Perverse Collections – HANDS OFF: LGBTQ+ Cultural Heritage and Ethical Stewardship – Dundee, Scotland

Who should be responsible for safeguarding queer and trans collections for posterity, and how should this be done?

‘Hands Off: LGBTQ+ Cultural Heritage and Ethical Stewardship’ is a two-day conference taking place across Dundee Contemporary Arts (1 February) and V&A Dundee (2 February). It is organised by ‘Perverse Collections: Building Europe’s Queer and Trans Archives’, an international project funded by JPICH. The event will take the form of several roundtable conversations between archivists and scholars from across the UK, Europe, and Scandinavia.

The central topic to be explored is the place of institutionalisation in relation to LGBTQ+ material histories. Queer and trans archives have usually begun as personal or community projects, characterised by their independence, informality, and unruliness. LGBTQ+ people have often been sceptical about official archives, libraries, and museums, sometimes with good reason (many official archives, for instance, have displayed a historical propensity to erase the lives of minority identities from view). As individual collections grow, however, maintaining them becomes a challenge. Some queer and trans archives remain fully independent for ethical and political reasons, making a virtue of their lack of institutional affiliation; some become housed within larger libraries and archives, which may allow them to retain their autonomy; still others attain a level of respectability and formality, securing regular funding and maintaining their own premises.

SAQMI participates on day two:
This event will take the form of several roundtable conversations between archivists and scholars from across the UK, Europe, and Scandinavia, including:
Stef Dickers (Bishopsgate Institute, London), Louise Dickson (V&A Dundee), Orla Egan (Cork LGBT Archive), Péter Hanzli (Háttér Archívum és Könyvtár, Budapest), Ben Miller (Schwules Museum, Berlin), Nanna Olsson (SAQMI – The Swedish Archive for Queer Moving Images), Adele Patrick (Glasgow Women’s Library), Sara R Phillips (Irish Trans Archive, Dublin), Jennifer Shearman (Queer Britain, London), Jaime Valentine (OurStory Scotland).