Miskatonic University PressYesterday I was very happy to give a short talk at the LACUNY Institute 2020/2021: Turning Data Into Art. My thanks to everyone on the organizing committee for letting me do it.
In the my session the talk before me was by Jennifer McGillan (Mississippi State University) called “Archivists in Lockdown: When Your Research is Your Self-Care,” which was about her pandemic project of working through a book of award-winning recipes using Heinz ketchup, published by Heinz in 1957. She’d also done research searching through old newspapers to find out about the contest and the award-winners. The talk after was by Dawn Wing: “Let’s Talk Comics, Let’s Talk Research.” She’s an artist who does comics and graphic novels, and she talked about how she uses them in her library work and about a biographical project she’s done. They were great company for my talk. We’re all taking things from our library and archives work and transforming them into something new.
I also want to point out the two great examples of performance librarianship that I saw, as mentioned in my talk. It’s wonderful to see so many people using their work and experience in libraries and archives as a starting point for creative art and performance.