Alice Proujansky and Randi Malkin Steinberger engage in a critical conversation regarding archives. As artists working with archives in two different approaches, their conversation will hone in on questions of objectivity, preservations, grief, relief, and patina versus decay.

As part of the Activator program for juniors and seniors living in Berkshire County, Steinberger and Proujansky acted as artist educators and workshop facilitators to bring teens through their process of grappling with critical questions regarding the archive as medium and inspiration.

Steinberger is a long-term artist in residence at MASS MoCA, who opened an exhibition titled The Archive of Lost Memories, in Building 8, Floor 1. The exhibition is on view through June 2025.

Before their conversation, 3–4pm, the Activators, Proujansky, and Steinberger will be present in Steinberger’s exhibition. Come and join us to meet the artists and activators, and see the exhibition. This exhibition requires museum admission.

Proujansky’s archive-driven photobook, Hard Times are Fighting Times, is available for purchase in the R&D Store online and in-store. You can find it online here.

About the Artists:
Randi Malkin Steinberger’s experience as a photographer was shaped by her studies in Italy, where she lived for ten years while launching a photography school and gallery. She has published two books of her collaborations with renowned Italian artist Alighiero Boetti Accanto al Pantheon (Prearo Editore), and Boetti by Afghan People: Peshawar, Pakistan, 1990, (RAM Publications). Damiani published her latest book No Circus, a collection of photos of structures colorfully tented for fumigation in Los Angeles. She has produced artists’ books that are part of the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Art Institute and Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Among her moving picture projects, the documentary Holi-days (2002) aired on the Sundance Channel and screened at IDFA, as well as other film festivals. She has made multiple music videos for Hen House Studios for artists such as Sunny War, B. Wurtz and Particle Kid. Steinberger’s books, No Circus and Boetti By Afghan People, are available for purchase in MASS MoCA’s Research & Development Store.

Alice Proujansky is a photographer and quilter looking at family labor: birth, work, motherhood, and identity. Her photobook, Hard Times are Fighting Times (Gnomic Book, 2023), uses archival and documentary images to look at the legacy of radical activism in her family. It was shortlisted for a 2024 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award and the Rencontres d’Arles Author Book Award, and was selected for exhibition through Baxter St’s Mid-Career Artists Initiative. She is currently working on a photobook about culturally responsive birth work and a photography and quilting project about psychological formation and motherhood.

Alice’s work has been published by Aperture, The Guardian, The New Republic, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Photo District News, The Intercept, The Nation, Virginia Quarterly Review, and others. She has received support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, International Women’s Media Fund, Magnum Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Peleh Fund, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and Women Photograph. Her work has been exhibited at the Canadian Center for Architecture, Museum of the City of New York, Nathan Cummings Foundation, New York University, Photoville and United Photo Industries. Proujansky has led workshops for Aperture, the Bass Museum, Fotografiska, the Magnum Foundation, Working Assumptions, and others. She was the lead curriculum writer for Aperture On Sight, a photography and visual literacy curriculum, and her first book, Go Photo! An Activity Book for Kids was published by Aperture in 2016. A member of Women Photograph, Alice grew up in Greenfield, MA. She graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and lives in Brooklyn with her family.