A lunga conservazione
The project A lunga conservazione (“Long shelf life”) was born in 2020 after the Center took part in the announcement of the public notice for the selection and funding of projects with the aim of gathering, digitalization and database archive creation on LGBT themed historical documentation wanted by PON Inclusione FSE 2014-2020 – Asse 4 “Capacità amministrativa” – Obiettivo specifico 11.1 – Azione 11.1.3 – CUP J55E17000030007, promoted by UNAR (National Office Against Racial Discrimination of Council of Ministers).
This proposed project was developed as a mean of giving historical dignity and acknowledgement to those who, before us, took part in the fight against prejudice and discrimination to advance civil rights in our Country.
The archival heritage preserved in the Center includes, in fact, several personal funds belonging to militants, activists, public figures, as well as those of associations and collectives; it is one of the richest and most complete LGBT+ themed archives in Italy and one of the most relevant in Europe. Many accounts of life and activism, hidden in archives such as ours, were waiting to be told and contextualized into our Country’s history in order to value the experience of Italian LGBTI+ movements. The preservation project, acted on for a long time by the entire community – people of different generations, genders, and kinds, needed an essential step from mere preservation to enhancement.
This kind of enhancement was possible thanks to the Nation-wide collaboration between institutions and associations: besides the Documentation Center, eight LGBTI+ archives also participated with their projects (MIT ArchiviST* Archivi Storia Trans, Circolo di Cultura Omosessuale M. Mieli La Storia in Circolo, Associazione Maurice Diapason, Gay Center Rainbow Digital Memory, Arcilesbica Zami Milano Archivio Indimenticabile, Arcigay Napoli Antinoo Il nostro orgoglio a voce alta, Italia Gay Network (Gay Net) Archivio diffuso, CIRSES Identit@ Narrate). The collective work of these archives allowed the history of Italian LGBTI+ community to emerge – a history there are no textbooks for, and cannot be told without community archives.
These are the guidelines we followed in order to plan our intervention:
– description: in order to turn a cultural heritage into a public resource, it must be described first.
– digitalization: granting access to the descriptions is the base for knowledge and sharing.
– usage: publishing search tools and digitalized material online eases education, research, and preservation of the sources preserved by the Center.
– enhancement: promotion and appreciation of search tools encourages the usage of preserved heritage and creates networks among institutions, associations and individuals.
Obtaining funds allowed us to start a filing, organization, inventorying and digitalization project of three selected nuclei chosen among those part of the complex Center heritage.
The archival funds chosen for the intervention were, specifically:
1. Arcigay Associazione Nazionale
(association documents, correspondence, pamphlets)
2. Posters
(visual documents in varying sizes)
3. Fliers, pamphlets and informational material
(postcards, fliers, promotional material)
In the lapse of time of interest, a total of 2963 documents were analytically described and catalogued.
In order to guarantee coherence among descriptions and respect archival contextualization logics for each digital item, the digital vault provided by the company Promemoria Group was used, through a back-end for description-based activities based on the open source software Pimcore.
Through the operation, the complex heritage was organized and mapped, counting available documents and improving their preservation conditions (conditioning, labelling, placing in available space and used materials).
For what concerns preservation, digitalizing materials made it possible to consult them without access to the original source. The project has overall increased attention and awareness towards the heritage of LGBTI+ historical memory, encouraging research and interdisciplinary studies – including prejudice prevention and contrast to contemporary discrimination.
The announcement managed to catalyze energies, creating a new network among National LGBTI+ archives, which could share tools and suggestions to preserve and enhance documents in the heritage. Byproduct initiatives, created in the context of our project and other national funded projects, have contributed in promoting awareness of the Italian LGBTI+ movement creating great interest among non-specialized audiences as well.
The documents in our archive, once filed and digitalized, will flow into the national portal arranged by Unar along with the documents, gathered across the Nation, from the other archives funded through the announcement.
In order to show the results once the project was completed, the initiative Identità e archivi tra memoria e futuro (Identity and archives between memory and the future) was held Friday, September 17 th 2021 at MAMBo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, in partnership with Ibridamente.it and in the context of Gender Bender Festival: a workshop on the theme of historical LGBTQ+ memory, with a special panel for the analysis of similar archival projects of spreading and publishing through magazines, graphic novels and digital projects.
The initiative featured, among others:
Giuseppe Seminario, president of Arcigay Il Cassero
Daniele Del Pozzo, director of Gender Bender Festival
Agnese Canevari, manager of UNAR – Ufficio Nazionale Antidiscriminazioni Razziali
Paola De Montis, of Soprintendenza Archivistica e Bibliografica dell’Emilia-Romagna (Archival and Bibliographical Superintendence of Emilia-Romagna)
Sara De Giovanni, organizer of the project “A lunga conservazione” of Arcigay Il Cassero
Ludovico Virtù, organizer of the project “ArchiviST*” of MIT – Movimento Identità Trans (Movement of Trans Identity)
Franco Grillini, project “Archivio Diffuso” (Widespread Archive) of Italia Gay Network
Paola Ciandrini, of Ibridamente.it
E. G. Crichton, interdisciplinary artist and teacher
Maddalena Valacchi, Salvatore Renna, of Le avventure di Archinia (Archinia’s adventures)
Enea Brigatti, of Archivio Magazine
Marta Inversini, of Fondazione Mondadori (Mondadori Foundation)
Screening of videos related to the proposed projects with UNAR’s contribution by Associazione Maurice (Turin), Arcilesbica Zami (Milan), CIRSES (Rome).
Link to the full recording of the initiative
Carissime Mele Marce
The printing Carissime Mele Marce (Dearest Rotten Apples), realized as a fanzine is a guide and description of the funds the archival complex is made of, and was printed to give
visibility to the results of the UNAR funded project by the Documentation Center in partnership with Promemoria Group, and with an original graphic project by Laboratorio Zanna Dura.
It was exhibited on October 2 nd 2022 in FRUIT Exhibition – Independent Art Book Fair during the meeting In piena luce (in full light). The fanzine celebrating 40 years of Cassero history was the center of the discussion among Sara De Giovanni, overseer of the Documentation Center “Flavia Madaschi” Cassero LGBTQAI+ Center, Eugenio Nittolo and Andre Tognan from Laboratorio Zanna Dura in Turin and Enea Brigatti, assistant editor of Archivio Magazine.
Browse the fanzine and learn more about the project:
