Feb 15, 2024 @ 5pm EST: THE MEMORY KEEPERS is an exploration of the archival praxis’ of fore-mother, grandmothers, sisters, comrades, filminist, muralist, printmakers, cultural workers and organizers before us and among us. It will guide you through you on memory keeping practice through a photographic description writing exercise. As well as provide additional examples of how you can maintain custodial databases in your living room repositories.
FACILITATOR BIO
SIERRA KING is a multidisciplinary artist, archivist and curator. Her introduction to archiving began with her Great-Grandmother, Annett L. Battle, a well-known child-care provider in the Collier Heights neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. Sierra holds a Bachelor's of Arts Degree in Art from Valdosta State University.
She has presented her work about art and community archiving at the 2018 American Studies Association Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA, the 2021 Memory Work for Black Lives Plenary presented by University of Oregon Library Archives for Black Lives: A Liberated Archives Exhibition and the 2023 Art Libraries Society of North America 51st Conference in Mexico City, Mexico.
In 2022, she was an Arts & Social Justice Fellow at Emory University in collaboration with Dr. Paul Bahsin, Director of the Symphony Orchestra. She is the founder of Build Your Archive, a memory work lab where Black Women Artists build their archives in real time.
IN COLLABORATION WITH DIASPORA STUDIES LAB
The Diaspora Solidarities Lab (DSL) is a multi-institutional Black feminist partnership that supports solidarity work in Black and Ethnic Studies conducted by undergraduates, graduate students, faculty members, and community partners who are committed to transformative justice and accountable to communities beyond the Western academy. We sponsor both traditional analog and digital experimental scholarship to build knowledge communities across institutions and geographies, training participants in the practices and principles of radical media, ethics of Black feminist praxis, and decolonial and antiracist principles. We emphasize the literacies of the born-digital and in-person ethical collaboration.