Building a Feminist and Activist Archive: Challenges, Discussions, and Reflections

Eskalera Karakola (EKKA) is a self-organized feminist social center. EKKA is a feminist symbol not only in Madrid, but across all of Spain. The space is directed by an assembly, the decision-making body of the house. This assembly is composed of the collectives that long inhabited the center, which has changed over the years and has hosted the project in its vastly different stages. I have been immersed in feminist activism in my neighborhood in Madrid while working on my PhD; my own local collective belongs to the larger assembly, whose history had been forgotten until a fateful day at the beginning of 2022. While reorganizing one of the rooms, we discovered 70 miniDVs in a closet capturing EKKA’s activities from 2005 to 2008. In addition, the closet held one hundred VHS tapes and DVDs containing feminist short and feature films from outside the commercial circuit. A forgotten audiovisual archive had miraculously resurfaced.

What would we do with this precious material? A debate quickly emerged and escalated about how best to preserve the tapes, first in the assembly and later in a group created to examine them. In the essay that follows, I present a history of EKKA and its relation to material we found in order to underscore what was at stake in these vital debates. Finally, I will explore the options that we considered: what to do with these materials to preserve them effectively while also reimagining archival practice from a feminist and queer perspective—two impulses that are too often in conflict. We aim to challenge the orthodoxy of archival practice and incorporate corporeal and affective concerns into our discussions. Above all, this essay is dedicated to explaining the process and the possibilities of deciding the destiny of these tapes.

The squatters’ movement in Spain started in the 1980s with a range of tactics and aims.¹ It was an eclectic movement. For the purpose of this article, I will focus on its political tendencies. The movement emerged in response to the property speculation that escalated earlier that decade to defend access to social centers for community members and mitigate the problem of housing inequality. Even as a class movement, however, it was not exempt from upholding certain gender roles and exercising different types of gender-based violence. Although women participated in the movement, specific events signaled that the squatter movement was not, despite everything, a safe space for them.² For that reason, a new group started their own project autonomously, trying to distance themselves from the patriarchal violence endemic to the squatter movement and other leftist collectives.

In November 1996, several women entered an empty house in the neighborhood of Lavapiés in Madrid that had once been a bakery and rehabilitated that space. As it happened, a new criminal code had come into effect that year, making squatting a crime punishable by imprisonment from three to six months, which, on use of violence, could be increased to one and a half years in prison. Just a month earlier, squatters had been violently evicted from the legendary social center Cine Princesa, a squatter cinema in Barcelona. The EKKA feminist project emerged from that context: resistance to police violence and the will to reclaim vital social centers such as the cinema.

The women gathered there were very diverse: some of them came from the feminist movement, others from the lesbian movement, or from the squatters’ movement. A few neighbors got involved in the new project as well. As a result, the bakery zone became a breeding ground for many debates that would concern Spanish feminism. While Spanish feminism was widely perceived as a unified movement (regardless of its profound internal differences), lesbian communities were ostensibly divided between feminist lesbians and autonomous lesbians.³ A key concern was how to share activist spaces with men (inconceivable for the former and fundamental for the latter). In other words, would men be allowed to enter at EKKA? Feminists defended the need for women-only political spaces. Those who came from the squatters’ movement or neighbors who approached the project did not understand this desire.⁴ Nevertheless, EKKA was constituted as a project made by and for women. Over the years various debates have unfolded, including challenges regarding the limitation of the space to cis women and demands that it become open to trans people, nonbinary, and feminist allies.

The institutionalization of the feminist community was another pressure point carried over from the 1980s. The emergence of different “Institutions of Women” in Spain changed the social perception of feminism. Silvia L. Gil has observed three consequences of this institutionalization: the deactivation of its critical capacity, the abandonment of any transgressive content, and the elevation of feminism as a career, therefore stripping it of its vitality as a forum for political activism.⁵ In response, EKKA was forged to reclaim feminism as a grassroots movement.

The building that housed the center was in a state of dilapidation, and its residents faced constant threats of eviction. In 2002 EKKA proposed to the council of Madrid that they be recognized as a self-organized feminist center. Meanwhile, a feminist network of groups around this house grew at a national and international level.⁶ Unfortunately, EKKA was eventually evicted from the house in 2005, but the council partially accepted the proposal and provided two premises near the original location for EKKA to establish an official self-organized feminist center. EKKA would have to pay a small rent (at present, the payment for the premises and associated expenses—electricity, water, insurance—is around 600 Euros per month). The center’s contract with the city was also precarious, with periodical revisions that jeopardized the future of the project about every five years. Both size and material conditions of the new spaces were far from what was requested. EKKA had asked to keep their original building, after it was rehabilitated, or to move to a space of similar dimensions. But their new accommodations were not only much smaller and partitioned; they also needed a lot of work (such as plumbing, electricity, soundproofing) that had to be carried out and paid for by the members of EKKA.

