Occupy Wall Street (OWS), like other social and political movements of our time, is instantly archival. Continually documented by traditional and new forms of digital and social media, OWS produces an active dialogue with itself, even as it engages with events that unfold in cities across the United States and around the world. How do research, artistic and documentary practices creatively interact with this ongoing, vital and mobile conversation? What are the possibilities and tensions in creating such a living archive?

Across The New School, there has been a wide spectrum of engagement with the movement – from direct involvement at Zuccotti Park and beyond to teach-ins to scholarly commentary to classroom activity – and for a brief time, the university and its galleries even housed an occupation. In an open call in November 2011, a group of faculty members invited TNS students to submit work exploring the implications of creating a living archive of OWS and to actively reflect on the university’s relationship to these events. This call resulted in a collaborative effort among faculty and students to organize an exhibition and a web archive that would encourage continued interchange at the university.

See the living archive HERE.