Community archival against cultural censorship
Research und Workshop by Dusty Whistles
Dusty Whistles will facilitate a space of community archival for the establishment of a public and living archive – documenting and historicizing the wave of cultural and academic censorship within Austria of works critical of the occupation, apartheid, and genocide endured by the Palestinian people. The workshop will offer participants a framework of support in the collective production of short-form archival case studies, in German and English. This will be the final step of production before the archive becomes a publicly available resource. The source material for the production of these case studies is building on a year of archival work realized within school, with Dusty's previous exhibition "O Povo Unido", and from work, she developed as a participant within the exhibition "Propositions: Experiments in Collective Archive & Composition", hosted by The Collective Art Community Against Censorship with the participation of Archive of Silence.
Additionally, there will be a space to contribute to the further development of her project "A cantiga é uma arma" (The song is a weapon), where Dusty invites guests to contribute to an audio archive of protest chants from emancipatory movements within Vienna, collected for the future composition of a polyphonic protest chant that speaks to the multiple and intersecting demands of an intersectional movement for collective liberation.
Both of these archival initiatives illuminate the intersectional complexity of liberation struggles and speak to how emancipatory movements respond with broad-scale, international, and often decentralized coalitions that organize across multiple and intersecting oppressions. This is especially the case when mobilizing against systems that are integral to the maintenance of racial capitalism, whose structures and histories impact multiple experiences of identity, uniting us in struggle. As well, through the archival of a history of censorship, a material and historical lens can be applied in analyzing how the hegemonic order exerts domination and control; often employing similar tactics within various frameworks, impacting multiple and intersecting experiences of identity, to achieve the silencing of collective power for the legitimization and perpetuation of state violence, imperialist expansion, and the accumulation of wealth.
Bring your own devices (laptops, phones, tablets) to participate in the writing of case studies. Pen and paper, as well as snacks and beverages will be provided. The space has a barrier-free entry but does not have a barrier-free toilet.
Dusty is a trans woman, who is racialized as white, with a body that is currently defined as “ablebodied”, and comes from a working class and transnational immigrant perspective. She was born on Matinecock territory in the colonial occupation called “New York”, and has recently immigrated to Austria, living in the city of Vienna. She is from a family of Portuguese artisans and unionized service sector workers, who fled the fascist regime of Portugal and whose paths of migration intersected Venezuela and settler colonial occupation called the “United States”. As an art worker her practice is centered in abolitionist and antifascist principals, with a focus on the culture of organizing and the art of mobilization within emancipatory movements. In her work she utilizes social practice methodologies, archival, care and hospitality practices, as well as drag performance, connecting to its legacy in supporting communal function, criminality, respite and resistance.
