Summoning The Archive

SUMMONING THE ARCHIVE A Symposium and Print Fest to celebrate & interrogate the periodical, printed matter, and the digital archive May 11-13, 2017

Organized by Meghan Forbes with the Institute for Public Knowledge

papercut zine library, cambridge massachusettes, 2006

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a grounding The printing and distribution of the avant-garde magazine, illustrated weekly, and underground zine have developed in the twentieth century in tandem with technological advancements in printing and access to these technologies in various regions, gaining traction in different parts of the world at different times based on economic, social, and political conditions. At its best, the magazine is an efficient, relatively affordable (for both publisher and consumer) vehicle for the artists and intellectuals it represents, and has the capacity to innovate with new technologies and engage in pressing social, political, and artistic issues. This is even more true now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, as we observe new models for content, design, and distribution of the periodical or magazine published on-line, which has the potential to involve an even wider audience, and host a variety of multi-media content.

The magazine thus continues to be a leading platform for social and political engagement, and artistic innovation.

Corresponding to a turn towards the digital, the field of Periodical Studies has gained traction as it situates the magazine as a cultural product that incorporates text, image, and graphic design toward various political, social, artistic, and pedagogical ends. With large scale projects dedicated to digitizing print based magazines, such as the Blue Mountain project at Princeton University or the Modernist Journals Project at Brown, and a concurrent turn towards digital mapping and data visualization, periodicals that were once sequestered in the archive now have the capacity to reach a wider audience, and make visible previously overlooked networks and connections enacted within and across the magazines.

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“SUMMONING THE ARCHIVE” A Symposium on the Periodical, Printed Matter, and Digital Archiving and Print Fest, held at the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU brought together publishers, editors, artists, archivists, librarians, and scholars from the Social Sciences and Humanities to come together around various methodologies and archival practices, and explore the following topics and questions: Politics of language and translation in multilingual or internationally circulated publications.

Trans-networks: serial print culture as an intersectional axis for place, culture, genre, language, race, gender, sexuality.

Does printed matter “translate” digitally?

How does the library intervene in its archived periodicals through systems of cataloging, binding, and preservation?

How does this affect the accessibility of these collections for researchers?

Gaps in the archive: what periodicals and other printed ephemera have been left out? What can be done to source and preserve historical periodicals originally not held in collections?

Likewise, what historical print magazines have not been digitized? What geographic-linguistic regions, gender, cultural, religious, and racial orientations are neglected?

Effective strategies for making visible and accessible digitized collections through Open Source platforms, as well as data visualization and digital mapping projects.

Distant versus close reading strategies.

Possible pedagogical applications.

The role and relevance of the print-based mag in our highly digital moment.

How does the digital magazine correspond with or subvert the conception of periodical as a material product and cultural form?

How do zines, comics, and avant-garde publications resist the potential for the periodical to be simply an inevitable by-product of consumerist, capitalist culture? Do they?

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about this document The symposium and print fest “Summoning the Archive” came together out of a desire on my part to engage some of the tenets central to my scholarly research — which looks at how avant-garde magazines published in “minor” languages in interwar Europe were able to enact networks with art and literary producers abroad and thus achieve greater visibility and break down certain conceptions of center — as well as a love and passion for printed matter and small press publications...certainly not mutually exclusive interests. The themes that I laid out for this workshop are meant to interrogate the gaps in our collective knowledge, garnered through institutional collection practices and now digitization projects that continue to center a very familiar canon, to the exclusion of the vibrant and pluralistic approaches taken by diverse groups. Of course, there are also many doing the good work of actively correcting this; two very recent examples that comes to mind are The Digital Colored American Magazine and the digitization of materials pertaining to the foundation of The Barnard Center for Research on Women.

With “Summoning the Archive,” by bringing together scholars, librarians, archivists, and print practitioners together over a three-day period, I am hopeful that we can further bring to light some of those historically undervalued sources, while celebrating the work of contemporary authors, artists, and publishers who resist reified centers. The responses (excerpted here) are the result of a series of questions that myself and Lynne DeSilva-Johnson, publisher at The Operating System, posed to all panel and print fest participants, in order to get a conversation going around these issues before the three-day event commences. In reading these thoughtful responses, I was struck by both the elements of overlap in vision and practice, and also the places in which a shared problem was seen, but different approaches to working through or against the problem are posed. The result, I think, and I hope the reader will find too, is a dynamic starting point for productive conversation around issues that affect all of us engaged in the printed/digital word and cultural production.

I’m grateful to all who took the time to offer their thoughts, and to Lynne for proposing this idea in the first place!

Meghan Forbes, Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU / Czech Lecturer at UT-Austin / publisher of harlequin creature

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As a publisher, a scholar, and an artist/maker, I’ve become increasingly concerned with the question of the archive -archive as noun and as verb, looking back and looking ahead, reckoning with the possibilities of what can be documented, saved, pollinated...or lost. In particular, this concern has honed in on the variables particular to this historical and technological moment, vis-a-vis both born-digital and obsolete digital media, and the evolving ecologies of this place.

The Operating System exists in part to engage with these challenges -- as stated in “Why Print / Why Document?” (http://www.theoperatingsystem.org/why-printdocument/) I see the site of printing and dissemination of materials via independent presses and publications to be the absolutely vital continuation of a radical, transgressive practice that flies in the face of ontological / historical / media gatekeeping.

When I saw what Meghan had set out to do with the “Summoning The Archive” conference, I asked the questions I always ask, with, of course, the archive in mind: how is this critical event being documented and disseminated? (And: can I/The Operating System help?) So, here we are. With virtual and print takeaways for onsite and longterm,virtual use / pollination / archiving, and with a little boost of bonus feedback from participants, on questions of impact to us both. We hope it inspires dialogue, and maybe... action.

Lynne DeSilva-Johnson, Founder/Managing Editor, The Operating System Visiting Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute / Libraries Editor, Boog City

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Research-oriented questions 1/ How do the magazines you study function as a site of network (across languages, geographies, identities, cultures, etc.)? What power can be found in this generative capacity, when the print runs of avant-garde mags and zines are so small?

2/ Conceiving of the (historical and/or contemporary) magazine as a potential site of social and political engagement, how can serially produced printed matter, as a source of scholarly study, add nuance to our understanding of major moments of upheaval and suggests paths of resistance to oppressive regimes?

3/ What do you see the role of the archive and library to be in facilitating this work? Alternately, have you observed the potential of collection practices to obstruct our understanding of history by largely ignoring or overlooking periodicals and other ephemeral printed matter from outside a white, Western, male canon? (What Eric Gardner calls “racist collection-development policies” in his recent essay for Legacy, “Accessing Early Black Print.”)

4/ Are the magazines you study held in major library and archive collections? Are they digitally archived?

