Event: The Recollectors
Part of Fall 2023 Arts & Cultural Programs
Presented in collaboration with the Generations Project
Saturday, October 21, 2023
Gallery:
About the Event:
On October 21, we welcomed the Recollectors, a digital community and storytelling forum created and dedicated to remembering parents lost to AIDS and supporting the children they left behind, to hold a free, live storytelling program, on-site at the New York City AIDS Memorial. This program was organized by Caroline Falby in partnership with the Generations Project.
About the Collaborators:
The Generations Project was founded to cultivate an intergenerational community and preserve LGBTQ+ history through oral story-sharing. They produce and film live storytelling events and facilitate programs to foster connection and empathy across all ages, classes, and sexual and gender identities enabling the sharing and preservation of our history and telling our stories in our own voices. By revitalizing the oral tradition, we create opportunities for in-person gatherings and community-building, ensuring the handing down of LGBTQ+ experiences to future generations and uplifting marginalized voices. Since 2021, the New York City AIDS Memorial and the Generations Project have collaborated on a number of live, storytelling events at the Memorial site, including the series REVIVAL (June-October 2021) and Meet Me On The Dance Floor (June 2022).
The Recollectors is a digital community and storytelling forum dedicated to remembering parents lost to AIDS and supporting the children they left behind. Founded in 2013 by Alysia Abbott and Whitney Joiner, whose fathers both died of AIDS-related complications, the community has grown to nearly 200 members around the U.S., along with members in Canada, Scotland, Switzerland, and Turkey. Over the years, members’ stories have been collected as original essays, book excerpts, oral histories, interviews, and recordings through our partnership with the oral history organization StoryCorps.
Caroline Falby is an interdisciplinary artist and member of the Recollectors community. She is currently in the production phase of “The Animation of Mortality”, an interactive animation installation that uses oral histories about HIV, to bring attention to lesser-known narratives about the AIDS epidemic. Her work has been exhibited at The Drawing Center, the Spring/Break Art Show, The Bronx Museum, NurtureART, and the Queens Museum. She was granted a Swing Space Residency by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, a Project Fellowship from the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, a BRIC Media Arts Fellowship, the Artcycle MFA Discovers Prize, an AIM Fellowship at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, a Brooklyn Arts Council Grant, a Media/Film grant from NYSCA, a Puffin Foundation Grant, International Artist Residency from NARS and an artist grant from the Peter S. Reed Foundation. Her work has been written about in publications such as the New York Times, artnet magazine, On Curate, and Testudo magazine.
Photography: Avery Brunkus