The hard-won contract was experienced as a bittersweet victory. In spite of it all, the CSO Eskalera Karakola (CSO is the Spanish acronym for squatter social center) was transformed into La Casa Pública de Mujeres La Eskalera Karakola (Public House of Women La Eskalera Karakola). The word “public” refers to the fact that the space was provided by the city, but also to the self-managed nature of the project. Both spaces that composed the new EKKA hosted different feminist groups that became agitators of activism. Other key feminist groups in Madrid included Las Gudus or La Eskina de Safo, an autonomous organization of lesbian activists who belonged to this project. EKKA also hosted Grupo de Trabajo Queer whose members are currently active academic scholars in queer theory. In 2005, they published El eje del mal es heterosexual, one of the foundational books in Spanish queer theory.⁷ Likewise, Precarias a la Deriva carried out various research projects and published A la deriva por los circuitos de la precariedad femenina.⁸ Territorio Doméstico was made up of politically organized domestic workers who had been immersed in the feminist movement for the past fifteen years.

Understanding EKKA’s history gives us necessary context for framing the challenges and debates that have swirled around the question of its archive. As both a public and a private space, an institutional and an independent movement, EKKA has always pursued a hybrid approach.⁹ Its evolution from a squat house to a quasi-institutional center was driven by deep tensions and passionate debates, exemplified by open disagreements about how to preserve EKKA’s audiovisual archives.

First, let me describe in greater detail the materials unearthed within this archive. They include 70 miniDV tapes recorded from 2005 to 2008. The authors of these tapes were members of EKKA who wanted to create an audiovisual archive of everything that was happening in their space and across feminist networks in Madrid. They reveal meetings, workshops, actions, and roundtables and include interviews with activists and other members. For example, there is an interview with Empar Pineda, a key figure in the history of lesbian feminism in Spain. The tapes capture footage of International Women’s Day (March 8) demonstrations, other marches for reproductive rights as well as protests not directly related to gender, such as the march for “Independent Life” (a movement that defends the rights of people with disabilities). They also document ongoing renovations of the new premises. These tapes bear witness to women’s camaraderie, their laughter, and their hard work.

Another shelf in the cabinet holds around one hundred VHS tapes and a dozen DVDs with short and feature films made outside the commercial circuit. The origin of this collection includes film festival submissions (which were screened at EKKA meetings) as well as recordings of gatherings and works programmed by a feminist video club. Many of these films were produced in Madrid, such as Chueca: Buscando una identidad (Chueca: Searching for an identity, 2003), a documentary directed by Juana Macías about an LGBT neighborhood that was gentrifying in the 1990s, and A la deriva (por los circuitos de la precariedad femenina) [Adrift (through the circuits of female precariousness), 2003], a documentary by and about a feminist research group, Precarias a la Deriva, at EKKA that focused on the precariousness of women workers. The club curated international films such as Butch Mystique (US, dir. Debra A. Wilson, 2003); Brother Outsider, The Life of Bayard Rustin (US, dir. Nancy Kates, Bennet Singer, 2003); Queeruption London 2002 (UK, 2002); and Pussies from Outer Space (US, dir. Nanci Gaglio, 2002), revealing the international reach of its collection. There were not only documentaries in that closet. It also contained compilations of performance videos by Erreakzioa-Reacción, an artistic and activist collective that engages with feminist debates through their cultural and visual work. Anyone belonging to EKKA could borrow them, write their name on a list, and return them back to the closet after watching them.

Initially, we wanted to preserve and share all audiovisual content that could be deemed interesting, which seems to encompass the entire collection. Having been stored in a closet for years, there was an urgent risk of damage or loss if these tapes were not cared for immediately. But EKKA lacked technological resources to digitize them or even an electronic adapter to view the obsolete MiniDV cassettes on an ordinary VHS player.

The trials performed to digitize the archive were done with borrowed equipment. We obtained a miniDV camera to verify that the tapes were still playable. We were able to digitize some of them using a stereo RCA/phono jack cable and a video or S-video cable hooked up to a computer, with special software to visualize the images.

As the program captures the footage in real time, this presented an obvious time management problem—the DVDs, VHS, and MiniDV tapes contain around 250 hours of audiovisual material. Also, the resulting file size of one tape is over 2 GB, requiring storage capacity beyond the group’s means. Simply put, full digitization required continuous time and digital storage space that the group lacked. Even with reduced file size, where can all these hours of film be archived? Would it make them more accessible not to digitize them? Would transferring their formats provide a reasonable long-term solution? As the pace of technological obsolescence gains speed, it remains doubtful that there will be any definitive solution to preserve these materials and ensure their wider accessibility.

