Tape Condition: degraded

Cait McKinney and Hazel Meyer Play, Rewind, Repeat: Queer Porn Archives and the Digital Afterlives of VHS By Cait McKinney and Hazel Meyer

We are sitting beside each other in these tapes and their digital after- rewind the tape, which sounds a small AV room on mismatched, lives.1 Still, in practice, we aren’t like an existential problem but is rickety desk chairs, watching old always sure that what we’re watch- actually a preservation measure: porn. It’s three pm in the middle ing is of use to anyone. It’s an old rewinding a tape every few years of July in Toronto but this room is argument at this archives and the lubricates the tape and cassette overly air-conditioned, as archives ad-hoc solution seems to be, if we heads, preventing the ribbon, which often are. Metal shelving stacked aren’t sure what to do with all this dries out over time, from breaking. with acid-free document boxes is porn, let’s just keep collecting it. Digital files don’t need lube but crammed into the room at angles they also dispense with the plastic that make moving around inele- The tapes come in through indi- cassettes, cardboard sleeves, and gant. The boxes are filled with the vidual donations from community mylar ribbon that make up some of Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives members who drop off their old the porney-ness of porn from this (CLGA’s) moving image collection, porn. The first tape we watch, era. At the end of Close Shave 2 we mostly VHS tapes, about 3,000 in Close Shave 2 (1990) by RAY ZOR get the satisfaction of updating the total, roughly 800 of which are porn. productions, is a compilation of “Rewound On” date in the com- hair-related sex acts featuring men puter catalog: “7/12/2014,” then the The porn is what brought us here; in southern California who look like tape goes back in its box and we we’re working on an exhibition the less attractive 90210 cast mem- continue watching. about the archives’ porn collection bers—think Ian Ziering’s “Steve.” and the problem of digitization— They’re shaving each other’s balls, Without ever saying it out loud what will happen to all this sex mostly in public bathroom stalls. to each other, we seem to have on tape as the archives begins its We played the tape because we embarked on a search for a fantasy transition into a 21st-century digital thought it might be some perfect VHS tape that most certainly does repository? In principal we believe fantasy scene in which earnest, not exist. Our Dream Tape is ut- these tapes are worth saving. They newly awakened lesbians give each terly unlike the tapes that actually record queer strategies of pleasure other their First Gay Haircuts, may- make up this collection, which and survival that activist archives be in a locker room after basketball is a pretty homogenous archive like the CLGA had the forethought practice. But it is not that thing, not of mostly white, gay men’s porn to keep. As Laura Kipnis argues, even close. from the 1980s and 90s, primarily “pornography grabs us and doesn’t commercially produced in the U.S. let go,” in part “because it’s in- Still, we watch the whole tape We keep hoping to find the kink tensely and relentlessly about us”; through to the end, but on fast- (there is some), the home-made this porn collection is the work of forward so the hair is shorn at (there is less), or anything made by a heterogeneous “us”—local queer eight-times the original record- or depicting women, performers communities past, present and ing speed. Our goal is to get to of colour, or trans people (there future—who might speak through the end of the tape so we can is almost none). All this watching, rewinding, and hunting is research something, or maybe do both at Bearchell was a lesbian feminist academy, Bearchell’s argument for Hazel Meyer, Tape Condition: for Tape Condition: degraded, the same time. We would really like who wore a lot of oversized plaid, collecting porn seems prescient. degraded (Raiders/Arse), 2015, an exhibition about porn and VHS some of our Dream Tapes to be had a gap in her front teeth that LGBTQ community archives are ink on paper, 15x21cm. tape at the archives. We want to part of the exhibition, but so far the was probably perfect for whistling, some of the only organizations that invite the public to consider porn- search isn’t going well. kept her hair short, and would have actively collected porn (the on-tape’s status as a vital record of eventually retire to a homestead CLGA’s collection is notably strong) LGBTQ subcultures at a crossroads Guiding us on our search is the fig- in Western Canada’s idyllic Gulf and these collections are incompa- as community archives digitize ure of Chris Bearchell (1952–2007), Islands. She was also kinky, into s/m rable primary source repositories their collections, seeking preser- a long-time Canadian porn advo- and all kinds of other things good for researchers, thanks