Unapologetic: What’s Obscene here?
Kujichagulia - self-determination the decision to define ourselves, name ourselves, instead of being defined and spoken for by others.
~ Audre Lorde
Unapologetic, What’s Obscene here? illustrates how critical it is to record alternate or counter narratives, to practice archival gestures and to make visible and audible the boundaries of our own lives. Despite the ephemerality of experience, documenting and building a disparate archive of hidden pleasure, political action, feeling, protest, language and gesture can ensure that brief moments are long-lasting.
“In the black community the fight is usually on racism... sexism, homophobia are sometimes not on that list and I'm finding myself making it on that list saying we can’t fight one without the other cause we are not a one issue movement. All these things affect our lives. Denying it is like denying me, and denying a lot of women like myself.”
- "Exposure", Michelle Mohabeer, 1990, CFMDC
Traditionally, the institutional archive is a repository of primary sources and historical records that formalize hegemonic experience and narratives. The power of the archive lay in its authority to validate experience and history, while burying differences and classifying out of existence. The institution speaks for power. What we want to explore in this program of works from the CFMDC collection is the power to speak for or represent oneself, and for ones’ communities, creatively documenting and transmitting experience through retelling, discovery and recovery.
“Rethinking what it means to "access" film and video histories, the video draws connections between the feminist "porn wars" of the 1980s, and current feminist debates about the ethics of digitizing sexual imagery in archives.”
- "Slumberparty 2018", Hazel Meyer and Cait McKinney, 2018, CFMDC
“Kujichagulia - self-determination the decision to define ourselves, name ourselves, instead of being defined and spoken for by others.”