5/ How do digital archives (perhaps even one you yourself curate) facilitate networks, foreground historical study, and reveal gaps in collection practices?

6/ What steps do you yourself take, or see others taking, to make sure that the digital archive is indeed accessible, making visible these maps?

7/ What do you understand “accessible” to mean in the context of periodical collections in libraries and digital archives?

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Production-oriented questions 8/ How can libraries and archives can play a critical, active role in collective resistance? What does this look like, especially in these times / facing the current administration.

9/ How are you / how is your space / organization already actively working towards resistance — even if you would use the word to describe programming that isn’t specifically “activist” in nature? Tell me more about the interplay between analog and digital in these efforts.

10/ Do we have the necessary infrastructure to do this work?

How or how not? What sort of infrastructural growth or strategy could you envision that could serve this purpose, and how can infrastructure build and strengthen direct relationships with those independently producing archival materials, whether journals, zines, or small presses?

11/ As a zine maker / publisher / independent press, does entry into the archive motivate or influence your publishing?

How? Has it influenced content, design, strategy? Was it a motivating factor in becoming a publisher?

12/ Have you considered rewriting, adjusting, or correcting the canon actively as a motivator for the work you produce / support / publish / seek out?

13/ Should independent producers, publishers, zinesters, etc., be thinking of themselves more immediately as “archivists,” taking an active role in this effort? How can we encourage and support these practices?

14/ In order to more actively consider and work mindfully towards archival practices, what sort of support would be helpful? What sort of infrastructure or resource base might serve you?

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Directory of Respondents Diana W. Anselmo Nana Ariel Meredith Benjamin Olympia Bhatt Alex Cuff Elvis!

Arthur Fournier Sherese Francis Margaret Galvan Yvonne Garrett Cynthia Manick Kate McIntyre Melina Alice Moore Camilla Salvaneschi Esther K Smith Kenan Tekin Teja Varma Pusapati

Responses Elvis! — Cartoonist and Zine-maker of Homos in Herstory!

1/ The print-runs of zines are intentionally small, and keep the choice of dissemination firmly in the hands of the creators. This is an important aspect of zine culture that is frequently dismissed as naive, but in fact helps to secure the boundaries of the culture zinesters work, so hard to foster in their everyday zine interactions & relationships.

3/ That’s a great essay. And yes...zines are typically not considered “real” source material for academic work, and are not always taken “seriously” in many settings. Which is in many ways fitting, because they are a super punk, DIY response to all the “serious” gate-keeping of mainstream media!

But on the other hand, they are in fact just as legitimate a scholarly topic as anything else might be (and are especially in close thematic company with outsider art, poetry chapbooks, and the like). So, in my humble opinion, zines are a feminist issue: they fly low under the radar of pop culture, frequently because their themes are directly opposed to what’s out there — intimate, personal, unpolished, scruffy,

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and handwritten writing in a glossy, high-definition world.

That’s the best stuff.

13/ The Zine Librarians’ Code of Ethics, which is online and continually updated, is a great source of guidance for those entering the field. If you have an interest in zine librarianship, or archiving zines, please check the doc to see how these community-based principles might help shape your archival practice.

Cynthia Manick — Co-editor at Jamii Publishing 8/ It starts with local and relevant programming. Subscribing and displaying materials related to issues that are prominent in the news, and those issues affecting library users. Seminars on job resources and immigration policy; a board of post-its where people can write how they are feeling; an art or poetry class that discusses the issues creatively; a display of the latest materials or thought pieces; and an engaged web presence. So many other organizations have begun webinars and live-streaming and more libraries should consider different ways of engaging.

9/ At Jamii we believe that creative writing is a tool that gives voice to the voiceless. Poetry is not a solitary art, instead it’s an art form that brings people together.

In that vein, we only publish minorities and women who are already active in the community. Community projects include hosting other artists, volunteerism, creating creative spaces, teaching at-risk youth, and facilitating art-based activism. One of my favorite publications of ours is the anthology Poets & Allies for Resistance which focuses on social justice issues. In terms of archiving, that’s what will be remembered, the voices of resistance, so Jamii works to capture that.

10/ Jamii Publishing is a two-woman crew, so we do everything in terms of infrastructure. Our publishing schedule is 1 to 2 books a year and we’re about to launch a broadside series to serve more of our community. In terms of capacity and growth, more is always a wish. To publish everything that comes through our mailbox, tweet every interesting article, and promote across our networks what is happening in the community. As a sector, more panels and conversations like this one is the first step of growing outward. The next would be communication and partnerships with other small like-minded organizations toward the goal of archiving and preservation.

11/ As an independent press, archive entry doesn’t influence

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our publishing decisions but we are constantly aware of it.

We choose our designs and content based on our mission, but ten years from now, when someone picks up a book by Keisha- Gaye Anderson the cover is the first thing they see. It’s an outline of a black woman in yellow felt amidst water and we want the reader to have a visceral reaction. Society is defined by what it leaves behind, so producing quality, and something engaging that represents us, is what we want to do. When we think of archiving, we think of what will be left behind.

12/ With Jamii’s goal of publishing women and minorities, we’re already on our way. We love projects that tell stories that are traditionally underplayed in the canon. Yes, let’s see all of humanity written from this perspective and then that perspective, from women to those disabled, from someone living in Utah to another living in Brooklyn. The world is both large and small, so as publishers let’s reflect those experiences. For too long, only one point of view has been allowed or praised, yet the literary world is so much more than that. So as a publisher, we seek stories from the “other.”

Yvonne Garrett — Doctoral student in History and Culture at Drew University / Senior Fiction Editor at Black Lawrence Press 1/ a/ The magazines (pamphlets, ‘zines, etc.) I study work within a broader cultural framework of American feminism, activism, and — in the later part of the 20th Century — underground music culture. b/ The generative aspect of the production and materiality of ‘zines is central to the topic of my presentation [at the IPK Symposium on the Periodical]. “Small” is relative given that revolutionary movements are often generated out of the work of a “small” group of individuals. If one accepts that for a woman to write (or create art) is a form of activism and a revolutionary act in itself, then the creation and distribution of these texts is powerful. Distribution of information is essential to any cultural movement.

2/ While I’m not really interested in the larger circulation of serial magazines (as often these are simply a part of a larger advertising-driven corporate structure working to reproduce hegemonic messaging), smaller texts, whether appearing as only one issue or a sequence over a period of time, have the potential to express individual viewpoints and to engage with marginalized groups. One cannot fully understand the American Women’s movement of the 1970s or the punk rock and Riot Grrrl movements of the latter half of the 20th Cen-

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tury without studying textual documents (pamphlets, ‘zines) created by and circulated among members of these cultural movements.

