The core philosophy of Remains // An Archive is grounded in Black feminist thought and practice, inspired by the work of scholars such as Saidiya Hartman, Marisa Fuentes, Elizabeth Alexander, and Jennifer Nash among others. As a microlab, we seek to recover and amplify the intimate, rebellious, and wayward lives and experiences of those who remain unfree, enacting interdisciplinary and collaborative practices of storytelling, digital mapping, curation, and reflection that:

provide spaces of refuge, collaboration, and creativity for those in the present grappling with the adversities of bigotry, loss, separation, and death.

(re)make and maintain a space for lost, fragmented, silenced, and seemingly unrepresentable [hi]stories.

grieve and remember those in the past whose lives and stories have been silenced, erased, and relegated to archival margins.

remain in solidarity, hope, and in anticipation of those in the future who will inherit our knowledge of the past, and the fruit(s) of our present-day collaborative labors.

“Horrible things take place. Nevertheless, survival is possible. Hope can gain ground, and generations can be sustained. When we bear into the future the full knowledge of our past, we walk with hearts unfolded. We recognize the brutality of our species and as well the light in our spirits. We see that nothing is preserved… without brash acts of love and wild visions of continuance.”
– Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake