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USA

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6:00 PM-8:00 PM, PT

On Archiving Punk

Conversation | Inside the San Francisco Punk Archive with Penelope Houston, Freya Channing, and Christina Moretta

  • Goethe-Institut San Francisco, San Francisco, CA

  • English
  • Free and open to the public
Free Tickets!

Three Women Goethe-Institut e.V. / Private

Three women Goethe-Institut e.V. / Private

What happens when a subculture becomes history? And who gets to preserve it?

Take a look inside the San Francisco Public Library’s Punk Archive and explore the stories, artifacts, and creative communities that shaped San Francisco’s punk history.

The evening offers a behind-the-scenes look at the archive as a growing, community-built collection, exploring how punk materials enter the archive, how provenance helps us understand their histories, and how archivists process, preserve, and make these collections accessible. The event also highlights the collaborative nature of punk archiving, including the important roles of donors and contributors, and what it means to care for fliers, photographs, and other ephemera from an underground cultural movement.

The event will feature Penelope Houston of the Avengers, who started the San Francisco Punk Archive with the support of the San Francisco Public Library, which holds key punk materials and ephemera; Freya Channing, archivist of the San Francisco Punk Archive and manager of the Little Maga/Zine Collection; and Christina Moretta, photo curator and manager of the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library, the official archives for the City and County of San Francisco.
 

  • Christina Moretta is Photo Curator and Manager of the San Francisco History Center at the San Francisco Public Library, the official archives for the City and County. She oversees a collection of more than two million photographs documenting San Francisco and the Bay Area. An archivist, librarian, rights manager, and educator, she helps researchers unlock and understand San Francisco’s unique history. Moretta holds a B.A. (History and Women’s Studies), an M.L.I.S., and an M.A. in History - and loves delivering fresh, fact-rich journeys through San Francisco’s past.
     

  • Freya Channing is an archivist for the San Francisco Punk Archive and manages the Little Maga/Zine Collection at the San Francisco Public Library. She began her library career at the Prelinger Library before earning an M.L.I.S. from the University of Pittsburgh. Drawing on a personal love for underground publications and independent print, she works directly with local collectors and donors to build, describe, and preserve the library's collections of San Francisco punk ephemera and print materials.
     

  • As a teenager, in 1977, Penelope moved from Seattle to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. Quickly her career in visual arts was side-tracked by the formation of the critically acclaimed proto-punk band, the Avengers. Since then she has performed over 1000 shows with the Avengers and her award-winning solo band throughout the USA and Europe. Venues include CBGB’s, The Whisky a Go Go, Winterland Ballroom, as well as Mabuhay Gardens, SFMOMA, and the De Young Museum. She has released thirteen albums on Warner Brothers and other labels with a musical career well-documented in publications from Newsweek to Slash. Alongside her career in music she pursues writing, painting, drawing and zine-making. In 2015, while working for the San Francisco Public Library’s Special Collections, Penelope instigated the creation of the SF Punk Archive and continues to assist in its curation to this day.

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