3/ It should be the role of the archive to collect and maintain materials relevant to the specific focus of that archive. I can’t speak to archival decisions but in an ideal world with unlimited budgets for maintaining knowledge, everyone’s knowledge and cultural production would be saved.

For instance, if one had an archive purporting to house “American Punk Rock 1976-1996” then it would ideally encompass all music, print, and ephemera produced within that time period. Since we don’t live in an ideal world, it would be helpful if archival collections would expand beyond the basic “Riot Grrrl” collections that seem to be so popular.

As regards the continued precedence given to the Great White Male in collection and preservation policies that’s just a given. It’s our job as activists to continually work against this.

4/ Some of the pamphlets and ‘zines I study are held in archival collections. However, as few of them are available digitally and I often have difficulty accessing collections on-site, my scholarship is generally limited by what is available to me digitally. I also have a large personal print collection which helps to facilitate my research.

5/ Digital archives are essential in fostering and maintain networks between scholars and participants in various subcultures. When archives are available online (and through open access!), scholars both within and outside the academy can access information that can help to build a broader, more inclusive history. I would argue that digital archives do not simply “foreground” historical study but are an essential component of historical study. One cannot study the history of feminism in America or the history of pop-subculture movements without access to digital resources.

6/ a/ There are several sites online providing links to digital resources for those studying feminism, punk rock, and of course, Riot Grrrl. Some librarians are posting LibGuides and others are working to create and maintain digital resources. Unfortunately, much of this information exists in “pockets” aimed at specific communities – whether discussion forums or individual college/university populations. b/ “Accessible” seems to have a very broad definition in the academic community and one that is often less than helpful to those outside a particular institution or outside the Academy. Print collections are not accessible in any useful way to anyone who is not a current member of a particular

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population and also has easy physical access to the library.

Most collections are not open outside of “work” hours or to anyone not a part of that specific library/archive’s target population (faculty, degree-earning student, etc.). Digital archives can provide a solution to the relative in-accessibility of print collections but often, they are merely a small selection of images from what is held in the larger collection — a sort of “press release” or advertisement for the collection. This is less than useful for any scholar who cannot access the print collection on-site. Archives must move beyond the “preciousness” of outdated modes of thinking about “access” if they are to remain the vital and viable sources of scholarly inquiry that they should be.

11/ I’ll answer this both as someone who was active in ‘zine creation/publishing in the 1980s and is currently a senior editor at a major independent press. In neither instance have I considered the archive. ‘Zine creation/publishing for me has always been more about the current moment, “speaking my mind,” and allowing a space for others to create and to be heard. That said, I’ve maintained my own archive of ‘zines (both my own and some created by friends) over the years. None of that work was done with the thought of a broader archival community. In being a part of the editorial staff of a large indie press, I really think only about the writing/art involved. At our editorial meetings, we don’t discuss “entry into the archive” but instead facilitating the dissemination of good writing. As to motivations, it’s more about creating a space to be heard and to allow others to be heard. How that fits into a larger archival project isn’t really important to me in those aspects of my work.

12/ Of course! I believe that every time a woman speaks, writes, publishes creative work she is helping to “correct the canon.” My academic work is generally all aimed at this project. As regards the indie press I work for, again, “indie” to me means anti-hegemony/anti-canon. I worked for indie record labels in the 1980s-1990s and in all that work, my goal was to work against the mainstream. It’s a question that I often ask when researching/working/reading/listening to music – whose voice am I hearing? Whose voice is being left out here? How do I access those “unheard” voices?

13/ First, I’m not going to presume to tell anyone working in non-mainstream artistic endeavors what their focus should be and I doubt any have the time to worry about archival issues. I think it’s the role of archivists and archivist-activists to help facilitate this type of work.

Of course, whenever I read about a new collection of punk

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rock (or other ‘underground’) cultural ephemera opening in a library somewhere, I think about all the great and powerful work that’s been lost over the years and how this affects the nature of the story being told. As to support for archival practices — it would be useful to have resources outside the academy to guide indie writers/publishers to help guide them in preserving this important history. Most producers on the indie side of things have neither the funds nor time (or the space!) to maintain any kind of archive. The Library of Congress website has some helpful resources for personal archiving — it might be useful to have something similar set up for indie publishers. Perhaps something could be done in conjunction with CLMP, although they tend to deal more with literary journals and presses.

Olympia Bhatt — School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University 2/ The periodical in its mass-produced popular avatar need not be an overt site of resistance though it has been the voice of the middle class in all parts of the world, including the earliest print culture that emerged in 19th century and early 20th century India. For instance, during the colonial rule in India, the bazaar was an important site for economic and socio-cultural transactions that flourished even though it was looked down upon for its informal networks and absence of the “modern” by the colonial government, while the local middle-class considered it as a site without a moral centre. The earliest popularity of cinema was fuelled by the bazaar economy of modern film technology which also provided the artists who performed in the earliest films.

However, the earliest periodical about cinema came a decade later (circa 1920s) after exhibition and filmmaking practices were consolidated as it tried to create an alternate space and discourse for itself.

3/ The practice of archiving in the act of collecting and collating objects, whether it is in museums, art galleries, or libraries, is primarily driven by the text-based Western discourse on knowledge. No doubt a lot of material dealing with issues of class, caste, colour, sexual orientation, and others are often marginalised while archiving, and practices which do not fit into these knowledge and power structures of the archive are often ignored. However, the bigger irony lies in the fact is that when these marginalia are acknowledged and appropriated within these dominant structures, it feeds into consolidating the hegemony of the dominant and supposedly endorses the dominant values, which, sometimes, goes completely against its original socio-political intent.

The question to ask then is: how to become part of the main-

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stream and not lose one’s voice?

4/ The magazines that I have accessed for my research are part of National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in Pune. About five to six years back, the archive began the process of digitising its periodical section. Today, most of the material in the library is digital and accessible as PDF files that can be stored on a computer. The other library with a good periodical section is Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML).

6/ One policy level shift that I have seen is how NFAI is trying to put together all, or at least parts of, its collection online as well as acquiring existing material in the personal collection of individuals across the world.

These new materials are, interestingly, made available in the digital format which has become the de rigueur form for storage. Also, there is also a growing introspection amongst institutions like NFAI, which was conceived to save film heritage after India became independent, about what constitutes the archive when there are moments in the history of Indian cinema where the memory of the film (accessed through secondary material like songs, periodicals, film paraphernalia and marginalia, etc.) outlives the materiality of the film. This has forced both archivists and research scholars to be creative in addressing these gaps and often, secondary accounts of oral histories, memoirs, and periodicals play a crucial link in mapping this seemingly disappearing past.

