The Archive is Creative: Artistic Interventions

What happens when artists intervene in the archive? A symposium rethinking history, and colonial narratives through artistic practice.

The day features roundtable conversations with artists Crystal Z Campbell, Sameer Farooq, Luis Jacob, Faraz Anoushahpour, Parastoo Anoushahpour, Ryan Ferko, and Timothy Yanick Hunter, alongside scholar Janine Marchessault. Join us for the first part of a three-part series organized by TMU’s Histories, Archives & Curation Cluster Initiative. Across three years, the series examines the evolving nature and political contexts of archival, curatorial, and community practices.

The Archive is Creative: Artistic Interventions brings together artists, curators, and scholars for a full day of roundtables examining how creative methods reshape what archives reveal in a colonial present. Working across varied materials—from moving images and objects to everyday, tactile practices—participants explore how archives are constructed, how access is negotiated, and how shifting one’s point of view can unsettle inherited narratives.

Emphasizing process over product, the symposium highlights how wandering, attention, duration, and material experimentation open new possibilities for engaging with historical records and imagining future forms of archival practice.

Organizing Committee

• Dr. Almudena Escobar López,
• Assistant Professor Michele Pearson Clarke,
• Dr. Kathleen Pirrie Adams
• Graduate Research Assistant: Janina Malapitan (Film + Photography Preservation and Collections Management)

with input from members from TMU’s Histories, Archives & Curation Cluster: Dr. Thierry Gervais, Dr. Alison Matthews-David, Eve Townsend, Dr. Nigel Lezama, and Dr. Caroline O’Brien, and Assistant Professor Evan Pavka

For questions, please reach out to: thearchiveiscreative@gmail.com

Supported by The Creative School Cluster Seed Fund 2025/6