Archivists Oraison Larmon and Tara Hart will present papers that critically engage discourses surrounding archival praxis. Their research draws upon conceptual, practical, and theoretical frameworks to address the shifting nature of archives in relation to visual art and embodied practice. Following their presentations, Leeroy Kun Young Kang will facilitate an open dialogue with the audience.
Talk: Oraison Larmon & Tara Hart
Oraison Larmon
Oraison Larmon specializes in archiving, curating, and exhibiting performance art collections. Larmon’s archive practice investigates the performativity of documentation; representations of the body in archival materials; and methods of processing performance art. At New York University, Larmon processes performance materials for the Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library (HIDVL) and the institute’s physical archive. Larmon is currently working with Martha Wilson on the forthcoming collection “Franklin Furnace: Performance and Politics” for HIDVL. It will feature performances engaging body politics selected from Franklin Furnace’s Event Archives. Larmon’s curatorial credits include the two-day event Performing the Archive (2013) with Professor Diana Taylor; the full-scale exhibition Desperate Archives (2014) with Split Britches; and the performance program for the Radical Archives Conference (2014) with Chitra Ganesh and Mariam Ghani.
Tara Hart
Tara Hart is an archivist based in Brooklyn, NY. Hart currently works as the Archives Manager at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Prior to joining the Whitney, Hart performed archival work at the Guggenheim, the New Museum, and the Fales Library and Special Collections. Her writing recently appeared in Archive Journal (archivejournal.net).
Leeroy Kun Young Kang
Leeroy Kun Young Kang is an archivist, independent curator, and visual artist whose work lives in the intersections of legacy audiovisual preservation and access, experimental Asian Pacific cinema, and queer and transgender history and visual culture. Kang’s archival work includes collections at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music, MTV Networks, and the New-York Historical Society. He has curated programs for the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Dirty Looks NYC, and CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies, while his own video work has screened at various festivals and venues including CAAMFest, Human Resources Los Angeles, MIX NYC, and Studio 2224 in Taipei. Currently he is a Visiting Scholar at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU and holds an MLS from Queens College and BA in Studio Art from UC Santa Barbara.