Abstract
My paper considers my experience helping compile the Art Archives for the Department of Afroamerican And African Studies at the University of Michigan, and the theoretical insights on a gallery proposal that emerged from this archival work, “715 Haven Street: Art Looks Back.” Art murals used to be displayed outside of the department’s first address at 715 Haven Street, until a series of fires deemed accidental forced the artwork and the department “indoors.” My digital recreation of the exterior of 715 Haven Street and its 3 internal gallery spaces offer a semiological methodology of re-hearing the attempt to remove the house and its art from public spaces. This public humanities and historical and literary intervention on the making of digital images contributes to the bibliography of abolitionist futures situating itself in a critique of carceral forms of source interpretation. I situate my re-reading of these objects and the juxtaposition of digitally rendered and digitized material objects in the anti-pacification critique that has emerged in Latin American police reform contexts, which align themselves with BLM-led police reform protests. Bringing back the physicality of the house in its digital presence by projecting the gallery on the exterior space that used to be occupied by 715 Haven Street counters the effects of the culture of policing where it attempts to use violence to curate public spaces in a reluctance to foster BIPOC, immigrant, poor, and queer histories out in the open; a challenge on many University campuses in the U.S. and beyond.
Presenters
Mari Aparecida StanevLecturer , Comparative Literature , University of Michigan, Michigan, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2022 Special Focus—Here Comes the Metaverse: Designing the Virtual and the Real
KEYWORDS
Public Humanities, Decolonial Museology, Police and Abolitionist Studies, Carceral Studies, Archive Studies, Subaltern Studies, Africana Studies, Latinx Studies, Latin American History, African American History, Critical Historiography, Material History, Cultural History, Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, Genocide Studies, Museum Studies, Public Digital Galleries, Media Studies, Sound Studies, Critical Race Theory, Maroon and Maronage Studies, Favela Studies, Decolonial Turn
