning, reparative efforts in the archives sector, and more. Space at each table is on a first-come basis.
3:30–4:30PM
Archive Roll Call: A Community Resource Session
A refreshed take on Sixty’s Archive Roll Call. The first part will include a rapid-fire session that goes down the list of local and regional repositories that specifically highlight and are welcoming to the histories and cultures of Sixty’s communities (Indigenous, trans, queer, diasporic, and disability). The second part will dive into useful tools and resources for connection, organizing, digital security, and safety within Sixty’s communities. Archivists and caretakers from select repositories will join us to share more about how to access their collections. Live CART (Communication Access Real-time Translation) will be provided.
5–6:30PM
The Atypical Archive: On Experimental, Anti-Material, and Environmentally-Minded Practices of Preservation (An Open Dialogue)
Co-Moderators: Skyla Hearn (The Blackivists, Johnson Publishing Company Archive), Tempestt Hazel (Sixty Inches From Center), Speakers: Jordan Campbell (Alt Space Chicago + Redemptive Plastics), Dr. Courtney Pierre Joseph (Haitian Oral History Project), Tanuja Devi Jagernauth (Writer, Abolitionist; Little Village Environmental Justice Organization / LVEJO), Isis Ferguson (Feminist, Arts Administrator)
Who decides what is remembered and how? In what ways are Sixty's communities practicing and being called to practice non-institutional ways of preserving our histories? What are the environmental, safety, and privacy costs of archives, preservation, and preservation-centered creative practices? Can we choose to be forgotten and for our legacy to exist in a non-material way? How must our understanding of archival practice and preservation change in the face of climate urgency? How does our understanding of archives change when viewed through a lens of non-attachment and ephemerality? What can we learn from Indigenous ways of knowing? Join us and add your thoughts as we get a little existential in this open conversation alongside artists, culture keepers, and archivists whose work inspire us to expand and complicate our understandings of cultural preservation and artistic practice. Live CART (Communication Access Real-time Translation) will be provided.
7–9PM
Festival Wind Down: A Reflection Session + Listening Party
Help us celebrate the close of the festival! Join us for a final reflection on the festival themes paired with a set by BAILAR Y LLORAR 🎭, a queer latine vinyl DJ duo between DJ Jungyal & Light of Your Vida, a.k.a. Luz Magdaleno Flores, Sixty's beloved editor for Sesenta en Español! BAILAR Y LLORAR's sounds evoke both sonic energies composed of salsa, dance hall, and house music from Jungyal’s Puerto Rican identity and lowrider oldies, soul, and romanticas from Luz's upbringing in California.
As a duo they bring expansive knowledge in music from the Caribbean and diaspora from Fania Records, Boleros, 80's Merengue, cumbia, hip hop, mariachi, and good ole Dance Hall beats. They evoke nostalgic memories of family parties and backyard carne asada mixed with bajo mundo and sad girl music.