PLEXUS

On February 19th we commemorate the International Day against LGBTphobia in Sports celebrating the birthday of Justin Fashanu, born in Nigeria in 1961, and the first football player openly gay during his active professional  career in the England's Premier League. His process of coming out was the end of this career and even of his life when he was uncapable of afford an unproven accusation of sexual abuse in 1998. (By http://www.7sur7.be/7s7/fr/1510/Football-Etranger/article/detail/757282/2009/03/10/Un-club-de-football-pour-gays-voit-le-jour-en-Angleterre.dhtml, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24030254) Founded in 2008, The Justin Campaign was created in his memory by the LGBTQ+ community in London. With homophobia still prevalent at both grassroots and professional level, the campaign’s aims include raising awareness through a strong focus on art, events, education, and sport. The Justin Campaign’s stated goals include seeking "to challenge the stereotyp...

In the last July issue (no. 175) of Archives and Human Rights , the newsletter of the ICA's Section on Archives and Human Rights  (ICA-SAHR) , we know about the difficulties of Lesbian women in Austria and Germany during the 1940s and 50s thanks to the documents kept by the Arolsen Archives. The Arolsen Archives are a unique international organization that results as a consequence of the end of World War II. In 1943, the International section of the British Red Cross was asekd by the Headquarters of the Allied Forces to set up a registration and tracing service for missing people. The organization was formalized under the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces and nmaed Central Tracing Bureau (CTB) a year later. Once finished the war, the bureau was moved from London to Versailles, and then to Germany. first in Frankfurt am Main and finally settled in Arolsen (changed its name to Bad Arolsen in 1997), northern Hessen. This beautiful Baroque town was not destroyed because ...

Every December 1st since 1988 we commemorate the fight against HIV/AIDS disease and the social stigmatization suffered by HIV+ people. Coinciding with this date we visit three archival cases on documenting and recovering the memory of this health and social crisis started in 1981. The first experience leads us to Sweden.   The Face of AIDS Film Archive  is an online film archive consisting of almost 800 hours of documentary film material about the global HIV and AIDS epidemic. The archive is based at Karolinska Institutet University Library in Stockholm, Sweden. The largest part of the collection consists of film director  Staffan Hildebrand’s  documentation of the AIDS epidemic 1986-2021. The archive also contains contributions from researchers, activists and others involved in the HIV response. Online exhibitions with essays and selected films on specific themes are regularly published on the website. The “Face of AIDS Timeline 1981-2017” contains a collection of s...

In March 2024 the ICA General Secretariat, leaded by Carlos Serrano Vásquez, launched the idea of creating a working group about sex-affective and gender diversity (SAGD) archives and archivists. The group started working in the elaboration of an Initial Statement Document to define the sense, missions and goals of the Group. After two months of meetings and discussions, the final version of the initial document  and the whole group were presented in a webinar held Thursday, June 27th. With the document, we could enjoy also with the presentation of three initiatives related to LGBTQ+ archives & archivists worldwide. Alejandro de la Fuente began the pannel presenting  Yeguas del Apocalipsis  (Apocalypse's Mares), a digital archive resuming the life and work of Pedro Lemebel, a key figure in art and politics in Chile in the last quarter of the 20th century. The second one, Big Tata Paris, was presented by Sam Bourcier. Big Tata  defines itself as the first network ...