Queers on the Run: A Nomadic Workshop in Queer Archives

This 2-day event will begin with hands-on research into holdings in les Archives gaies du Québec, with files selected by members of the research team. While registration for the event at Les Archives is limited to ten (10) participants, all are welcome for our JI session. Our objective is to experiment in collaborative research, bearing in mind the following questions: 1) What is a queer archival methodology?; 2) How does mentorship function outside the heternormative order?; and 3) What are the ethics of and protocols for uncovering and circulating traces of queer worldmaking?

Where do queer Canadian art histories reside? What gathers/dwells in these repositories, what has been omitted and/or excluded, and how do institutions shape what histories can be known and accessed? Rarely a solo endeavour, queer art historical scholarship is more often relational and collaborative in nature. However, despite the wealth of queer Canadian art practices, the untraditional forms that queer scholarship assume may account for why no comprehensive history of queer Canadian art exists. Efforts through the 1970s to the 1990 to secure queer presence and visibility in a variety of institutional contexts became de facto political acts. However, queerness has a troubled, even “backward” (Heather Love, 2007) approach to archives and histories (Ann Cvetkovich, 2003; José Esteban Muñoz, 1996). We ask: how might queer archives, and queer researchers, engage self-reflexively with regard to the challenges of preserving oft-ephemeral queer histories while continuing to promote and safeguard their right to exist?

We invite students and members of the public to participate in Queers on the Run: A Nomadic Workshop in Queer Archives in Canada, an ongoing research experiment led by Drs. August Klintberg and Erin Silver. Guided by the premise that museums, art institutions, collections, libraries, and archives are inextricable to art historical scholarship, we will examine the interrelation between institutions and the researching and writing of queer Canadian art histories.

On Thursday, December 11th from 10am-12:00pm, we will meet at Les Archives gaies du Québec (1000 Atateken). Following a brief presentation by Klintberg and Silver and an overview of Les Archives gaies du Québec, the group will be invited to engage in collaborative archival research.

On Friday, December 12th from 3-4:30pm, please join us at the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art for Afternoons at the Institute, where Klintberg and Silver will be joined by graduate student researchers and members of the SSHRC-funded project Queer Operatives: Writing, Making, and Transmitting Queer Canadian Art Histories for a series of presentations on team members’ archival research and community dialogue.

Adrian Deveau is a PhD candidate in Art History at Concordia University and holds an MA in Art History and Theory from the University of British Columbia. 

August Klintberg (formerly Mark Clintberg) is an Associate Professor at the Alberta University of the Arts.

Erin Silver is an Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at The University of British Columbia.