Moving through the archive: Johnny Chang & MayDay Rooms

–> A Look at Critical Archiving and Organizing Access <–

Welcome to an evening, 8/6 5-8 PM, of thinking together on the possibilities of organizing archives and libraries from multiple perspectives. This program examines how different forms of gathering, especially from and for movements as well as marginalized communities generate various forms of agency, resistance, and collective un/learning processes. What are the various approaches, possibilities, and limitations of these practices?

Moving through the archive_ invites Johnny Chang and MayDay Rooms to discuss how knowledge can be collected from informal, critical, dissident perspectives. Through a lecture performance by Johnny Chang, and a public presentation by MayDay Rooms, we invite the public to reflect on the possibilities and limitations of collective, interdependent forms of gathering.

Elof Hellström, from Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus, will moderate an open conversation after the presentations.

_ JOHNNY CHANG is a Taiwanese-American multidisciplinary designer and artist based in Stockholm. Moving between visual communication, writing, and artistic inquiry, his practice is concerned with circumstances of distance and diaspora, the politics of voice and listening, and processes of sense-making. His work inquires into conditions and entanglements of contemporary everyday life toward cultivating resilient capacities for sensing, feeling, and being in the present. His current residency research with Grafikens Hus is engaged with differently situated archives and libraries to investigate aesthetics of gathering, and terms and methods of access from urgent perspectives.
www.johnny-chang.info

_ MAYDAY ROOMS aims to safeguard histories and documents of radicalism and resistance by connecting them with contemporary struggle and protest, and by developing new free forms of dissemination and collective self-education. Our building contains an archive of historical material linked to radical history. Alongside our material archives, we create and maintain digital archives and databases of these histories, with the hope that these traces of the past might freely be taken up and put to use in present struggles. As well as housing an archive, our building functions as an organizing space for activists, social movements, troublemakers and radicals. We also run a full programme of events including film screenings, poetry readings, archiving workshops, historical talks, discussions, reading groups and social nights.
www.maydayrooms.org

_ ELOF HELLSTRÖM’s work addresses issues of socio-political injustice in the contemporary city. He has initiated and is a member of various art collectives and self-organized initiatives such as the cultural house Cyklopen in Stockholm. Elof is one of the artistic directors at Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus.
www.medborgarhuset.se

–> The program is a collaboration between Collecting Thoughts/Grafikens Hus, A Movement to Hold and Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus. Curated by Macarena Dusant/Grafikens Hus and Alba Folgado/A Movement to Hold. In collaboration with IASPIS. With support from Kulturrådet.

–> Accessibility

The event will take place in the library room on the ground floor of Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhuset. Medborgarhuset has a lift which makes the upper floor accessible as well. There are no obstructive steps on the ground floor of the building. There are larger wheelchair-accessible and gender-neutral toilets on both the ground floor and the upper floor. There will be other occasional visitors to other events in the house at the same time.

The event will be in English.
Keywords and translations will be available in Swedish.

If you would like to speak to someone prior to your visit to discuss your access needs, please contact: info@medborgarhuset.se

Find your way there:
Hägerstensåsens Medborgarhus
Riksdalervägen 2, 129 32 Hägersten
Subway station: Hägerstensåsen