Research, Workshops & Events

NEW YORK CITY
August 12 – 20, 2023

Transmigrating Cassettes Vol. 1 Workshop
August 18, 4 – 8 PM

The Africa Center
1280 5th Ave New York, NY 10029

SITAAD invites the public to participate in a collective gathering themed Augustus F. Sherman’s photographs and under-examined histories of early migration. The workshop will include archival presentations, dialogue, sounds, small plates and refreshments.

This event aims to prioritize the Somali community but is open to all.

MINNEAPOLIS
August 20 – September 16, 2023

Kaydka Reerka / Family Archives Workshop
September 3, 2 – 5 PM

Soomaal House Gallery
2200 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55404

This workshop led by SITAAD (Leyla Degan and Naima Hassan) explores Somali family archives. It provides an opportunity to learn about archiving and will be introduced by Kaamil A. Haider, co-director and archivist at Soomaal House.

Materials from the Soomaal House Archive will prompt us to consider the conservation of Somali family photographs. In the workshop, alternative strategies of archiving connected to the centrality of Somali oral traditions will also be explored. Somali music cassettes will feature in the workshop; therefore, participants are invited to bring family cassettes and 1~5 photographs to the scanning session to take advantage of this opportunity.

The workshop will include light refreshments.
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Transmigrating Cassettes Vol. 1 Workshop
September 9, 2 – 5:30 PM

Liberal Arts Engagement Hub
University of Minnesota
Room 120, 310 Pillsbury Dr. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455

‘Tacabbir’ is a Somali nautical term referring to crossers of the sea. It is composed of the Somali word ta’ab (effort/work) and Arabic abara (to cross over).

Following their first workshop held at the historic Africa Center, SITAAD invites the public in Minneapolis to a workshop themed on their project Transmigrating Cassettes Vol. 1 which remediates Augustus F. Sherman’s Somali photographs and the troupe’s under-examined deportations.

In 1914, Chief Registry Clerk Augustus F. Sherman photographed a large group of Somali passengers from French Somaliland at Ellis Island Immigration Station. At the station, the group were processed as a performing troupe that arrived for exhibition purposes with Barnum & Bailey Circus. On the same day, in a letter addressed to the U.S. Department of Labour Ellis Island Immigration Inspector John F. Mann declared that at the “expiration of their tour,” each troupe member would leave the United States. The workshop will address the potential of uncovering colonial archives using sonic methods, along with an introduction to audio-visual methods. Workshop attendees will be invited to contribute to the project through cassette recordings and writings.

The workshop will include a Somali music cassette listening booth, dialogues, small plates, and refreshments.
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presenting Transmigrating Cassettes Vol. 1
September 15, 5:30 – 8:00 PM

REGISTER HERE

Soomaal House Gallery
2200 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55404

The public is invited to the concluding presentation by Soomaal House Archive Fellows-in-residence SITAAD (Leyla Degan and Naima Hassan). Over the course of the residency, the fellows have developed the first iteration of their project Transmigrating Cassettes in various settings, including Milan, Amsterdam, New York City, New Jersey, and Minneapolis. In the Twin Cities, the fellows have benefited from a rich program delivered by Soomaal House of Art, Immigration History Research Center Archives (IHRCA), and The Liberal Arts Engagement Hub.

The presentation will delve into the fellow’s sonic-research methodology and their activation of Augustus F. Sherman’s Somali Photographs. The fellows will provide a walk-through of their archival research visits to Ellis Island, New York Public Library, Drew University (GCAH) and their findings. The presentation will conclude with a sonic offering.

The presentation will include light refreshments.

About the project
Transmigrating Cassettes is a sonic container for SITAAD research interventions on dispersed colonial collections. It instrumentalises the audio cassette as an archival and discursive tool. 

The first cassette series examines Augustus F. Sherman’s photography collection of Somali passengers who arrived from French Somaliland to Ellis Island Immigration Station in 1914. With the guidance of Soomaal House of Art, SITAAD will undertake collections research on the seventy-five Somali passengers, who are described in official bureaucratic records as a performing troupe who arrived for exhibition purposes. The troupe’s arrival, performances, detainment, and eventual deportation, are contained in collections across the United States. To engage the public, SITAAD will host workshops and symbolic gatherings in Minneapolis and New York City. The volume is developed with research support and guidance from Kaamil A. Haider, director of Soomaal House Library & Archive Center, and Louis Takács, initiator of the project Let Me Get There: Visualizing immigrants, transnational migrants & U.S. citizens abroad, 1904-1925.

Future iterations of the project will investigate Somali participation in the economies of international colonial exhibitions in new geographies in association with practitioners, communities, collectives, and institutions. The cassettes will map sonic strategies for transmuting colonial histories in the present and coalesces into a symphonic archive on Somali performing troupes and their itinerant trajectories across the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean.

Volumes in the series will be dispersed in various locations and made accessible on both SITAAD and Soomaal House of Art’s archives.