QU(e)ERYING RELIGION: UP NEXT!
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Help Qu(e)erying Religion Preserve its History
THE "anti-Archive" PROJECT
QR is at a critical juncture in 2018 with the pending retirement of QR founding chaplain, Ralph Carl Wushke, in August 2018. In the wake of this organizational transition QR student intern, Alisha Stranges, proposed a vision to engineer what she calls an “anti-Archive” — a digital space that collects and organizes QR’s ongoing programming history using a combination of concrete and ephemeral evidence. In Stranges' view, an “anti-Archive” documents the undocumentable and provides what José Esteban Muñoz describes as “a kind of evidence of what has transpired but certainly not the thing itself.”
Our “anti-Archive” focuses on promoting and preserving the mission of Qu(e)erying Religion through memory. As photographic artist Zoe Leonard eloquently states, “testimony or being a witness is about understanding that your story is part of a larger story that is vital to pass on to other people, that you hold a piece of a puzzle that’s part of a picture that other people need to see.” Thus, in addition to descriptive and photographic information about QR’s history of programming, the “anti-Archive” captures from QR alumni around the world some audio-visual recollections of attending QR events from the first decade of our programming.
We hope that in staging the effort to remember what is always already lost, the experience of being immersed in QR’s common and uncommon conversations will momentarily reappear, preserving QR's history, testifying to QR's life-changing impact on students' lives, and promoting QR for the next generation of LGBTQ students of faith.
Our digital archive will also have a wider reach in the U of T community of over 100,000 students, staff and faculty, and serve as an inspiration for campus ministries and university chaplaincies beyond U of T.
Our “anti-Archive” focuses on promoting and preserving the mission of Qu(e)erying Religion through memory. As photographic artist Zoe Leonard eloquently states, “testimony or being a witness is about understanding that your story is part of a larger story that is vital to pass on to other people, that you hold a piece of a puzzle that’s part of a picture that other people need to see.” Thus, in addition to descriptive and photographic information about QR’s history of programming, the “anti-Archive” captures from QR alumni around the world some audio-visual recollections of attending QR events from the first decade of our programming.
We hope that in staging the effort to remember what is always already lost, the experience of being immersed in QR’s common and uncommon conversations will momentarily reappear, preserving QR's history, testifying to QR's life-changing impact on students' lives, and promoting QR for the next generation of LGBTQ students of faith.
Our digital archive will also have a wider reach in the U of T community of over 100,000 students, staff and faculty, and serve as an inspiration for campus ministries and university chaplaincies beyond U of T.
WHAT WE NEED
The immediate goal of this project is to engage Stranges, for three months in the summer of 2018, beginning June 1. Stranges first proposed and began work on the "anti-Archive" in the summer of 2017, conducting 15 audio-recorded interviews that generated almost 20 hours of digital material.
OUR FUNDING GOAL
To help QR execute the creative vision for this project, we are seeking donations toward a goal of $2,500. This amount represents a quarter of the project's overall budget, the remainder of which we are seeking through various granting bodies. However, we need your help to secure the necessary funding to remunerate Stranges for the completion of the following work plan:
- Conducting 7-10 more audio-recorded interviews with QR alumni
- Editing 20-30 hour-long personal interviews into 5-10-minute audio narratives
- Filming 20-30 moving portraits of the interviewees, including video documentation of the physical spaces that QR inhabits
- Editing together the audio narratives and the moving portraits
- Uploading the audio-visual materials to the Qu(e)erying Religion website and partner sites
- Uploading descriptive and photographic evidence of QR’s history of programming
WHAT YOUR SUPPORT CAN DO
Once completed, we anticipate that the "anti-Archive" will facilitate:
- Increased student awareness of QR’s annual programming at the three U of T campuses
- Increased student response to QR in future academic years, as compared to previous years
- More programs like QR being offered at college and university campuses in Canada, the USA, or further afield