Beyond recorded film and video, the closet held memoirs, letters, fanzines, magazines, dossiers, posters, books, and more. They register twenty-five years of feminist work, personal relationships, national and international networks, and political activism. Some materials are mundane but relevant to EKKA’s history, such as meeting minutes or discussions about occupying the old bakery. One of the papers documents a registry of group members’ nicknames and pseudonyms (including names of famous actresses, singers, or funny aliases) along with the list of necessary tools to squat in a building. Members agreed to refer to this checklist in all communication as the “wedding list.” What would an EKKA “wedding” be without a hammer, pliers, and a hacksaw? You can find these papers in a dossier of EKKA’s first year, which also contains notes from women who had stayed up all night on the very first days. They describe the mood and energy of the night—if it was calm or if members were terrorized by the sound of police sirens and street fights.

The materials are eclectic and often chaotically organized. Among folders and notebooks, there is a box with dozens of postcards from other collectives and individuals who had written to the EKKA over the course of a decade. There are hundreds of photocopies of feminist articles, posters of parties or workshops celebrated at the house, feminist magazines and fanzines from Spain (but also from other countries), and flyers for protests. Unlike the audiovisual materials, these print collections remain accessible to the people who inhabited EKKA. Most are labeled in boxes or big folders, although they are not cataloged. The audiovisual materials, by contrast, is completely out of reach because of the outdated technology necessary to view them.

What to do with this treasure trove? The group initially considered donating all the films to a public institution, because it lacked the technological tools necessary to preserve them, and there seemed to be little motivation initially to self-manage the project. The obvious choice was to donate everything to the nearby National Museum, Museo Nacional y Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. EKKA approached the museum, which urged EKKA to make an inventory of all the tapes. Consequently, a small group was formed to itemize all the audiovisual materials. They started by creating an Excel spreadsheet with all of the film titles. However, many members expressed doubts about handing over the history of their feminist self-managed center to a national museum, so they decided to pursue different options, which they then presented to the assembly. Group members disagreed about how and where to donate the materials, or if it was even necessary to donate them at all.

Debates about archives, activism, institutions, and their relation to EKKA’s self-management drove the agenda. Three possibilities materialized: a donation to the National Museum; a donation to another feminist collective or organization; or to keep the material at EKKA. The first possibility was strongly considered because the museum has worked with memory and activist archives in recent years, such as Archivos del común (Archives of the common), an initiative led by Red Conceptualismos del Sur (Southern Conceptualisms Network). Archivos organized seminars at the Museo Nacional y Centro de Arte Reina Sofía to question the practices around the archives, activism, and art. Afterward, they published the conference proceedings of the second and third editions, which are downloadable for free.¹⁰ In 2012, ¿Archivo Queer? (Queer archive?) aimed to inscribe queer memories of the history of social movements in Madrid by donating fanzines, magazines, videos, photographs, and posters from the first queer groups in Madrid, such as LSD, La Radical Gai, and RQTR, to the museum’s archive.¹¹ But most of the material is now inaccessible to the public, even though it is housed in a public institution. In these examples, we observed contradictions between theory and practice, revealing the lack of flexibility within institutional structures. To consult these materials, you must be accredited as an investigator, view them on a special table in front of the librarians, and not photograph any of the documents. Ironically, this archive holds an important collection of queer zines, some of which state on their cover, “copy and disseminate,” in reference to anti-copyright restrictions, but they can no longer be spread out.¹²

These examples also illustrate the tension between access and preservation, which are both essential and often mutually exclusive. Once the museum acquires any material, it is subjected to the museum’s protocols for conservation and preservation. Dealing with an institution of this magnitude fueled discussions and outrage about why some memories are deemed more valuable than others. But we were running out of time. Storage resource scarcity put pressure on the tapes’ material degradation. For example, sound is not always comprehensible in recorded meetings, and even when it is, topics can appear trivial, such as management issues or preparations for a party. But we believe that ordinary archives give necessary context for the visibility of the exceptional. Across their expansive contents, these tapes bear witness to tactics and histories of feminist organizing. Their poor quality speaks to the woeful lack of Spanish popular media to engage with feminist or lesbian issues at the time (in either fiction or documentary genres).

