The Archive of Affect

About

Participating artists create ongoing works that help to amplify voices often silenced, omitted, or erased from contemporary historical narratives. The “affect of archive” is particularly salient in current media usage, where access is increasingly democratized, and personal narratives contribute to growing participation. The Archive of Affect reminds us that there are many voices still unheard and unwritten, and that artists can play an important role in challenging traditional notions of place, history, and personhood. The exhibition will include artifacts, ephemera, and documentation of the artists’ projects, as well as present a series of public performances for time-based and durational projects for audiences to experience live.

Featured artists were selected by Culture Push from their Fellowship for Utopian Practice, a testing ground for new ideas that aim to create positive social change through civic engagement and horizontal learning opportunities. Participating fellows are provided creative, analytical, and logistical tools in the creation of boundary-pushing, interdisciplinary, and socially engaged artwork. The Archive of Affect includes:

Olaronke Akinmowo is an artist who provokes, heals, nurtures and inspires deep emotion, critical thinking and perspective shifting through her work. Growing out of set design and into performance art, Ola includes elements of Blackness, femininity, and magic. In this exhibition, she will activate Free Black Women’s Library, a radical mobile library and interactive biblio installation that focuses exclusively on the literary output of Black Women, highlighting authorship that is often ignored. The pop-up library hosts readings by authors and the public is invited to bring books written by Black Women to trade or donate.

Chloë Bass is a conceptual artist who works in performance, situation, publication, and installation. In this exhibition, Chloë will present a participatory engagement from the Department of Local Affairs, a project that crowdsources information about specific neighborhoods from local inhabitants to develop a more accurate and nuanced picture of that place. The Department of Local Affairs challenges traditional approaches to tourism by amplifying the voices of local tenants, workers, and civic participants who are already integrated in the community at the neighborhood level.

Lise Brenner with visual design assistance from Christopher Kennedy presents “Distributed Archive: Joe’s Story,” research and engagement from Vox Populi, a project that takes an intimate look at the Dutch Kills neighborhood of Long Island City. Dutch Kills is currently undergoing transformation as developers bring high-rise condos and upscale retail spaces to a neighborhood with small shops, light manufacturing, and family homes. Vox Populi documents the changing built environment by giving voice to the people who have lived in Dutch Kills for decades and highlighting the locations residents deem crucial.

Sarah Dahnke is a choreographer, multimedia artist, and arts educator. In addition to performing during the exhibition, Sarah will present artifacts from Dances for Solidarity, a collaborative project developed through correspondence with people in solitary confinement. Sarah and her team created a list of simple movements to share with people in solitary confinement, who, in return, were invited to perform and expand upon the dance by adding choreography of their own. Dances for Solidarity invites creative collaboration to an under-represented and often invisible community and sheds light on the physical conditions of the prison structure.

Liz Linden & Jen Kennedy’s collaboration, which began in 2008, is an ongoing effort to find ways to transmit feminism forward. They will present a physical exhibition of their online forum which has been an interactive element of their website since 2010. The forum acts as a one-question survey about people’s assumptions about feminism. The accumulation of 6 years of entries creates a living archive of the shape of feminism in contemporary thought.

Members of the Worker’s Art Coalition, Barrie Cline, Setare Arashloo, Jaime Lopez, Paul Vance, and Eliza Gagnon, will exhibit documentation of their actions around labor issues. The Worker’s Art Coalition is a collective of union workers who come together to demonstrate how art can build and strengthen labor movements. Through participation, action, and dialogue, The Worker’s Art Coalition gives attention to the diverse individuals who actively shape the developing history of labor movements and union organizing.

Culture Push (curator) is an arts organization that works with hands-on learning, group problem solving, serious play, and creating connections. Culture Push creates a lively exchange of ideas between many different communities; artists and non-artists, professional practitioners and laypeople, across generations, neighborhoods, and cultures. It supports the process of creating new modes of thinking and doing and serves a diverse community of creative people. The programs of Culture Push focus on collaboration and group learning through active, participatory experiences. Culture Push programs appear in many different locations, taking many different forms, and public presentations are low-cost or free, to give access to the widest audience. culturepush.org