Archives are dirty. Though scholars have critiqued the idea of an archive as dusty and disorganized, their contents often challenge the very boundaries that try to contain them. This symposium interrogates the idea of DIRT by “departing from the planned coherent borders of the ‘archival’” and refocusing our attention to the “trashy, dirty, disgusting, and untidy disorganization of bodies, things, and emotions” (Manalansan 2014: 94). This symposium brings together artistic, activist, and scholarly communities to highlight these messy, dirty, and alternatively-organized archival practices.

This one-day symposium offers activists, artists, and scholars a chance to interrogate the affective relationship between materiality, archives, and Canadian cultural practice. Within Canada, much of the archival material documenting the voices of marginalized groups is dematerial(iz-ed/ing) – this event asks us to consider both why this is occurring and how we can create/have created new archival practices to reincorporate lost records, voices, affects and bodies.