7/ I think the notion of an “accessible” archive, especially when most of its print and other materials have acquired a digital life, is constantly pitted against the widely and freely available personal archives that have become part of our digital selves in social media or otherwise. This democratisation through the digital then challenges us and raises two important questions: first, whether access to out-ofprint, avant-garde periodicals—some of which are no longer bound by copyright—should be exclusive to those few who are willing to pay. Should this knowledge be in the public domain, free for everyone and available to all? The second point is ontological: it is the question of whether I am still looking at the same periodical when it has been digitised, and does it mean the same thing to me as its original printed self? I am still grappling with these questions and wondering in which direction we are heading while making the archive accessible.

Diana W. Anselmo — Postdoctoral research fellow in Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh 1/ I study movie-loving girls growing up in the United States during the 1910s, and their movie fan communities,

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arguably the first fan communities organized around a mass visual medium. Film fan magazines and industry newspapers distributed at this time are key to understanding the fan practices of these communities since their columns not only addressed a largely young female audience, but also published letters and artworks produced by everyday moviegoing girls.

4/ Both. A majority are digitized and can be found online in open-source, nonprofit websites like Archive.org and the Media History Digital Library. This is particularly useful when researching best-selling titles like Motography, Photoplay and Motion Picture. However, some less known titles and non-digitized issues can only be found in microfiche or in brick-and-mortar research facilities like the Margaret Herrick Library.

6/ This is a tricky question for someone in the early stages of an academic career, such as myself. I find access a key concern in working with one-of-a-kind, autobiographical objects and I do collect unique movie scrapbooks put together by girls growing up in the 1910s that I believe will be very useful to other historians/scholars. I have begun conversations with libraries/archives to host these objects after I finish my book. However, at this stage of my career, I feel I must prioritize protecting the uniqueness of my sources over fostering open access to rare artifacts. It is an issue I hope becomes less contentious for myself once job security is achieved.

7/ As a foreign born scholar, “accessible” to me really means not bound by the demands of a national or academic credential. Every time my visa is interrupted or I lose academic affiliation, I lose access to primary and secondary sources vital to the advancement of my research. Coming from a non-English speaking country complicates the matter further since main academic texts are not freely or readily available at libraries or bookstores. The Internet becomes then the only space for remotely finding reliable information. When digital archives are blocked to those not actively affiliated with US universities, distribution of knowledge and innovation becomes intrinsically elitist and nationalistic, gate-kept by electronic credentials and geographical placement. Making periodical collections open and low-cost to all regardless of geography and academic affiliation would be the ideal scenario for “information accessibility”—that sounds impossibly utopian, however, under the current US political climate.

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Teja Varma Pusapati — Recent PhD Graduate from Oxford University 1/ I study, amongst others, 19th century feminist and abolitionist periodicals. These periodicals created avenues where writers from various parts of the world, such as England, France, and the United States of America, could debate and discuss political and social events and built international support for women’s rights and abolitionism.

2/ Since debate and discussion, both between writers as well as between readers and writers, is an integral aspect of most periodicals, they enable one to see resistance and struggle as not as a pre-formed, singular agenda but as part of a wider, collaborative project that was shaped through lively debates, disagreements and discussions.

4/ Although most of the material I study has been digitally archived, they are subject to a (substantial) subscription charge and in this sense, are not freely available.

5/ Digitized resources are immensely useful in enabling scholars, who would not have access to the physical material, to work in these fields of research. They enable a scholar in India, for example, to work on collaborative research projects, with scholars in England and the United States.

7/ Accessibility means not only the availability of periodical titles in digital format but also affordable access to the databases that hold the archives.

14/ Scholarships and bursaries towards purchasing subscriptions to databases of historical periodicals would be particularly helpful.

Camilla Salvaneschi — Doctoral Candidate at Iuav University, Venice and the University of Aberdeen The past decade has seen a flourishing of contemporary art and art-interested periodicals around the globe. Diverse in editorial content, design, and readership, these magazines share the common goal of challenging and questioning the supremacy of the Western art world. Technological innovations and the Internet, by accelerating the circulation of information and the distribution processes, have facilitated these magazines’ role as a vehicle for a global dialogue in the international art world. In the recent essay “Art Periodicals and Contemporary Art Worlds, Part 2: Critical Publicity in a Global Context”, Gwen Allen acknowledges she learned about some of the magazines discussed in her survey thanks to the Documenta 12 Magazine project (2007), and the conference Critical Machines (2014) at the University of Beirut. Does this mean that these periodicals aren’t held in major libraries and collections in the US and Europe? Where can they be studied?

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As a researcher in the field of magazine studies I have been searching for various collections holding periodicals from non-Western regions. Two digital archives have become fundamental for my work: one is a magazine that expanded into an online library, the other an archive that launched an e-journal as instrument to discuss its role as archive, and the materials held in its collection. The first, Chimurenga, founded in 2002 in Cape Town, is a “pan African platform of writing, art and politics.” It takes many forms, one of which is an online Library questioning the role of the digital archive, and providing a resource of collected independent pan African publications. The latter, Art Asia Archive, initiated in Hong Kong in 2000, is devoted “to document[ing] and increas[ing] access among the recent histories of art in the Asian region.”[3] In 2012, the archive launched Field Notes, an e-journal with the aim of analyzing what it means for an archive to document the contemporary.

These two cases are key to understanding the mutual relationship between magazines and archives, both sites of self-reflection and networking, to comprehend their potential to stretch boundaries and produce knowledge, as well as their capability to create new narratives and inspire historical study.

References Gwen Allen, “Art Periodicals and Contemporary Art Worlds, Part 2: Critical Publicity in a Global Context,” accessed April 20, 2017, http://www.artmargins.com/index.php/featured-articles-sp-829273831/784-art-periodicals-and-contemporary-art-worlds-part-2. This essay is part 2 of an essay in two parts devoted to critical art periodicals. The first part is published in ARTMargins Print (#5.3, 2016).

“About,” Chimurenga website, accessed April 21, 2017, http://chimurengalibrary.co.za/about “About Us,” Art Asia Archive website, accessed April 20, 2017, http://www.aaa.org.hk/About/Overview

Margaret Galvan — Faculty at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study 5/ 6/ For the last few years, I have been thinking a lot about how digitization efforts often privilege the discovery of textual content to the detriment of visual materials. But it’s not just a hierarchy of text over visuals, often there’s a hierarchy of what text is deemed important for discovery. These concerns come together in spaces that

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contain both image and text. A prime example are the grassroots and feminist print media of the 1970s and 80s that I have spent the past few years researching in both physical and digital archives.

