Breathing Music into the Paper Archives

Breathing Music into the Paper Archives (From the University of the Arts Archives) invites participants to encounter an archive in transition and listen for the music still held within it.

Following the sudden closure of the University of the Arts, more than eight million works—including records of artistic, cultural, and educational life— were set adrift, their future suddenly precarious and marked for disposal. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania acquired the items for cultural preservation. This workshop will be among the first public engagements with the collection. This is the only program in the Treasured: A People's Archive, that explicitly focuses on the music within our archives.

Through archival materials, close listening, reflection, and generative writing, participants will consider how paper can hold rhythm, voice, rehearsal, performance, and memory. What happens when an institution disappears but its creative life remains? How can poetry help us hear what survives? What voices can we write into the archive.

Together, we will breathe sound back into the archive and write toward continuity and cultural memory. What survived because someone saved it?

Facilitator: Raina León
Archivist: Historical Society of PA
Speakers:
Interpreter: DHCC

This program is made possible by the generous support of the Academy of American Poets and the Mellon Foundation as part of Treasured: A People's Archive.