Wearing The Archive: A Queer Button Making Workshop

Dress and clothing are essential when considering the development of Queer cultural memory; fashion is a collective conversation exploring the dynamic intersections between age, time, social and relational public. Dress and style function as a visible link between the body and identity, acting as visual production in which Queerness can develop new culture and canon, circulate, and incorporate into wearable desires. As archival materials become more digitally accessible, archival practices that refuse to accept objects as frozen or untouched begin to be enacted. Fashion is a method of deeply engaging with the archive, full of primary texts, objects, and memories that one can extract what one wants and reproduce into new histories, cultures and canon.

Buttons are tactile, affective resources that can emphasize historical or current tensions, communicate desires, and demonstrate how we may perform our desires. Using The ArQuives button collection, this workshop aims to delve into these complexities and explore how we may physically and emotionally choose what memories we connect with and how we interpret digitally accessible archival materials.