OHMA EXHIBITS: a collection of interactive oral history encounters

Listen Here: 2021 Interactive Oral History Exhibit

Check out our Accessibility Design Notes Scroll straight to the exhibits

Will you stop reading this if we start with the words, “A year ago we were…”? We’ll risk it. A year ago we were scrambling to convert our annual oral history exhibit from the in-person, pop-up event it had been for almost a decade into an online equivalent. Our students braved new digital tools, adapted their scopes and scales once it became clear they wouldn’t have access to their planned fieldwork, and created films with b-roll of the would-be installations they’d instead built at home. We built a VR experience that didn’t really work but gave our visitors a thrill. The words we kept coming back to were valiance and grit.

Seemingly without pause as the year wore on, oral history and adjacent fields in public memory launched into the production & archiving of knowledge about the present moment. Resources about remote interviewing started circulating and evolving. Fieldwork resumed and began. All year it seemed new projects were popping up, about Covid-19 and Black Lives Matter in particular, and about their intersection. Yet as sustaining as it has felt for many of us to be creating during this time, to record essential voices and to trust that essential voices are being recorded, we find ourselves wondering about our colleague Luis C. Sotelo Castro’s simple provocation: “How do we know that people are listening?”

What if we ask it first of ourselves: How do we know that we are listening? How do our narrators know they are being heard?

Across more than a dozen live events over two weeks & paired exhibits that will remain live into the summer, you’ll be invited to experiment with listening. Some events & exhibits may ask you to immerse in a shared present time and you may forget your body at your computer as you join something global. Some may sink you soundly back in your body and release you from time for a while as you reconnect with what is very local. Some may even ask you to step away from the screen. Some may be easy for you to listen to wherever you happen to be and some may be hard. What do you hear when you’re not able to listen?

Last year our goal with going virtual was to create an equivalent experience, and we used technology to approximate dynamics of connection and conversation that we already had in mind. This year we offer only a place to start: LISTEN HERE. We offer this first instruction with urgency, for the oral histories curated within contain vital knowledge, and with curiosity: How will you listen? How will you know that you are listening? What will enter your body? What will come next?

—Carlin Liu Zia & Amy Starecheski, Listen Here Co-Curators
April 9, 2021

 

All Exhibits

Here are all the options! After you check out the exhibit you've come for, come on back and we'll have a few suggestions of what else you might like to explore.
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34th Avenue Oral History participants pose for a photo on the Open Street after the launch event. Narrators Manuela Agudelo, Jim Burke, and Erick Modesto stand with oral historian Bridget Bartolini and dancers from Ballet Folklorico Nueva Juventud, who are wearing traditional Mexican costumes.34th Avenue Oral History Project by Bridget Bartolini
A door to the US Capitol building on Jan 6th, 2021, when it was overrun by insurrectionists trying to stop the certification of President Joe Biden. On the door is scrawled in large crude letters: MURDER THE MEDIA. A semi-transparent U.S. map is overlaid on the door. Photograph by Erin Scott/Reuters, overlay by Lisa R. Cohen.Voices from the Home Front by Lisa R. Cohen
A popular Peruvian breakfast: a tamale served with salsa Criolla (pickled onions) on a square plate. Adjacent is a cup of coffee and a basket full of bread rolls. Photo Credit: ID 209102501 © Juan José Napuri Guevara | Dreamstime.comOral Tradition in the Kitchen: Peruvian Tamales by Margie Cook
A digital painting of a brownstone apartment window. Bordered in black and surrounded by brick, cream-colored curtains part to reveal a pale blue wall, a bright green plant, and a placard taped to the window: Apartment, call 646-801-8823.Palace of Memory by Casey Dooley
Sunrise over Dorothea Dix Park, a site that has witnessed countless lives over thousands of years evidenced by the many paths etched in the landscape.Every Path Speaks by Susan Garrity
The central logo is a circle with the Black Lives Matter clenched fist in the middle of it, but the fist is grasping a microphone. The importance of the logo is our shared support for Black Lives Matter on the show, as well as the goal of the show, to bring diverse stories to the world from people who have historically not had a seat at the table.A black logo on a light gray background. Around the circle is the name of the “show” or exhibit, “Making Meaning: An Oral History”.Making Meaning: An Oral History Project by Michael Giannetti
The Student Veteran Memorial pictured here was built by Chicago sculptor Lorado Taft, who built the sculpture to honor Hillsdale College students who fought and died during the American Civil War. The head of a weathered statue, a young soldier in cap and uniform, fills the foreground while a waving American flag drops out of focus in the background.From the Armory to the Classroom by Elizabeth Jefimova
Pink, blue, and white text on a rainbow prismatic background. Big pink text with a blue shadow reads 'bodyhome maker.' Smaller white text underneath reads 'a Working 2050 experience.' The background image is distorted as if glitching.bodyhome maker by Kae Bara Kratcha
A sleepy kitten, a man in pajamas, a jug of milk, a moog synthesizer, a leaping sheep, and a digital alarm clock float around the moon in a surreal dreamscape. The words "Down Will Come Baby" float diagonally across the image.Down Will Come Baby: Secrets of Sleep from Friends and Strangers by Seth Langer
A bright red door with a golden push bar rests open, revealing a large, empty room with high ceilings and green and white walls. The inside of the room is blurry, but it is reminiscent of a school gymnasium. The room is bright, either from lights or natural sunlight.Reflections on Teaching, Learning, and Care through Education Narratives Project by Jennie Morrison
Image collage displays three femmes.SHEDDINGSOMETHINGSHED DING by Brandon Perdomo
This image is a multiple exposure of three images: 1) the backside of a postcard from the Phillips Collection (Washington, DC) that Cosby Hunt sent to his father; 2) a family portrait of a young Cosby in-between his parents, Betty & Ike; and 3) Panel No. 1 of The Migration Series by Jacob Lawrence. Written on the postcard is a note from Cosby to his father. The note references the last thing he did with his mother: Seeing Jacob Lawrence speak in Akron, OH. Cosby closes by expressing his desire to see The Migration Series exhibition with his father.Real World History: Generations in Conversation by Max Peterson
It is a poster for the exhibit. It shows a wailing widow of 1984 Sikh Genocide in New Delhi, India, during her oral history interview in 2020. The backdrop photo is one of dozens of stone slabs engraved with names of victims of 1984, placed in an enclosure inside a historical Gurudwara (Sikh temple) in New Delhi, Rakab Ganj, bang opposite the Indian Parliament. The enclosure is christened "Wall of Truth".The Victims of November by Harpal Singh
Acrylic painted bust of Black person (Shoulders to head). Face, from chin to forehead, is obscured by paint—no features are defined. Framing the face are a series of collaged flowers and green vegetation. A shell is collaged and pasted upon the ear of the bust. Painted/Collaged by Taylor Thompson, 2020."Tell Me About That World": Speculative Archives + Black Feminist Listening Practices by Taylor Thompson
Chinese herb store, barbecue, clinic, fruit store, shopping mall...Elements that constitute a typical Chinatown. A derivatve work of Toronto Chinatown, created with watercolor brush pen.Chinatown: The Stories We Cherish by Nina Zhou

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