Counter-Archive is a hands-on workshop exploring how oppressive systems decide what is worth preserving—and how artists and communities can resist that erasure. Participants gather to discuss whose stories are excluded from official histories, family archives, museums, and media.
The event begins with storytelling and writing, and other creative exercises where participants name moments, people, subcultures, or experiences that feel historically invisible or deliberately forgotten. From there, participants collaboratively design a “counter-archive” backdrop using writing, painting, drawing, attaching objects, collaging, and storytelling.
Select participants may choose to pose for a tintype portrait with the backdrop behind them as an additional part of this archive. The tintype and the backdrop become physical refusals of disappearance: a heavy, singular object insisting on permanence.
This event will be selling tintype portraits the prices will be listed below.
4x5 - $70
5x7 - $85
Participants are not required to purchase a tintype portrait to take part in the workshop. The workshop is free with the price of general admission.