t.r.a.p

the radical archive project

Our Mission

At The Radical Archive Project AKA t.r.a.p. our mission is to preserve performance cultures, communities, and artists' work through archival education, consultation, and the execution of preservation projects. This project is inspired by The Black Radical Tradition as learned through the study of the philosophical and intellectual tradition by Dr. shady Radical.

Resonances include the work of: Cedric Robinson, Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten, Walter Rodney, W.E.B. DuBois, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Robin Kelly, Cornel West, Assata Shakur, Frederick Douglass, Frantz Fanon, Marcus Garvey, Audre Lorde, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Amiri Baraka to name a few.

The Radical Archive Project is particularly invested in articulating, celebrating, and preserving black humanity as understood through the black women's experience.

the black radical tradition

"As scholar Cedric Robinson coined it, the Black radical tradition...is a collection of cultural, intellectual, action-oriented labor aimed at disrupting social, political, economic, and cultural norms originating in anticolonial and antislavery efforts."

- Drs. Dominique Thomas and Tabbye M. Chavous

"The Black Radical Tradition of Resistance" Feb 6, 2019

National Center for Institutional Diversity

Medium and Spark Magazine

Our Story

The Radical Archive Project or T.R.A.P. is the imagined community of artists and students working to keep the body at the center. Founded in 2019, shady Radical imagined a space where scholarship and practice collided in powerful, meaningful, and implicating ways. Through archival research and practice, we create performances and rituals to activate the senses towards the recognition and appreciation of the human spirit and perseverance through struggle and adversity.