The Shoebox Archive: Inherited Memories

A participatory workshop exploring personal archives, memory and inherited memory, developed in response to Discovering Lisel Haas. Inspired by her experience working with the Lisel Haas archive, artist Anu Gamanagari invites you to this participatory workshop exploring personal archives, memory and inherited memory. Participants are invited to bring a small object that holds a personal or family history. This might be something inherited, something that has travelled through generations, or an everyday object connected to a particular memory. Through collective storytelling and simple archival prompts, we will explore: • What do we choose to keep and why? • What do we remember, and what have we inherited through storytelling? • What is missing from our family histories? • How can we begin creating our own personal archives? Each participant will photograph their object using an instant camera and create a simple archival record documenting what they know, remember, have been told, and what remains unknown. The photograph and record will become the starting point of their own shoebox archive, which they can take home and continue to build with photographs, letters, recipes, documents, objects and stories.