In Forced Migration: Ghosts of Familial Memory, I create a haunted archive through
performance and recorded conversations with my mother and grandfather. Our conversations
focus on my ancestors’ forced migration to Canada as children in the late Nineteenth and early
Twentieth centuries. Beginning in 1618, the United Kingdom shipped as many as 150,000
children to the colonies; I create a haunted archive of sound recordings to tell stories of my
ancestors’ migrations – Joseph Hart, Louisa Hart, and Eleanor Copeland – while tracing the
impact of these stories through my own embodied and performative response. Performances are
recorded using video and still photography, and my mother and grandfather’s stories are
accentuated through collected sound. This haunted archive contends with the official adoption
records of my ancestors’ migration by highlighting the storytelling voices of my mother and
grandfather. My archive lives in a website which pairs performance documentation with audio
recordings. I use queer and hauntological theory to reflect on my experience as a haunted
archivist in the creation of a sound and performative archive.

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