Furthermore, national archives exist at the will of the political regime in power, which could undertake partial or total decimation of the archive on a whim.¹³ As Jorge L. Marzo and Patricia Mayayo observe, archives serve to “preserve (but also to order, control and even manipulate) memory” (my translation).¹⁴ Handing over all the tapes to a public institution, such as a national and state-controlled museum, would radically endanger them if there were a political change in the country. At best, donation to a public institution would depoliticize them, as state institutions like museums tend to co-opt material created by counterhegemonic foundations and turn it into something manageable. As it turns out, the presence of feminist and queer collections did not actually change the national museum’s general narrative, which continues to have a strong male presence in its permanent collection and in its vision of art.¹⁵ It is precisely from these critiques, writes Maite Muñoz Iglesias, “that new models of archives were born, the so-called dissident archives, community archives or anarchives—that collect and preserve memories displaced by official discourses, highlighting the value of the archive concerning cultural, social and/or emancipatory movements” (my translation).¹⁶

Toward that end, the group considered donating the collection to one of the Women’s Documentation Centers and Libraries established in the late 1970s. Some of these centers belonged to organizations or collectives from the feminist movement, while others were directly affiliated with universities or governmental institutions, such as the Women’s Institute and information centers from different councils.¹⁷ As of 1993, these three types of organizations formed a network: Red de Centros de Documentación y Bibliotecas de Mujeres (Network of Women’s Documentation Centers and Libraries). We believed that the mission of these centers aligned with our larger project. However, we would lose control over the material, which would again remain at the mercy of a volatile political climate.

Our third option was simply to keep the material ourselves and figure out how to handle it. To quote one of the members of Fils Feministes (Feminist archives—a feminist and queer Catalonian memory group): “If we do not save our history, no one else will” (my translation).¹⁸ For that purpose, we started to pursue the project of housing a feminist archive at the EKKA. The biggest risk (among others) has been precarity: lack of technological resources, gradually decaying and obsolete tapes, nonexistent budget, unevenness of activism, and unpredictability of our own time and energy. The precariousness of volunteer work is a reality in the collectives, and sometimes there is no regularity in the administration of these tasks. During the process of figuring out how to construct an archive, we discovered that this was not the first attempt to archive all the memories of the center. It had been impossible to complete this task earlier, because the people in charge disappeared after some months of work (they changed jobs, their daily schedule, or moved to a different city or neighborhood).

Was the answer in the cloud? We considered uploading all the content to the internet, which was seen as a lower level of commitment because it had a clear goal with a beginning and an end. Opening an archive means cataloging everything, but there has to come a point at which it becomes open to the public—regularly and reliably into the future. Jean Bessete stresses the importance of giving value to this material, regardless of which option one chooses. Our deliberations exemplify her concept of “retroactivism.”¹⁹ Memory can be cultivated by subjects who have been excluded from dominant historical narratives. The digital era enables the creation of “rogue archives” as advocated by Abigail De Kosnik, who views them as counterinstitutions.²⁰ De Kosnik highlights how those archives make room for other narratives that have been left out of institutional records. EKKA’s archive could be, in its own way, a rogue archive. Our approach is animated by the belief that institutions (their structure and protocols) are hostile to the very nature of our material. We strive to create relationships between equals, therefore we work to establish counterinstitutions that allow for horizontal dynamics of collectivity, memory, and access.

These issues go beyond power or politics: they are about intimacy and friendship. Looking at this material is like witnessing the activists’ daily work. You can see it right there in the videotapes: the euphoria, the joy, the concerns, the conflicts.…They are “archives of feelings” as Ann Cvetkovich theorizes them, stressing the affective horizons of LGTBQ+ history.²¹ Some objects are traversed by feelings and emotions, and they document intimacy, sexuality, love, and activism. Such material often escapes the institutional priorities and preservation criteria of a traditional archive.

These materials are deeply personal for the members who have devoted themselves to their compilation and accessibility. They hold the history of the center to which we belong. They are full of familiar faces and names, both of people long gone and EKKA members still active within the feminist movement. They speak to the multiple levels of emotional connections between the archive and the archivist. Without sensitivity to these networks of intimacy, there can be no history of the feminist and queer movement.

The future of the archive remains uncertain. That is why EKKA is still looking for a hybrid solution to preserve the history of the social center without ceding control over how that history is understood. Work is currently underway to catalog all the material, such as contacting the people who recorded it to verify the content and the origin of the tapes. Other possibilities are being explored, such as joining forces with allied groups working on audiovisual memory projects. What will be the destiny of all the VHS tapes, DVDs, and miniDVs left behind by dozens of activist collectives in Spain? We will work together to figure it out.

Regardless of the outcome, the process itself will be feminist: work is done horizontally; EKKA opens itself to new forms of knowledge and openly debates what is integral to the memory of its own feminisms. This has also led EKKA to recognize that the memory of a movement is composed of the materials that can be saved. EKKA’s history is part of the history of Spanish feminism. Recognizing the past of the movement helps us understand the present and prepare for the future. It is our duty as feminist activists to save and share these histories. Like the miniDV or VHS tapes, media formats are fickle—but memory lasts a long time.

I would like to thank every person who has collaborated with this archive, especially Laura Gaelx whose enthusiasm and dedication have been crucial to researching these materials and exploring their possibilities for the future.