in part, to vation and improving access. What cate, writer, intersectional feminist, lesbian-feminists weren’t sup- progressive amateur archivists and happens to the boxes and boxes of and archives staff member who posed to like in the 1980s. Bearchell advocates like Bearchell.5 porn as materials of more obvious managed to straddle the often- staked out her ideological territory “archival value”—materials like oral conflicting worlds of feminism and squarely on the pro-sex side of the What united all Bearchell’s activism, histories—jump to the front of the gay liberation. She is our diamond. anti-porn debates. At the archives, whether for sex workers, fags, or digitization queue? As porn scholar Every time we talk to someone she’s said to have advocated for leather dykes—was a commitment Walter Kendrick argues, “porn” about our interest in protecting the construction of a never-real- to carving out and protecting as a genre does not exist without and honouring porn at the archives ized false-wall in the 1980s, behind spaces for sexual expression—in- archival sensibilities that classify by taking its digital future serious- which all the porn could be kept cluding print, magnetic tape, and obscene materials, separating ly, they ask us if we know about hidden from frequent police raids. celluloid. In 1983 she wrote, “Many them from everything else.2 In other Bearchell. The stories about her are dykes, including those who call the email, Cait writes, “gotta find is planning a new digitization room words, porn is unthinkable outside legendary. She was a lead orga- In the 1990s, when the CLGA con- ourselves feminists, are compulsive this in the CLGA spank bank.” To us that will replace the current A/V archival classification methods, and nizer of anti-police protests after sidered de-accessioning a lot of the rule-breakers. We take women to the revelation that Bearchell made room. For Tape Condition: de- digital interfaces are often where Toronto’s 1981 bathhouse raids, porn collection to deal with space beaches, or find them there, and dykey, do-it-yourself sex tapes is graded we imagine a DIY, digital these classifications take shape or creating the slogan “No More Shit!” limitations, Bearchell insisted it be head for the dunes. Or take bar- a huge discovery. We search the transfer station aimed at communi- get revisited. that emblazons buttons and other kept because it was the respon- room tricks to bathroom cubicles CLGA’s moving images catalogue ty access and fabricated to create Canadian anti-censorship activist sibility of an archives of sexuality for quickies. We reject Playboy les- to no avail, then we ask CLGA “good enough” digital copies of Tape Condition: degraded takes ephemera. Toward the end of the to ensure access to records that bianism because it isn’t hot enough expert-on-everything Alan Miller if tapes. We need just three pieces of the form of an immersive installa- protest, Bearchell is said to have document that sexuality—records and get out our polaroids instead.”6 he’s seen these tapes, but he hasn’t. consumer grade equipment: a VCR, tion in the archives’ gallery space. jumped on the hood of a parked that often fit the devalued genre And so we keep looking and our an analog-to-digital video conver- A working digital transfer station car, leading the crowd in chanting of porn. Porn archives, argues porn If only she had taken out her Dream Tape grows into a bigger and sion dongle with USB output, and a is situated in a kind of pervy, quasi the phrase that would politicize studies scholar Tim Dean, preserve camcorder. bigger absence. computer. rec-room. In the grant proposals Toronto’s newly visible queer “traces of nonnormative pleasures,” we wrote to fund the show, we community on the cusp of the AIDS facilitating “not only the tracking As we continue to research and Right now digitization at the Digitization is not a magic-bullet promised that the space would crisis. but also the reactivation of these imagine Tape Condition: degraded, archives is focused on creating solution to the space and preserva- “conjure the unique feeling of an pleasures.3 Like T-shirts, buttons, we’re guided by one big question: Internet-ready versions of oral his- tion challenges facing community activist community archive, warm We search out anything we can find and protest signs, sexual minorities what would Bearchell do with a tory tapes that document materials archives. Widescale digitization and somewhat domestic” but what on Bearchell, scanning old Body archive porn as a form of cultural digitization station? Would she traditionally underrepresented creates massive amounts of data we really mean is that it will look Politic issues on dusty microfilm memory, imagining its value for find the energy to digitize tape in LGBTQ community archives, that needs to be stored secure- like a space in which one could machines for her writing on queer future