Living Archive Workshops

Start date and time

Tuesday 14 June 2022

to Thursday 25 August 2022

Location

Alchemy Film & Arts, Hawick

The Living Archives is a collaborative research project in which we explore connections between archives, identity and materiality. We challenge the hierarchy and centrality of institutional archives by inviting participants to recognise the value of personal archival artefacts through an exploratory, creative and discursive process.

In August 2022, experimental filmmaker, radical archist and curator, Lydia Beilby, and filmmaker/lecturer, Sana Bilgrami, worked with Alchemy festival. We held workshops in Hawick with a group of queer/non-binary young adults, using physical film and archival objects to engage with concepts of identity and to challenge the dominance of digital culture and the hierarchy of public archives. The group shot a short black and white 16mm film, 'Letter to Time', on a Bolex camera. They used the language of experimental film to explore their personal archives and identities, and created their own archive on a film-strip.