Cataloging the Underground Press
This Saturday, July 23, 1-5pm

Last month IA received our biggest ever donation, Sean Stewart’s amazing “Babylon Falling Collection” of underground press and related ephemera. This Saturday we are hosting the first accessioning party for the collection!

There are over 30 boxes of underground newspapers (The East Village Other, Berkeley Barb, Rat Subterranean News, The Black Panther, The Realist, The Guardian, and many, many more), underground comix (including issues of It Ain’t Me Babe, Wimmin’s Comix, Zap, and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers), and counter-cultural magazines (including one of the most complete collections of Ramparts magazine we’ve ever seen).

The accessioning party will be the first attempt at organizing the Babylon Falling Collection and integrating it into existing IA holdings. If you are interested in being a part of this, come to the archive for 1pm on Saturday or contact Charlie at morgan.charlie@gmail.com This is a great opportunity to work with some fantastic material and absolutely no archival or library experience is required. If possible bring a laptop!

Amplifier Foundation and Interference Archive host the first of what hopefully will become many propaganda parties. What is a propaganda party? It’s where we invite dozens of organizations, activists, designers, and artists producing materials around a political issue together to hang out, meet each other, and distribute their flyers, stickers, posters, buttons, and more. All propaganda is free, and we encourage all to come by, grab a drink, and load up on as many posters and stickers you can carry!

Are you an artist or activist organizing or making art around issues of mass incarceration, the failures of the criminal justice system, or police brutality? Please bring your work (in multiples) to distribute and get out into the city. Also come meet like minded people with similar intersecting commitments to art and politics.

We're always trying to share the experiences of people working at Interference Archive, and one of the ways is through a series of blog posts written by Interference volunteers:

My first encounter with Interference Archive (IA) was in the Agitprop exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. I was happy to find out that IA hosted open archive hours, exhibits, and events as well as chances to volunteer. I also came across the if a song could be freedom mixtapes and references to IA by other New York-based art organizations and was impressed with the local collaboration fostered by IA. As someone interested in art history and social movements, I was excited by the Archive’s role to inform present day collective action through access to historical objects.

After attending a general meeting, I learned that IA is organized in several Working Groups. One group focuses on curating exhibits, while another coordinates events, and another maintains the archive itself. There are seven groups in total and each one delegates work amongst its members and volunteers. Within the structure however, many people overlap groups and the level of time commitment required varies. This flexibility has made it easy for me to become increasingly involved from attending events to now having volunteered several times.

Read the rest of their post here. If you’re interested in volunteering at Interference Archive, check out our website for info on how to get involved, or email info@interferencearchive.org. You can also support the amazing work of all our volunteers by making a financial donation.

Next Bi-Weekly Cataloging Party
Saturday, August 6, 2016

IA is now hosting bi-weekly cataloging parties! A bunch of us get together with laptops every other Thursday evening and work on entering some of our amazing posters, pamphlets, buttons, and record albums into our catalog so that they can be searchable online. The next cataloging party is Saturday, August 6th, 2–5pm. BYOL (Bring Your Own Laptop)!

Our Comics, Ourselves opens to the University of Connecticut
June 14–August 22, 2016

The Archives & Special Collections at the University of Connecticut will host the first traveling installment of the exhibition Our Comics, Ourselves co-curated by Jan Descartes and Monica McKelvey Johnson. The exhibition premiered at Interference Archive in January, and we're really excited to see it move on to new locations. Our Comics, Ourselves features comics from the Interference Archive collection as well as private collections on loan. The exhibition includes comic books, graphic novels, DIY comics, and various comics paraphernalia primarily from the United States, 1945 to present. The works range from autobiographical to sheer fantasy, and explore feminism, abortion, racism, cultural identity, social activism, veterans of war, sexual abuse, immigration, public health, civil rights, gender and sexual identity, and more.