Queer Archive Work Library

MJ Sanqui

#class project: the Queer.Archive.Work library catalog

Handwritten notes under the heading "Solidarity Infra!" with various points on project considerations, internet control, material threat, and the use of internet as a publishing tool. Handwritten notes about a project discussing library data collection, maps, calibration, and maintenance questions.

early class project ideas and discussions

A screenshot of a spreadsheet titled "QAW Library Log 2022" displaying columns for Title, Year, Author/Artist/Editor, Publisher, Form, Media Type, and Subjects/Category.

here is the current state of the QAW library log, so far entered by me on a single google sheet, but there are a handful of other iterations by other Binch Press / Queer.Archive.Work members. below is what the physical organization of the library looks like today.

A wall of bookshelves filled with various books, folders, documents, and items with signs including "ABORT THE SUPREME COURT" and "WE WILL TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER NO MATTER WHAT."

the qaw library

A handwritten note on blue tape reads "on print/publishing typography on design, on ART" with a heart symbol at the end, attached to a wooden shelf with books on the background. A bookshelf with various books and a sticky note with handwritten words: "Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, Alternative futures, Community building?"

A handwritten note that reads "AVASH BOOK INTERNET" is taped to a wooden shelf filled with books.

attempts at categorizing

The image shows an arrangement of various pipes, wires, and valves attached to a ceiling, with some plastic containers and equipment visible below.

my raspberry pi 3b's future home (dangling from an ethernet cable in the studio's ceiling pipes)

# reflections, moments, insights, questions (in progress)~

when I've talked to people in my life about what this class is about, I've used phrases like "grassroots approaches to the internet" and "learning what and where the internet actually is". the technological infrastructures I interact with seem purposefully elusive and joining this class has helped ground those things in some materiality - I'm frequently returning to ideas of the net infrastructures in our lives as maps, as woven baskets, and as gardens.

right now I'm tending to a garden with my friends, my first ever garden started from seeds. I've also recently become invested in caring for my houseplants and have found daily joy in watching formerly wilting plants start to burst with new growth. tending to quiet growing things has always felt a little abstract to me despite their corporeality - plant growth is mysterious! - and since joining this class, I feel similarly that computational technology and internet structures are becoming less mysterious to me and more placed within the world! trying to set up a situated server feels like tending to my garden.

A collection of potted plants is arranged on a surface near a window with green foliage visible outside. A string stretches along a row of young plants in a garden bed surrounded by dry grass and stones.

some house plants and lettuce seedlings

I move forward from this class with a lot of excitement and many unformed questions that will take shape as I dive more into new threads that have snagged me. this class has really cracked me open with how much I don't know, and how much I didn't know that I didn't know!