Join Sixty Inches From Center for the 2024 Chicago Archives + Artists Festival! This year’s festival embraces the theme of embodiment. Throughout this 3-day gathering, we’ll explore the ways archivists and artists preserve the legacies of our communities via talks, performances, music, and workshops.

We will have our usual festival offerings, including our Archive Roll Call, an artist-designed Photo Booth (hosted by artist and Sixty Visuals Editor Ireashia M. Bennett), and a series of archive digs and unfurlings—a term and format we’re borrowing from Never The Same’s 2013 project Unfurling: Five Explorations in Art, Activism, and Archiving. This will also be a continued celebration of our recently-released book Case Studies in Collaboration, published by For the Birds Trapped in Airports.

The space will be adorned with a site-specific installation by artist and Sixty contributor Natalia Villanueva Linares, and with a new mural by artist and Sixty Collective Co-Lead Katia Perez Fuentes. We will close out the night with our usual Festival Wind Down featuring BAILAR Y LLORAR 🎭 (a.k.a. DJ Jungyal & Light of Your Vida).

This year’s festival is co-curated by Kate Hadley Toftness, Tempestt Hazel, and Christina Nafziger.

The Chicago Archives + Artists Festival is generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art and Teiger Foundation. This festival is also part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
ACCESSIBILITY NOTES

**Masks are required for those who attend and we will have HEPA air purifiers throughout the building and in the primary event space. Live CART (Communication Access Real-time Translation) will be provided during every panel of the event. Read more about accessibility for this venue and event in our Accessibility Guide.

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FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

For this festival, we are calling our friends, communities, collaborators, and co-conspirators to bring their own knowledge, curiosities, and experiences to the following conversations, workshops, and offerings. Below is the full schedule. More speakers will be announced in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
DAY ONE // Friday, August 2nd

Kinship within the Archive: On the Emotions, Vulnerabilities, and Personal Connection of Archives

6pm – 8pm CST (Doors open at 5:30pm)

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).

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.

Official Website

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Tags: 2024 Chicago Archives + Artists Festival: Embodying the Archive: Day One, Bailar Y Llorar, Chicago, Christina Nafziger, DJ Jungyal, Emily Hooper Lansana, Experimental Station, Haku Blaisdell, Hyde Park, Ireashia M. Bennett, Kate Hadley Toftness, Katia Perez Fuentes, Light of Your Vida, Liú Chen, Natalia Villanueva Linares, Samantha Hill, Tempestt Hazel., Troy Gaston