gather & disperse

Gather & Disperse (G & D) is an ecosystem for Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s research and archival work. G & D includes special collections of “found” Black vernacular photographs and Black printed matter; research platforms on radical Black educational institutions and Black spiritual movements; infodumps on niche histories such as Eldridge Cleaver’s fashion line and the escape of Penelope the Platypus; and viewfinders that closely read shapes, textures, and typography that we may typically overlook.



Focusing on the poetics and politics of knowledge production, G & D asks who determines what qualifies as knowledge worth transmitting and what reaches the threshold of visibility. Further, G & D asks: What political ends do these distinctions serve? Research, knowledge production, and archival work are nimble entanglements that reveal the political choices that govern what is allowed to circulate, what is worthy of our attention, and what is dismissed as noise. G & D engages with the necropolitical conditions that structure what gets documented, circulated, and preserved, and what gets excluded or rendered conveniently illegible. An apparatus of necropolitics, the archive makes and unmakes technologies of disappearance. This platform seeks an expanded understanding of archival practice as a practice shaped by the power to determine what deserves our sustained attention.



This ecosystem's projects fall into four leaky categories. Many projects overlap. The distinction is less about format and more about each project's animating impulse and the community interactions it invites.


Research Platform





These research platforms serve as cycles of inquiry.
These platforms are guided by specific research questions pursued through deep reading, community gatherings, and publishing across several years.
Community Interaction:
Public Events; Roaming Libraries; Collaborative Annotation; User Accounts to Create Bespoke Research Folders and Annotate Materials

Special Collections





These special collections serve as libraries.
These libraries are guided by a need to consider practices of circulation, care, fetish, and re-animation amongst the archival matter of marginalized communities and individuals.
Community Interaction:
Public Events; Roaming Libraries; Collaborative Annotation

Infodumps





These infodumps serve
as aggregators.
These infodumps are guided by obsession, hyperfixation, and the pleasure of chasing encyclopedic knowledge when total comprehension is promised.
Community Interaction:
Contributions to Infodump

Viewfinders





These viewfinders serve
as close-reads.
These viewfinders are guided by a desire to expand, extend, and interrogate how my attention has been trained to render some stimuli as signal and dismiss other stimuli as noise.
 Community Interaction:
Close-Reading Quests and Prompts
© Kameelah Janan Rasheed 2026