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This project joins together a scholar of Yiddish culture, Rob Adler Peckerar, who researches Jewish material culture in the pre-World War Two period, and choreographer and performer Alexx Shilling, whose work prioritizes the body as a primary research site. Together the two will delve into the Language and Culture Archive of Ashkenazic Jewry (LCAAJ). They will create a work of art that re-embodies the lives of the speakers recorded over thousands of hours of interviews in a project that originally set out to preserve the sounds of a living Yiddish language. The goal is the creation of a multi-disciplinary dance performance that explores the lived, corporeal experience of the informants of the LCAAJ, giving unique access to their everyday lives before the devastation of the Nazi genocide and after decades of displacement, emigration, and assimilation.

The two in-residence collaborators are Art History graduate student Gladys Preciado and Ceramics graduate student Jasmine Baetz. Both are women of color who are concerned about the politics of representation on the CU �鶹ӰԺ campus. This collaboration is part of a larger project that surrounds a public art sculpture to commemorate the activism of the Chicano Student Movement, during which Los Seis, as they became known, were killed in two separate and unexplained car bombs on May 27 and 29, 1974. These traumatic events happened on two sites that bookend the CU �鶹ӰԺ campus: Chautauqua Park, and 28th Street and Canyon Boulevard. Resting between them is Temporary Building 1, the building these students were occupying with fellow activists in demand for continued growth and autonomy of Educational Opportunity Programs at CU �鶹ӰԺ.

This project joins together Erina Duganne, an art historian, and Muriel Hasbun, a photo-based and socially engaged artist and educator. “Art for the Future: Building Transnational Activism Through the Archive” puts the archive of the 1984 U.S. activist organization, Artists Call Against US Intervention in Central America, in dialogue with the archive of Galería el laberinto (1977-2001) in El Salvador so as to discover overlooked connections and hidden congruences, both visual as well as historical. Although Artists Call and Galería el laberinto were contemporaries, their founders and participants were mutually unaware of each other. In so doing, this transnational collaboration will not only bring these forgotten archives to light but also foster much needed conversations about visual alliances and solidarities between these two countries. Given today’s polarized political climate and dehumanizing rhetoric against Central Americans, such transnational dialogue is necessary more than ever, promising a more hopeful and restorative future.

In 1917, a dressmaker with an eighth-grade education named Sarah Schenirer opened a girls’ school in her studio, hoping to stem the tide of Orthodox girls who were abandoning tradition in droves through the force of her own religious passion. Within a few years, the Bais Yaakov system had grown to dozens of schools, founded, directed and led by her adolescent students. The Bais Yaakov Project aims to mine the archives of interwar Bais Yaakov and make this history available to the public through a dedicated website, www.thebaisyaakovproject.com. It also aims to revive the musical repertoire of the movement at its interwar height, arranging and performing songs and anthems hitherto hidden in archives across three continents. The Bais Yaakov Project represents the work of three Bais Yaakov graduates, of different generations: Naomi Seidman, a professor of the Arts in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, Basya Schechter, a musician and composer who has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe, and Dainy Bernstein, the Digital Content and Web Designer for the project.

In this project, a dramaturge (Emil Uuttu, MA) and a historian (Riikka Taavetti, PhD) together with a sound designer (Tatu Nenonen, MA) will work in forming a radio play that addresses the knowledge production of queer lives. They will creatively combine archival research with artistic engagement of queering the archives, both their content and archival practices.The radio play will combine found audio, documentary audio recordings, and scripted radio play scenes. The radio play will premier late spring 2020. The project utilizes the vast collections of Finnish reminiscence writings, life stories, and oral traditions. The Finnish traditions of gathering folklore and popular tradition date back to the 19th century, and personal reminiscences and life stories have been gathered by open calls for writing since the 1960s.