Archival Interventions (with Scissors!): Zine- and Buttonmaking as Resistance at UCSC Special Collections & Archives

As is intrinsic to most repositories, the collections within the University Archives at UC Santa Cruz are interwoven with bias. Collections materials unevenly represent student life and experience, eliding certain knowledge, identities, and expression across the documented history of the university. In response and resistance to these elisions, UCSC Special Collections and Archives developed the "Zine Art Party," a critical zine- and buttonmaking series hosted in Special Collections and Archives. At these events–usually held during finals week–students are invited to cut, remix, collage, and otherwise intervene upon the archive to tell their own stories. The "Zine Art Party"" has three major objectives: to welcome students into Special Collections and Archives and foster a sense of belonging in the space, to critically activate collections materials, and to empower students to pursue arts-based research methodologies. Librarian Sam Regal will set the "Zine Art Party" program in situ by outlining the role, utility, and activist potentialities of critical making as a teaching methodology and research practice, with particular attention paid to the political implications of experimentation and play.