Queer Memory and Archive Policies

Queer Memory and Archive Policies is the first seminar in Spain from Perverse Collections: Building Europe’s Queer and Trans Archives, a Europe-wide project the Museo Reina Sofía is a member of alongside other cultural institutions. The encounter assembles activists, archivists and historians to debate the emergence, history and policies of queer and trans archives in the Spanish State and southern Europe.

Setting out from the idea that archives occupy a central place in the political imagination of LGBTQIA+ communities as stores of collective memory, resistance and anti-establishment resources, as well as sources of inspiration for the future, this seminar explores the connections between activism and archive practices; the specifics of sexual dissidence archives and the relations they bear to institutional frameworks; the possibilities offered by dispersed, migrant and digital archives; and the traces of LGBTQIA+ history in other repositories.

The Perverse Collections project, funded by the European organisation ERA-LEARN JPI-CHSE (Joint Programming Initiative-Cultural Heritage, Society and Ethics) and Spain’s State Research Agency, advocates a critical understanding of the development of LGBTQ+ archives in Europe, enabling strategies to be constructed to preserve LGBTQ+ history and fostering its transformative potential in cultural heritage policies through researchers, queer communities and workers from the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sector. Its lines of action include mapping these archives, from the 1970s to the present day, and with an awareness of their similarities and differences, their institutional relations and an understanding of the local, national and international queer history they put forward.

Both this activity and the project it is framed within set forth innovate strategies to preserve and maintain the queer cultural legacy. Consequently, they are situated in a living political context: while LGBTQ+ violence and discrimination/phobias continue to increase in Europe, exacerbated by the far-right rhetoric of certain political groups, initiatives such as these substantiate the social, cultural, ethical and political value of LGBTQ+ legacies.