On April 24, Kennedy Arnette Mitchell, LMC ’24, gave an interactive, in-person demonstration of their thesis through their lecture, Creating Living Archives, in the Price Gilbert Library Scholars Event Network space to an audience of engineering faculty and fellow students.

Mitchell’s work proposes a cultural solution to the problem of incomplete communal and intergenerational memory. They describe memory keeping as the respectful, long-term piecing together of a family or community’s history through conversations and physical documents or artifacts.

Their work, developed during their time at Tech, is heavily influenced by their past experiences with their families and the various communities they have been a part of.

One of the novelties of Mitchell’s work is the fact that they may be the first student at Tech to give a live demonstration of their thesis, according to the description of the event published by the School of Literature, Media and Communication (LMC).

In an interview after the event, Mitchell gave the Technology more background information about how they became involved in their research.

They describe the fact that they preserved natural memories in their own family as a great source of inspiration for their work.

“I had a personal project that I had been working on for a long time and I wanted to be able to spend time on it during my studies. And in that, I went to my advisor, (and) I said, ‘Hey, it’s my graduate semester, I want to do a final project.’ She kind of discouraged me from doing a traditional thesis and encouraged me to do an independent study instead because that’s a better option. Especially for a mixed-media artist like me, it gives you more freedom in what you create.” Mitchell said.

Mitchell went on to explain how they asked one of their professors to be their mentor for the project.

“I went to my favorite professor, Professor Thornton, whose work I admire and his classes I really enjoyed, and I maintained a good relationship with him, you know, checked all the boxes, and I was like, ‘Hey. So this is what I have so far. I just want to be guided with a certain amount of time,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell came to Tech from California, where they also spent time as a horticulture educator and grassroots community organizer.

“I started writing about this effort in 2022. But the efforts to bring back memories preceded this by many years. I was a memory keeper, even when I was gardening, but I just didn’t realize it. But it was for the same feeling. And coming to Tech has given me the language and space to expand what I do,” Mitchell said.

The two core aspects of Mitchell’s design include a physical archive, created from documents and artifacts by the memory keepers, and the memory keepers themselves as the embodiment of the archive and its practices.

Mitchell raises the question of how you can find the potentially lost parts of your history by reaching out to your family and friends.

This includes having curious and sometimes difficult conversations with the elderly, not to judge their past, but because that past provides context for the experiences of the current generation. It also involves collecting artifacts from their lives, including photos and documents, as artifacts of one’s own story.

In a hands-on demonstration, Mitchell explained one key detail of their research: the importance of context when collecting physical documents.

In the case of their grandmother’s photo album, the individual photos it contains serve as one layer of artifacts in their family’s history. Yet the particular arrangement of the photographs in the album serves as another, equally important artifact of their grandmother’s experience with those memories.

Mitchell showed the audience scans of the album with the collage-like pages intact. They couldn’t delete and scan the individual photos without destroying the context of their arrangement.

By collecting data that has existed in fragmented and potentially neglected or oppressed states and reinvigorating them according to the values ​​set out in their research, Mitchell illustrates for the public how such practices can also impact our elders. Mitchell asks, “How can I give them something of themselves back?”

Another striking aspect of Mitchell’s work is their belief in the “power of naming” in articulating new ideas. They discuss the personal practice of naming as an act of empowerment and of reclamation, and even consider the history of weaponized naming in the legacy of imperialism.

In this sense, Mitchell has coined two terms that summarize the core concepts of their research: ‘mosaic appreciation’ and ‘perennial remembrance’.

Mosaic assessment “describes the cyclical process of examining a memory or value system as it involves disruption, reorientation (and/or) connection.”

Eternal memory “refers to a deep inner knowing instilled by ancestral traditions and recent generational practices. (It) refers to the way in which we, together with the land itself, embody a memory of all that came before.”

The Technology Mitchell also asked about other opportunities they had found through their work.

“Earlier this semester I organized a workshop. I was really proud of that. I hosted it at For Keeps bookstore. It’s a black bookstore on Auburn Avenue with rare black books and ephemera, and hosting a workshop there during Black Futures Month, February, really opened my mind to how this work is received and the impact it can have on different people, Mitchell said.

Mitchell also commented on the educational environment at Tech and how it has helped them develop as students over the years.

“As I said when I talked about my application essay, I applied and said that I think learning is most valuable when it is done in the community. And that couldn’t be more true, because spaces like the CoLab on campus, in the Skiles building, OMED, ​​simply in an environment of students, people who just want to expand their craft and promote their ideas, people who really I am also motivated and it is very nice to be around.” Mitchell said

Mitchell’s work will be self-published later this year in a workbook titled “The Memory-Keeper’s Handguide.”