In this session, Chris from 56a Infoshop archive will talk about their 30 years journey into ‘making it up as you go along’ archiving. Rather than focussing on the history of the archive, the talk will look at how the materials in the collection are sometimes presented and used:

What is it you hold when you hold an old feminist mimeograph? What is it you connect to when you look at a dozen squatted cafe flyers? What happens when you take the archive for a walk outside?

Chris will be bringing a mystery object: five different editions of the same text re-published hither and thither from the 70s to the 2010s for us to pore over and ask questions about!

From those different versions we can look at the sensuous nature of counter-cultural production (collective decisions, radical print shops, formats, technological pleasures etc.), why texts endure and why we keep different versions of the same text in our archive. There will inevitably be some talk of 'materiality' and what happens when we hold in our hands something from the archive. It'll be fun!

Forward to the past!

Photo by Nivedita Nair