Discrit presents Archiving the Personal

Discrit (“critical discourse” / “discourse critique”) is an initiative of public knowledge-sharing and discussion. Spanning lectures, seminar-style discussions, critiques, and screenings, Discrit provides the public with programming dedicated to explorations of contemporary art and culture and free, university-quality art education. Discrit is Joey Molina and Chris Fernald.

Joey Molina is a multi-disciplinary artist and scholar working between video, installation, and collage. Their work engages with visual culture as material, object, and ephemera. Molina’s research interests include horror films, queer theory, and new media. They received their BA from Georgia State University in 2013 and will be on track for their MA in Film and Video at Georgia State University in Fall 2020.

Chris Fernald is an artist, writer, and cultural programmer. He is the Co-Founder of Discrit and a Graduate Student in the History of Art at Williams College. His work has been exhibited in group shows in New York and Mexico City, and his poetry and art criticism have seen publication in both Canada and the US. His writing and creative work often examine how modernity’s crises disassemble and re-constitute notions of personhood. Recurring subjects of interest include techno-spirituality, post-human cosmologies, lifestyle minimalism, animism, and the digital’s relation to the afterlife. He received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2013.

Anicka Austin is an Atlanta-based choreographer and archivist curious about the relationship between ephemerality, documentation and legacy. She is a Carolina Academic Library Associate in Wilson Special Collections Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel. In her role with the University Libraries, she has co-faciltated performing arts archiving workshops, collaborated on various library outreach programs and co-created a series of resources for students, faculty and community members to further engage with live performance through scholarly and popular media.

Julie B. Johnson, PhD, is a dance artist and educator working in the intersections of creative practice and research, African Diaspora movement aesthetics, community interaction, and social justice. Julie is on faculty Spelman College in the Department of Dance Performance & Choreography and the African Diaspora & the World Program. She serves as the Curator for Spelman’s lecture series, Inside the Dancers’ Studio, uniting audiences and artists to engage in unique creative practices, innovative scholarship, and leading strategies in the field of dance. Julie is a co-founding editor of The Dancer-Citizen, an online, peer-reviewed, open-access dance journal exploring the work of socially engaged artists; and is Executive Artistic Director of Moving Our Stories, LLC, a exploring the ways memory lives and moves in our bodies. Julie serves as a co-director of The Georgia Incarceration Performance Project, a devised archives-to-performance collaboration bringing the history of incarceration and convict labor in Georgia to life through embodied archival research, and created the associated performance and video installation Idle Crimes & Heavy Work, a focusing on black women’s experiences within this history. Julie earned a PhD in Dance Studies at Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance, where her research focused on meanings and experiences of ‘community’ in a West African Dance class in Philadelphia.

Holly Smith is the College Archivist at Spelman College. She received a B.A. in History and Black Studies from William and Mary, an M.A. in History from Yale University, and an M.S. in Library and Information Science with a concentration in Archival Management from Simmons College. She is passionate about community archives and archival advocacy related to collections for underrepresented groups.