There are a number of ways that the digitization of these materials obscures images and other content. Even when the full document is digitized, you can often only search by text, and OCR technologies make it impossible to find certain kinds of text, like handwriting. In other situations, parts of the work are excluded without recognition that the full document is not available. Perhaps the most heinous example I’ve encountered recently is a project that digitized only the textual content of news stories in a particular periodical, omitting all images and important textual elements like the staff box. One of the results of this erasure is that a staff cartoonist who was active across many years in the publication was not at all searchable through this interface, as if she or her work did not exist. Across these efforts, it is often difficult to get a complete picture of who was responsible for creating these periodicals, including not only those actively producing content but also those responsible for wrangling advertising, ensuring distribution, etc. In this conversation, it is important to differentiate grassroots digitization efforts, which overall are more committed to the visibility of the full media. Some of these interfaces are not always as robust, but they innovate methods to explore this media that embrace its original contexts.

How we digitize reflects what we deem important. It’s problematic because these resources are the starting point for a lot of scholars, who often do not realize the extent of this loss because the databases are silent on this point. They’re built to seem seamless.

Contending with this loss requires not only that I work with these materials across physical and digital spaces in order to comprehend how digitization handles these materials, but it also means that I consider how digital tools and infrastructure could rectify these losses. I build digital networks of all of the participants for a given series during a particular time window in order to recuperate those names that have been heretofore forgotten. This obscuring happens not only in digital archives as described above, but more variously where only a handful of the most prominent participants are remembered. These efforts are not only about remembering more, but about theorizing collectivity and recognizing the importance of the names forgotten on the margins.

As someone with experience in building digital platforms, I

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am also thinking through the possibilities of digital infrastructure to more fully represent these materials—especially the images!

Nana Ariel — Fulbright and Israel Institute Visiting Scholar at Harvard University // Are some periodicals considered “non-archivable” even in this time of increased attempts to broaden the limits of the archive? An archive’s primary choice would usually be either proven influential magazines, or eccentric, independent zines. In the gap between the two, there seems to be a certain kind of periodical that has very low, or even no symbolic capital.

The case of visually unattractive short-lived periodicals is particularly intriguing: those somewhat unsuccessful ventures that are neither interpreted in terms of zine craft, nor received as nostalgic, exotic, or politically important, seem to me like those plain-looking cats and dogs in the shelter, waiting to be adopted in vain, after all the exotic ones were already picked. Some Hebrew periodicals that I study certainly conjure up this image — they are in no way attractive, and ostensibly, they are just “unimportant.” It is no wonder that so far Hebrew magazines and periodicals have not been treated as a distinct corpus for archiving and digitization, although they often play a crucial role as a first stage for emerging artists and writers, and as a platform for (marginal) socio-political protest and alternative-making.

The archival importance of such ephemeral magazines is undoubtable: they often provide the only trace of otherwise lost cultural moments. As a whole, they portray a rich cultural ecology, broader and more diverse than the unavoidable limited picture that is revealed in studies. “Their collective importance”, as T.S. Eliot wrote about those “minor” magazines, “is out of all proportion to the obscurity in which they struggle.”

Thinking about those less “prestigious” items which nevertheless bear “collective importance,” I wonder: how can we map our archival priorities? To what extent do factors of cultural taste (not only language, gender, and race) constitute the boundaries of the archive? What is the role of unattractive “failures” in archival endeavors, and doesn’t the meaning of “failure” change in the context of the archive?

How can the “summoning” practice be as inclusive as possible? Should it? And if so, can an ecological archival ethos

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of “life preserving” be more useful an ethos of “curating”? //

Kate McIntyre — Co-editor at Projective Industries 8/ This is an interesting question for us as chapbook publishers because chapbooks seem so often to escape the library or the archive — which itself may begin to offer an answer. In its ephemeral form, chapbook publishing offers a means of communication that can be both faster and less visible than mass publishing. It can also, of course, be a slow art.

9/ I think I’ve always felt that chapbook publishing opts out (or tries to) of traditional circuits of capital and knowledge-production, and that act of resistance is important to me. There are so many wonderful digital poetry projects happening right now, and Projective Industries hasn’t taken that route yet. We’re excited by the possibilities opened up by the digital, but I personally still feel some political pull towards the analog — a commitment to making time for slower practices. This needn’t be antithetical to the digital, but so far I’ve been unwilling to let go of a technology [letterpress] that demands a certain amount of slowing. When printing, it can all feel very fast! But you still have to be there, pulling the lever for each print.

10/ I think in large part we are the infrastructure — we being the communities of small press publishers and writers — and we are continually collecting and reshaping ourselves. I think we need more shared spaces where the crafts of writing and printing can coexist and can happen freely; the costs of production can be so daunting.

11/ Archiving has happened haphazardly for us. Stephanie Anderson, our founding editor, has always kept a careful archive of her own, but we didn’t reach out to libraries until the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago ordered our chapbooks for their special collections. I think the ephemerality of the chapbook was part of its initial appeal, and we’ve only gradually realized it might have a more permanent place as well. There’s a more figurative sense of the archive here, too, and I love the idea of making space for the ephemeral in the archive; already, so much of what we find there is aleatory, and embracing that seems fascinating to me.

12/ I know on a personal level I’ve been interrogating the aesthetic traditions I’ve inherited, and that has seeped into presswork as much as into every other aspect of my

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life. Our role as publisher, I think, isn’t so much to adjust or correct the canon as to lift up the work of those who are already doing that — and of course, people always have been.

13/ I think archiving digitally might be more available to small press workers than amassing a large library would be— though of course, I’m also committed to the specificity of the material object. The simultaneous desires for singularity and accessibility can be difficult to parse.

14/ A resource base that included not just money but also space and tools for printing—whether that be the computer, the letterpress, the risograph, or the stapler—and also the resources of shared knowledge would be a truly incredible thing. I think those are things we do have, but in a fairly disparate way. That has its own magic, but some consolidation of those resources might make them more accessible for everyone.

Esther K Smith — Proprietor of Purgatory Pie Press I make books (in part) because when I was a student doing a semester in London, studying William Blake’s poetry, one of the professors wrote a beautiful note on very nice paper in his beautiful handwriting with his beautiful fountain pen, and I took it to the British Museum Library, and they let me touch the books Blake and his wife Catherine printed.

This month I am working on a book about Benjamin Franklin. I went to the Morgan Library’s reading room to look at Franklin’s printing — and to see how he bound his books. It was fascinating — and there is something about touching the pages that Franklin printed, like touching the pages that Blake printed, that makes me very happy. But JP Morgan had had those books rebound. I saw the stitching on copies of Poor Richard’s Almanac online.

My next big publisher book is a reprint with Rizzoli of the 1874 Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders &c, a very rare book. I first saw it at Newberry Library in Chicago — and then saw 2 other copies at the New York Public Library’s rare books reading room. The copy I worked with for my reprint is at Columbia University’s Butler Library. I also worked with a digital version of the book on-line, but seeing the real book, turning the pages, examining the binding, feeling the paper, and touching the pages that Wm H Page — who made the 1874 book — printed are so important.

