Interference Archive
These people are hardcore anarchists!
The 20th century political activist Emma Goldman once said “No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution” and absolutely stuck to her word, leading rallies and plotting assassinations and being arrested at least five times for the belief of her ideals and her vision of a better world.
We know as much as we do about Emma Goldman because she was a prolific writer, especially when it came to the pamphlets that she would make and distribute in order to further her word to those attending her rallies or even just those who happened to be nearby. It’s easy to look back at that time and feel surprised that her positions on feminism and sexual liberation were so inflammatory, but we have these hard tangible things that tell Goldman’s story and how hard she fought to earn us the life we know now.
The Interference Archive is dedicated to the collection of ephemera documenting social movements, protests and revolutions, particularly those of the 21st century. It is through their work that the words of today’s Emma Goldmans are being preserved and passed on to the next generation.
The Interference Archive was founded in 2011 and was borne out of the personal collections of Dara Greenwald and Josh McPhee. They host 3-4 exhibitions and 80 cultural events per year from their modest Park Slope location, and are dedicated to creating a space for the community.
Their current exhibition is This is Not a Local Struggle: ephemera from the movement to STOP COP CITY. It displays posters, flags, zines, pamphlets, t-shirts and more created in service of the ongoing Stop Cop City movement taking place in the Weelaunee Forest just outside of Atlanta. The short version of the story is that in 2021, the city of Atlanta announced their plans to raze several hundred acres of the Weelaunee forest to build a training facility for their police force and police forces around the country. It has been met by resistence since, which is documented in all its forms in this exhibition.
This wasn’t related to the exhibition but I’ve been to the Interference Archive before and I love going through their button collection.
The works displayed for the This Is Not A Local Struggle exhibition ranged from resources for mutual aid within the community and information on the environmental significance of the Weelaunee Forest to more violent signage encouraging the destruction of property and attacks on the police force. All are given equal weight and all are presented for the viewer’s consideration.
I was particularly taken by the below poster on display— on the night before the exhibition opened, a group pasted these posters on the block around the Archive. The posters declared themselves in opposition to the exhibit, stating that those who put it together were writing a revisionist history of the “forest struggle”. The museum included this poster in the exhibition, with a note explaining that while they had done their best to incorporate multiple viewpoints on the protests, they wanted to do their best to include this anonymous group’s point of view. I think it’s really cool to commit to being a place celebrating protests hard enough that you also celebrate when the protest is about you.
Essentially the story of human history is a long story of protest and power struggles. In virtually every culture’s history there have been a group of people who have benefitted from the sorrow of another group, and there have always been people who have found their mettle and banded together and stood up against those at the top. This has been well documented, but never quite as meticulously documented as in the Interference Archive. I admire their work to document these movements, for better or for worse, so that we might one day look back and have a clear idea of how we got here.
ADMISSION: Free
GIFT SHOP: Yes
BATHROOM: Yes
WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE: Yes
Oct 12: Grey Art Museum
Oct 19: Historic Richmond Town
Oct 26: Grolier Club
we were together and walking around the neighborhood just after you moved in when we first came across this place, right? i remember that with such fondness. i should go back. love you.
SUCH a cool museum, had no idea it existed. Loved looking at all the protest/poster art. Really liked the "if you build it we will burn it" poster.