Event Reports

This conference brought together more than a hundred museum and archive professionals, scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners working with trans and queer archives. Queer and trans identifying people, as Eliza Steinbock remarked in their opening address, are often pushed into a defensive demonstrative mode of proving their identity and history, while at the same time grappling with the desire for alternative and more ephemeral forms of historic traces. Spread over two days, speakers addressed the complex relationship between queer and trans communities and the historical materials used to document their existence. The role of ‘evidence’ was interrogated, discussing how historical materials can be both cherished and weaponized against the community with examples from the European, African, Asian, and Northern American context.

Susan Stryker, the conference keynote speaker, illuminated the recovery and commemoration of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot (San Francisco, 1966). Reflecting on discovering the riot’s history through archival research at the GLBT Historical Society, she highlighted the convoluted role archives play in both erasing and recovering histories. Throughout the talk, Stryker elaborated on the ways in which the riot was commemorated and appropriated into various forms of art and activism, such as documentaries, theater, and visual art, and erased through the use of the building as a carceral facility. She also raised questions about who controls the narrative and how these histories are commercialized or used to support different political agendas. In the following discussion, Kate Davison shared the question of whether there is a danger of the “Compton story becoming a new Stonewall.” Stryker responded that this problem indeed exists, pointing to earlier attempts to fold the story into a neoliberal inclusion narrative about the Tenderloin, which has been renamed the “Transgender District.”

Subsequently, three members of IHLIA LGBTI Heritage, the conference’s institutional host, offered insights from working in one of Europe’s largest non-heteronormative collections. The speakers Wilfred van Buuren, Thea Sibbel, and Dewi Vrenegoor addressed the role of queer and trans archives in creating histories that are more inclusive, participatory, and remain open to community discussion. A common thread across the speakers was the importance for people to get the opportunity to see themselves in the archive. By combining traditional archival practices and (creative) public engagement, queer and trans histories become relevant and accessible to diverse communities. Examples of such activities include zine making workshops or visual poetry workshops that have accompanied exhibition projects. Furthermore, Vrenegoor talked about bringing their own materials into such workshops to bring in more diversity in the context of a still predominantly white archive.

Roundtable C revolved around the question of who continues to be marginalized in LGBTQI+ archives. Moderated by Renaud Chantraine – who described the rise in queer and trans activism and initiatives as well as more intersectional approaches to archiving over the last ten years – the roundtable discussed which communities remain illegible. Speakers Slava Greenberg, Linda Chernis, Kata Kyrola, Anna Linder, K.J. Rawson, Tomka Weiß, and Jamie Chih-Yun Yao illuminated the archival invisibility of perspectives such as disability and madness, Indigeneity, and intersex and trans subjectivities (Slava, Linda and K.J. pictured on left). Ownership and funding came to light as key concerns in the discussion. Chloe Turner asked what kind of work is necessary for cultural professionals in the face of evidence being distorted by anti-trans rhetoric. Rawson pointed out that while information activism is powerful, archives must support the livability of trans lives, for instance by letting individuals access information they need, but also by letting them recant their consent due to safety issues.

The penultimate roundtable D aimed to identify new strategies of display, narrativization, and categorization, geared towards changing cultural heritage and policies at large. Moderator Josefine Hetterich introduced the topic by arguing against uncritical progress narratives of queer and trans liberation, bearing the risk of glossing over the gaps and exclusions that still do exist, as well as the precarity of existing materials and projects. In their respective inputs, Siân A. Williams, Thomas R. Hilder, Márton Tóth, K.A. Harper, Nour Outojane, Nico Miskow Friborg, and Oda-Kange Midtvåge Diallo explored different strategies of performativity, auto-ethnography, democratization, counter-archiving, and decoloniality that can offer different versions and narratives of LGBTQI+ history. From the audience, Gianmaria Colpani asked at what point an artistic intervention turns into instituting change. Williams replied that artistic interventions can be seen as testing out methods to uncover stories that are usually being missed. Another question addressed the trope of Nordic exceptionalism and how to work against it. Friborg shared experiences with oral history workshops and showing the activists’ labor and struggles, aimed to complicate such narratives. Diallo added that stories about the role of Nordic countries as settler-colonialist states need to be “posted and reposted” as most still do not know about them.

Concurrently with the conference, PERCOL’s temporary art exhibition titled Blooming Archive opened at IHLIA’s exhibitions space. The group show featured works by contemporary artists Pauline Agustoni, Oscar Eriksson Furunes, Philipp Gufler, Tabea Nixdorff, Christian Friedrich, J.G. Basdew, and Pablo Lerma. All these artists, based in the Netherlands and abroad, have researched IHLIA’s collection and creatively reframed archival materials in their practices and artistic research. Uniting their works for the first time, the exhibition shone a light on the variety of critical artistic approaches to the archive, while also evidencing the new mobility of archival holdings found in art. The conference had the generous funding of the Joint Program Initiative on Cultural Heritage, backed with financial support from the Dutch Research Council, NWO.

The second Global Audiovisual Archiving (or GAVA) conference took place in Toronto 12-14 July 2024; it was hosted by TIFF Lightbox in the city’s downtown area. The event – co-organised by Canada’s Archive/Counterarchive and the EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam – had the theme ‘Building Alliances’, and aimed ‘to broaden the knowledge and connections within the global archival community, leading to new approaches to sound and moving image archives as well as to a sharing of knowledge and archival practices taking place in different parts of the world.’

Glyn Davis, Eliza Steinbock and Sandro Weilenmann from Perverse Collections attended the conference, all giving papers. The event provided a wonderful opportunity not only to share what our project is doing, but also to reconnect with some old and established contacts, and to make new connections with some exciting archivists and researchers. Three days of talks and presentations were supplemented by some excellent screenings and a day of archival tours; kudos to the organisers for pulling together such a packed programme!

Among our personal highlights of the conference: Axelle Demus’ screening and presentation ‘Queer Toronto on Cable: This Show May Be Offensive to Heterosexuals’, which centred on unearthed Canadian cable TV materials from the late 1970s (pictured); a ‘Show and Tell’ panel devoted to ‘Artistic Interventions’, which included Asha Tamirisa introducing us to a project centred on ‘Counter-Archiving the Avant-Garde) (website here); and a round of lightning talks on ‘Feminist, Queer and Decolonial Interventions in the Archives’, which included Laura Horak’s presentation ‘Audiovisual Archives as (Anti-)Trans Technologies’ and Allison Elliott introducing the Feminist Institute‘s Pop-Up Memory Labs.

But singling out these talks is to fail to do justice to the rich array of materials on offer across the days of the event. And despite the difficulties that some people had attending the event (visa issues prevented entrance to Canada for well over a dozen presenters), the international variety of speakers and materials was especially notable and commendable. Now, who’s going to host the next iteration of the event, in 2026?

Titled “Lively Metaphors in Preservation Practices”, the workshop focused on the theme of ‘Sex and Death’ in the archives. In working with various losses in queer and trans collections across Europe, the workshop aimed to unpack these forms of losses – ranging from those that are physically lost to those which are metaphorically lost due to them being neglected, unlabeled, wrongly categorized or presented under harmful terms. Eliza Steinbock opened the workshop asking, “Where does this material lie?” This was followed by a short screening of Jyoti Mistry’s film Loving in Between (2023), introduced by Sandro Weilenmann. The film is based on archival footage from the EYE’s collection. Juan Suarez and Glyn Davis chose three different sections from the film and – in conversation – highlighted the aesthetic articulation of queer and nonnormative erotics that lie at the heart of the film.

On the first day, the cinema space of the EYE Filmmuseum was fitting for show-and-tell presentations. Participants presented audio-visual materials, exploring their content, histories, collection purposes, and how materials are re-mediated and reshaped by artistic and audience engagement. In Panel 1, partners presented some materials varying from the institutional collections of the EYE Filmmuseum and IHLIA to the autonomous archive of El Punt Collective in Valencia. Through this panel, participants exchanged practices in archiving and managing marginalized collections. Simona Monizza showed materials related to David Singelenberg’s collection, Gerdien Smit talked about the Dutch feminist film collective Cinemien, Wilfred van Buuren presented the Gerrit van Jos collection, and Thea Sibbel introduced the Homosaurus data vocabulary platform.

Divided into four panels, the second day had a more theoretical and conceptual dimension. The presentations contextualized scholarly and practice-based theories while describing works in progress, reflections, and potential re-workings of past initiatives and projects. Day two addressed the following themes: 1) sex and death in the archives through talks by Lieks Hettinga about unexpected strands of solidarity in the AIDS archive and Szymon Adamczak on the death of Bob Mellors, cruising spots and transnational queer liberation movements. 2) Preserving a movement/moment with case studies on the Trans Identity Movement in Italy by Stefania Voli and trans sex workers, ethics and archiving by the filmmaker and podcaster Morgan M. Page. 3) Selective memories and urgent voices; a presentation about secretive (familial) queer encounters by Luc Marraffa juxtaposed with queer and punk archives in Poland by Jennifer Ramme and the multi-tasking of the Háttér Society’s Archive in Budapest. And 4) Problems of temporality highlighting black, queer and trans community histories in the archive by Rudy Loewe; archiving and displaying histories of Kewpie’s gay life in District Six, Cape Town by Ruth Ramsden-Karelsen; and concluding with a presentation by Dagmar Brunow on trust and ethics in/of archives.