Another function of libraries for me as an artist who makes

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limited editions, is that they collect our work. This helps support us, to keep us going — but also is a way for our limited editions to reach far more people. When rare books are in a public collection — or a collection that the public can access — they belong to the world.

Yes, you can see pictures of some our books online. But our books are more than their appearance.They are the structures, the movement, the textures of the papers and the leathers and the threads. People use all their senses when they manipulate books, turning the pages, smelling the inks and the papers and the covers. Books like Purgatory Pie Press’s limited editions elude capture by the virtual.

So far.

Alex Cuff — Co-editor at No, Dear 8/ Libraries and archives, if easily and freely accessible to the public, can be vehicles against the disappearance of histories, and are crucial for the documentation of narratives and objects and cultural artifacts particular to a given community in a given time. Additionally, they can document the authenticity of resistance; the art which comes out of communities that exist outside of the resourced/ white/male center, are often appropriated by cultural producers who end up with more mainstream recognition and/or institutional backing. Archives can hold space for these histories. I’m thinking of a few examples today who are all approaching the archive in different ways, but seemingly with a similar aim: to play an active role in collective resistance. There are physical spaces that archive several mediums from video & audio, to zines & letters & books, like Interference Archive and Lesbian Herstory Archives. There are digital spaces like the Ugly Duckling Presse Online Chapbook Archive which makes out-of-print chapbooks available for free online reading and the Internet Archive which moved a copy of its archive to Canada for safe-keeping after the November election.

9/ I suppose our mission could be described as “working toward resistance” as we aim to support community-based spaces/venues for writing/thinking/discussion that might be ignored by larger literary establishments. There are many small and medium-sized presses that are working to give voice to narratives and concerns often ignored and minimized by mainstream media; I see No, Dear as acting in concert and collaboration with these other spaces and organizations.

In our first 8 or so years as a press, we were exclusively analog. We value the book as an object and the communal pro-

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cess of creating the publications and have focused most of our time and labor on those pursuits and have distribution in several NYC bookstores as well as archives at the New York Public Library and University of Buffalo. However, in addition to passion for creating books, part of our mostly analog existence has been due to time and resources, mainly the capacity of our website to effectively and aesthetically hold a satisfactory space online for other pursuits. This past summer we created a new website where we can have a store, publish online conversations with poets, and we are beginning to scan back issues of the biannual publication for free access online — so we are slowly moving into the digital.

Meredith Benjamin — Post-Doctoral Fellow in First-Year Writing at Barnard College [Note: These reflections are in relation to my larger project about the role of writing and engaging with archives in shaping feminist communities in the 1970s and 80s, of which my research on Chrysalis is a newly developing component.]

My research for this project has convinced me that if we attend to a different set of networks, presses, archives, and groupings of literary texts, we can complicate overly simplistic or homogenous narratives of feminism like those that suggest that feminism in the U.S. was a homogenous movement in the 1970s that was then split or fragmented by those who called attention to differences among women. This new range of materials and groupings includes both newly available archival materials, as well as grassroots and small-press periodicals. When we look at networks of feminist writers — editors who helped shaped work and suggest writers, publishers who assigned readers and framed a book’s reception with its marketing and promotional events and interviews, writers who were attending readings and workshops together, and the communities engendered by texts as they addressed their readers — we can understand the texts that came out of them as part of an interconnected landscape, as opposed to, in the words of Virginia Woolf, “singular and solitary births” (Room 65).

Reading published texts including magazines like Chrysalis within the context of these unpublished materials and collected artifacts of lives and professional engagements, restores another level of complexity to our reconsiderations of feminism in the 1970s and 80s. Particularly as these periodicals become more and more accessible digitally, we can gain new perspectives by reading them in the context of the newly available archived papers of well-known feminist figures (which potentially illuminate the figures as existing

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within networks, not as isolated individuals). Reading works in the context of their archival materials also prevents us from reading works as static objects, which must be evaluated as a set of ideological positions. Rather, we can think about them in the context of the communities they sought to bring into being, as part of an active, dialogic process that we continue today.

In her recent book The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order, Kate Eichhorn directly tackles the potential of the archival to dismantle or complicate overly simplistic generational narratives of feminism when she writes that “archival proximity is about the uncanny ability to occupy different temporalities and to occupy temporalities differently, thereby collapsing the rigidly defined generational and historical logics that continue to be used to make sense of feminist politics and theory” (61). While she focuses primarily on feminist archives of material from the 1990s, I want to extend her ideas back to archives from the 1970s and 80s and think about how they can help us to complicate our understanding of the literary output of “second-wave feminism.” The model of archival engagement at work in feminist texts of the 1970s and 80s — drawing on existing archives of the past, while simultaneously creating archives of their own lives and writing in the present, two processes that cannot be separated — provides a sense of how we might move beyond generational conflicts or entrenched “wave”-based narratives of feminism that inevitably leave out the work of many, and obscure complexity and multiplicity as they create singular narratives of loss or decline.

Reference Eichhorn, Kate. The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order. Temple UP, 2013.

Melina Alice Moore – Doctoral Candidate in English at the Graduate Center, CUNY 1/ 4/ The magazines that I study, Transvestia and, more recently, Turnabout, were vital sites of networking for transvestites and gender nonconforming subjects in the 1960s.

These magazines were composed of articles, drawings, and autobiographical and fictional narratives submitted by subscribers who were invested in the project of forging language to describe their identities and experiences. During a period that saw heightened attention to studying and categorizing deviant sexuality, these magazines offered a key space for dialogue and resistance to the cultural knowledge circulating in the mainstream press and medical literature.

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The editor of Transvestia, Virginia Prince, a heterosexual transvestite who would later live as a woman full-time, encouraged readers to engage directly with the “experts,” and modeled practices of reading against the grain by publishing essays from medical journals with her own commentary printed in brackets. For the subscribers of these magazines, there was a great deal of power and comfort in generating space to define themselves against the grain of mainstream discourse and to share their experiences with a select community grappling with similar questions surrounding gender and the body.

Generating community was at the core of Transvestia’s mission statement from the first issue; Prince writes: “It is one of [our purposes] to help lift a little of that loneliness by providing an outlet of expression…It is not only interesting and satisfying to learn that we are not alone in our non-conformity but it can be…a real psychologically stabilizing experience.” Significantly, the networks formed through Transvestia quickly expanded beyond the printed page. After publishing the first issue, which had only twenty-five subscribers, Prince organized a meeting that transformed the print community into a social space. Originally dubbed the “Hose and Heels” club, by 1962, the small Los-Angeles based group had grown into a national organization (the Foundation for Full Personality Expression). Though the magazine ostensibly sought to cultivate solidarity, as the periodical and its social networks expanded, the editors and contributors attempted to narrow their focus to the “sexually normal individual” — meaning white, middle-class heterosexual transvestites (Ekins and King 7). They aimed to distance themselves from transsexuals and homosexuals (who did, in fact, subscribe and attend meetings), and the magazine consequently developed a contradictory respectability politics that both challenged contemporary social understandings of gender expression and reinforced conservative ideologies.

