The Archive is ALIVE

Mia Barnett, Derek Benig, Habiba Hassaan, Linda Wei

Presented by VC Archives Artist-in-Residence program

Screenings:

Saturday, May 2nd | 11am to 8pm

Sunday, May 3rd | 11am to 7pm

Then & Now Workshop:

Saturday, May 2nd | 5:30pm to 7pm

LA Artcore | 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles, CA 90012

Collective Artist Statement

This exhibition brings together four projects developed through the inaugural VC Archives Artist-in-Residence program, which invites artists to engage the VC Archives as a site for research, experimentation, and new creative process. The residency emphasizes exploration and working with archival materials to ask new questions, test forms, and imagine new ways of activating history. 

Through historical media, virtual reality, and participatory installation, the works examine how stories are preserved, contested, and reclaimed over time. They explore archives not as static repositories of the past, but as living systems shaped by memory, community, and reinterpretation. 

The exhibit traces stories from the activists behind the grassroots struggle for Japanese American redress to the unresolved injustice of the 1871 Los Angeles Chinese Massacre, and from the evolving cultural legacy of Tuesday Night Cafe – the longest-running Asian American open mic series – to Then & Now, an interactive exhibition and workshop exploring concepts of home, immigration, and belonging.

Together, these works reveal the archive as something continually rewritten through acts of remembering, storytelling, and care. In assembling fragments of testimony, images, and lived memory, The Archive is ALIVE invites visitors to consider the non-linear nature of art and life. 

What we remember, and how we choose to remember, is itself a living thing. It’s an open invitation to listen, question, and find our place in a history still being written.