Bloc Projects‘ Public Programme Curator Kerry Campbell, alongside Social Arts Network, Sheffield Hallam University and Yorkshire & Humber Visual Arts Network (YVAN) are delighted to welcome guest speaker Kevin Caplicki, co-founder of ‘Interference Archive‘ (IA) based in Brooklyn, NY to host a free talk sharing the incredible work of IA, hosted as part of Sheffield Hallam’s Gravity Lecture series and coinciding with the Social Arts Summit.
Interference Archive (IA) is a radical open source and entirely volunteer ran activist archive based in Brooklyn and founded in 2001. The archive explores the relationship between cultural production and social movements, manifesting as an open stacks archival collection featuring a study centre and public programs including exhibitions, workshops, talks, and screenings, all of which encourage critical and creative engagement with the rich history of social movements.
The archive contains many kinds of objects that are created as part of social movements by the participants themselves: posters, flyers, publications, photographs, books, T-shirts and badges, moving images, audio recordings, and other materials.
Through their programming, IA use this cultural ephemera to animate histories of people mobilising for social transformation, considering the use of their collection to be a way of preserving and honoring histories and material culture that is often marginalised in mainstream institutions.
As an all-volunteer organisation, the local community are welcome and encouraged to shape the collection and programming; creating a space where all volunteers can learn from each other and develop new skills. The archive works in collaboration with like-minded projects, encouraging critical as well as creative engagement with contemporary histories and current struggles.