In spite of Transvestia’s fraught politics, it remains a key site for understanding the ways trans and gender nonconforming people organized socially and politically at mid-century, as they formed their own spaces to express self-fashioned identities. These magazines have received scant critical attention, likely as a result of their occasionally embarrassing and offensive politics, and because they are only available in the queer and trans collections of a few specific libraries. With the exception of a few issues of Turnabout (available through the Digital Transgender Archive), they have not yet been widely archived digitally.

Reference

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Ekins, Richard and Dave King. “Virginia Prince: Transgender Pioneer.” International Journal of Transgenderism, 8.4 (2005): 5-15.

Kenan Tekin — Research assistant at Yalova University 1/ Late Ottoman periodicals such as Ali Suavi’s Ulum Gazettes demonstrate a new phenomena of connectedness between the Ottoman and European intellectuals. Although there was some interaction between Europe and Ottoman intellectuals in the age of the manuscripts, the flow of knowledge between these domains was limited. With the proliferation of the printing press, and the emergence of periodicals, we can see that knowledge was not merely translated and transferred; in fact, knowledge was directly produced within the rival political domains. Suavi was one of the Young Ottomans who used periodicals as a medium to shape the nascent public opinion and resist political power. After getting arrested for his journalistic activities and put under house arrest, he escaped to Europe. His journal reflected his own networks within the Ottoman Empire and Europe as he engaged Ottoman intellectuals and Orientalists.

2/ Journals and magazines do not simply document contemporary events. They do so with entrenched positions regarding the social and political upheavals of the moment. The Ottoman government suppressed various journals and magazines because they were considered disruptive, as they could incite violence. In fact, censorship of the media emerged because of such resistance to power. Some journalists sought refuge in rivaling political centers and produced magazines in places where the government could not suppress them directly. The above mentioned journal of Ali Suavi provides such an example. Others who could not avoid governmental censorship produced periodicals that attempted to escape obvious challenges to power, and instead used various genres that were acceptable. One needs to look at the popular science periodicals and literary magazines from such angles. Were they subversive in ways that could avoid drawing attention of the dominant discourse, but still carry out their message?

3/ The question of the archive is significant and certainly poses a challenge for historians. The main challenge being that the archive itself is a construction, and reflects the biases of its patron. In that regard, when approaching the magazines and journals, we should raise the question of what is included, and what is left out. In some cases, we might not be able to know that at all, if the journal did not be-

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came popular, and had a very limited edition.

4/ Many of them are archived in Turkish libraries. Some are available digitally.

7/ As the question itself suggests, there are different degrees of accessibility. The mode that I appreciate most is free online access to digitized periodicals, which can also be downloaded. Some libraries allow patrons to make electronic copies of periodicals for personal possession. And some provide interlibrary loan services.

Sherese Francis — Creator of J. Expressions, a pop-up bookstore in Queens 3/ Archival and library work are one of the main actors in facilitating the availability of materials that are obscure or are ignored in favor of more mainstream literature. These kinds of institutions and organizations allow for people who may not be able to find or afford these materials to be able to interact and be in dialogue with those works. bell hooks said the public library is one of the most subversive institutions. James Baldwin wouldn’t have been the writer he became if it wasn’t for access to the library. But I also think of Arturo Schomburg and that he started his archival and library career as a result of a teacher telling him that black people had no history. I think of other archivists like Charles Blockson and Mayme A. Clayton. Their work as archivists and librarians allowed for the general public to re-envision the history originally presented to them; that the work we consider as history and canon is often constructed based on who has power (which has been mainly white and male) and is only one perspective of that history, that moment in time. By having these collections available, I and others have been able to do research that may not exist in other collections or not seen as worthy of collecting. As someone who regularly attends libraries, does research and collects printed material, I do notice how materials from people of color, women, LGBTQ, poor and other marginalized groups are more difficult to obtain or discover and requires much more detective work and digging because of their lack of availability. That’s why more radical archivists like Schomburg, like Clayton are needed.

5/ As a researcher, digital archives are especially helpful as they allow for even greater access to printed material that may be available only in certain areas that are not easily reachable, or for delicate printed materials that are withering away. They allow for a wider audience to interact and engage with the work that may have been reserved for

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only specialized scholars, offering more perspectives that were not available before. It also allows for more interaction between different archives, kind of similar to the interlibrary loan system.

6/ Universities have started opening their research papers and journals to the public. Other organizations are doing more open source work and radical universities exist where information is available online or taught online for free or affordable prices. Scholars I know have shared research articles, excerpts of books and other printed materials online with those outside of university system.

7/ Accessible means the greatest number of people have these materials available to them, through means of affordability, guidance/explanations/teachings of the materials for better understandability (that includes teaching the historical and social context), digital accessibility when in-person access is not available, translation and disability services, etc.

8/ As the current administration is currently deleting and erasing information, it is important for us to collect the materials in our own libraries and archives both in the physical and digital. As I mentioned above with Schomburg, it is easier for those who are in power to create any version of history they want when material evidence of other perspectives and voices are not present. As Zora Neale Hurston said, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” Libraries and archives need to have a diversity of voices, curators and collectors who have an eye out for works that are speaking to the times we live in right now. Because if that knowledge is available, others in other spaces can learn from it. Libraries and archives are about that sharing of knowledge and motivating resistance — showing us what is possible. So increasing that sharing and accessibility of that knowledge is important, especially to communities who need to know that information, which is often the communities who do not receive it, like the poor, people of color, LGBTQ, women, and other marginalized groups. That information is often locked away in elitist and controlled environments like universities. One book that I think highlights this well is Daniel Jose Older’s Shadowshaper, where the main character has to sneak into a university to find out information about the archeological work done about her own heritage and spiritual/magical traditions.

9/ One of the issues I stress in my popup bookshop/mobile library project is exploring local spaces and histories. In a globalized world where people are constantly migrating or

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living nomadic lifestyles, or cities are constantly changing due to forces like gentrification, the printed materials produced by members of local communities and neighborhoods are easily lost. That is why my project is centered around promoting the literary works produced by writers and authors in Southeast Queens, especially as the area is changing.

The project includes not only collecting physical works of literary talent in and from the area, but also showcasing the digital work of those from the area along with interviews with them on my blog and distributed through my mailing list. As new people move into the area, it gives them a chance to engage with the work of those who were originally, or used to be, in the area, acknowledging that people existed in these communities before the new populations moved to them, that it should not be a Columbus type situation where you move in as if no one was there before.

