Promiscuous Archiving: Notes on the Joys of Curating Black Queer Legacies

On 5 June 2018, the ArQuives in Toronto (formerly the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives) hosted a public conversation between Ajamu and Courtnay McFarlane titled “Promiscuous Archiving: The Joys of Curating Queer Black Legacies.” The exchange published here is a follow-up to that public dialogue. It not only returns to some of the terms, gestures, narratives, and critical provocations of that previous discussion but also expands on several of those issues and questions. In what follows, Ajamu and Courtnay talk with Ronald about their artistic and curatorial practice and about the relationships between joy, desire, collectivity, and archiving. Their dialogue offers both a theory of and about archives as well as reflections on archival practice in relation to Black queer histories.