10/ I feel we need more local, community-oriented, and supported infrastructures, not only more large-scale institutions, because that way the knowledge will not be siphoned off from the public and made less accessible. This also allows for more local voices to be in direct contact with local institutions.

12/ Yes I do. As I’ve read more and more work from marginalized communities, I’ve realized that what we consider “canon” was largely determined by upper-class, white cis-heterosexual men in power. And when you are told that is canon, it makes someone who does not identify in that way feel as if their work is illegitimate, does not matter, or not of standard. So much of my work as a writer (including writing speculative fiction), researcher, and founding a popup bookshop/mobile library is to say that our voices and creation matter and have value too. That they should be considered canon too.

13/ Yes, especially if your work is considered outside of the mainstream. As time goes by, books and other printed materials can easily be lost, even more so if they are not sought out to be preserved. Create your own spaces and investing (monetary and other social support) in spaces that will hold onto these works and actively look for these works. Make sure copies of these works are sent to libraries and other archives. Make sure that libraries and other archives know that these works are important enough to be preserved. Create digital archives of these works. Hold onto a few copies and treat them as if collector’s items.

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Arthur Fournier — Proprietor of Fournier Fine & Rare As a dealer and collector, my interest in underground serials concerns their status as the public records of the hidden knowledge of communities scattered across space and time that would otherwise remain invisible. By seeking out the complete run of a defunct underground newspaper, fanzine, or magazine — especially one that that hasn’t yet been digitized and isn’t yet discoverable in OCLC — I can play a role in making sure that scholars and other members of the public will have reliable access to an otherwise hidden primary source document.

Most of my clients are academic rare book librarians at top-tier research institutions. When I sell one of them a well-cataloged fanzine or other rare document, in some modest way, I can have faith that it will enter into the permanent record of global civilization. As long as such institutions are around to house, protect, and make them discoverable, the voices they record will not be lost. For me, this a deeply satisfying feature of my profession.

I can testify to the enormous appetite today’s librarians have for periodicals and ephemera from outside of the normative white, western, male canon of 20th century print culture. However, given the extent of the gap shown in the contemporary collecting record for post-war serials by and about women, people of color, LGBTQ communities, and radical political action groups, it is clear that there is much retrospective work yet to be done to correct the record and broaden the scope of institutional holdings. It brings me tremendous pleasure to report that many of us in today’s rare book trade are actively scouring the marketplace to supply these resources to the libraries that will value them most. Capitalism may not be a particularly elegant or appropriate tool for the preservation of anti- and extra-institutional discourses, but at the moment, it is the most effective one at hand...

In addition to being a dealer of rare books, serials, and ephemera, I also work as a broker for small publishers, activists, and culture workers on the placement of their productive life’s work archives with universities and museums.

In many cases, those who have spent their lives most engaged with the transformative issues of the 20th century have not saved effectively for retirement, and some do not have access to affordable healthcare. Their correspondence, private papers, and collections of ephemera relevant to their par-

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ticular struggles can be of enormous scholarly importance.

When it is appropriate, I try to advocate on their behalves that such archives should enter the permanent record of the institutional library space as purchases, not gifts. If archives and museums are willing to compete with each other to pay enormous sums for the papers of Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, and other white men, they should also be willing to pay fair market prices for the papers of activists, cultural workers, and publishers from other communities. The dollar figures involved may indeed be more modest. But nonetheless, in our world, a sale communicates respect, and the financial needs are often more pressing.

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This document was produced in collaboration by Meghan Forbes is Czech Lecturer in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and teaches courses in Central European literature and visual culture, as well as the Czech language. Her research considers the interwar avant-garde through the lense of periodical and epistolary studies, mapping transnational networks of exchange enacted in print, correspondence, and via travel across geographic, linguistic, and gendered boundaries. She has received numerous grants and fellowships for her work, including a Fulbright award to conduct dissertation research in Berlin, Germany (2014-2015). For the 2016/2017 academic year, she is also a Visiting Scholar at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge, where she is organizing a three-day event—Summoning the Archive: A Symposium on Periodical, Printed Matter, and Digital Archiving—to take place May 11-13. The symposium, which includes site visits to the collections of the Barnard Zine Library, MoMA, and the NYPL will bring together an international group of scholars, editors, archivists, and librarians to discuss such themes as the politics of translation in multilingual or internationally circulated publications, serial print culture as an intersectional axis for genre, language, race, gender, and sexuality, and the role and relevance of print publication in the digital age. Her writing for audiences both inside and out of the academy has appeared in such journals as Umění/Art, post at MoMA, Words Without Borders, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her essay “‘What I Could Lose’: The Fate of Lucia Moholy,” which appeared in the Winter 2016 issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Meghan is also the founder and co-editor of harlequin creature, an arts and literature imprint. With hc, she conducts a series of creative writing workshops with children, at such institutions as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Dia:Beacon, and 826. http://meghanleighforbes.com Lynne DeSilva-Johnson is a queer interdisciplinary creator, curator, educator, and facilitator working in performance, exhibition, and publication in conversation with new media. She is an Assistant Visiting Professor at Pratt Institute, focusing on Transdisciplinary Writing, Critical Theory, and Literature for Architecture students. Lynne is the founder and Managing Editor of The Operating System, as well as Libraries Editor at Boog City. She is the author of GROUND, blood atlas, and Overview Effect, co-author of A GUN SHOW with Adam Sliwinsk/S Percussion, and co-editor of the anthologies RESIST MUCH, OBEY LITTLE: Inaugural Poems for the Resistance, and In Corpore Sano: Creative Practice and the Challenged Body. Recent or forthcoming publication credits include the Brooklyn Poets Anthology, Gorgon Poetics, Vintage Magazine, Wave Composition, PostMortem/MadGleam, and a Panhtalassa Pamphlet from Tea & Tattered Pages Press.

She performs often, resists always, and lives in Brooklyn NY. http://www.theoperatingsystem.org

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Summoning the Archive was sponsored by: The Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University, The NYU Center for the Humanities, The New York Institute for the Humanities, and the Steinhardt Department of Media, Culture, and Communication.

In partnership with: Public Books, The DeWitt Wallace Periodical Room at the New York Public Library, The Zine Library at Barnard College, and the Museum of Modern Art Library.

Special thanks to Gordon Douglas and Siera Dissmore for making this all possible.

This program/zine was created in collaboration between Meghan Forbes and Lynne DeSilva-Johnson.

Design by Lynne DeSilva-Johnson.

Type set in Andale Mono, Lyric Poetry, Impact Label, Earwig Factory, and Distressed Ransom Note.

Images from the Creative Commons, with permission.

Covers printed on a Risograph machine at the University of Texas at Austin.

Summoning the Archive was organized by Meghan Forbes.

Thank you to all participants!

ONWARD!

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