generations.4 Today, with the after tape with names like Raiders including queer migration stories ly, managed through metadata comfortably a) jerk off or b) digitize sex and the fight against obscenity. resurgence of porn studies in the of the Lost Arse and Sissy Squad? and records of transgender lives. assignment (when descriptive Would Close Shave 2 seem worth These kinds of materials have been text is associated to a file), and Our Diamond, Chris Bearchell defending to her? If this hard-edged woefully under-collected for many migrated as new formats replace (right), pictured with Gary feminist sex advocate found such reasons, including white, gay men’s old ones (think, for example, of the Kinsman at a Toronto value in collecting gay porn, surely predominance in staffing roles and impending obsolescence of DVDs). demonstration against customs there’s an argument to be made for the influence of a narrowly memori- Porn presents all kinds of unique censorship, 1989. Photograph its digital future. alized AIDS crisis’ on building these challenges for digitization. Many of by Jearld Moldenhauer. nascent collections. Digitizing these videos were made for profit A few months into our research, these rare materials has the poten- and are protected by copyright Cait sends the following quote from tial to improve access and create restrictions. Sticky consent ques- Bearchell’s obituary to Hazel in an digital versions that won’t degrade tions come up around amateur email, subject line Chris Bearchell like magnetic tape. tapes. We struggle thinking through jerking off: “In the early 80s, as part what we can show in the gallery of one of the first series of erotica While professional digitization by space, which is an ethical, politi- created by women, [Bearchell] outside vendors is expensive, the cal, and also legal question. In our made a small film of herself mas- CLGA and other archives—includ- worst nightmares, Tape Condition: turbating. It, like other works she ing Brooklyn’s Lesbian Herstory degraded would incite the kind of made like it later, may not have Archives—have begun to do this public scrutiny of the archives that been the biggest turn-on ever, but work on their own, designing Bearchell and others had to deal it did demonstrate her bravery and technological solutions for in-house with in the 1970s and 80s. In the tenaciousness.”7 At the bottom of digitization programs. The CLGA autumn we buy up all the CLGA’s Hazel Meyer, No More Shit! of money shots feature scenes that (for Chris Bearchell), were special to someone in partic- 2014, ink on paper, 28x35cm. ular, watched over and over again when they needed exactly the right thing to get off. “The Porn I Like” emerges as a genre made up of Dream Tapes lovingly dubbed and hand-labeled cassettes that testify to the archival hazelmeyer.com uality, feminism, and material culture. sex - the relationships sport, between and textiles investigatesperformance, Hazel Meyer’s work with installation, value of this “mainstream” porn collection. These tapes document desire and the erotics of watching, making, and cataloguing your own media. As the exhibition develops, we think about how digital inter- faces might account for the very material status of these compila- tions; how might the tapey-ness of Eleven artists, activists, and thinkers tape be honoured via a digital file?

When Hazel isn’t sure what to

and online tools. caitmckinney.comand online tools. adoption of digital late-20th century movements,social emphasizing the practicesmedia of feminist and LGBTQ Cait McKinney’s research examines the share their “Dream Tapes”; VHS do about a problem she often starts by drawing it. She sketches overstock of No More Shit! buttons Sometimes it’s hard to know what out VHS tapes—some real, some at the annual garage sale; we might we’re looking at because these imagined—and we decide to fantasies that reflect on the digital use them in the exhibition, but twenty-five-year-old tapes have invite others into the project to more urgently, we need some kind deteriorated, marked as such in the contribute recipes for their own of talisman. database with “Tape Condition: Dream Tapes. The “us” Kipnis futures of queer and trans media degraded,” from which we take our invokes shifts as these Dream Tape For now these big questions can name. Colours have faded, there outlines come in. Compilation wait because there are more are occasional streaks and drop- tapes animate a set of questions archives, both real and imagined. tapes to reckon with. We’ve been outs, and there’s always the risk about Our Diamond and ourselves asked to assign descriptive tags that a tape will snap when played that guide these drawings; we plot catalog published in No Morecatalog published Potlucks (2016). YES! Association/Föreningen JA! (The Power Plant, Toronto 2015), and a feminist tool workshop, a performance for art)work(sport)work(sex)workEquipment Room by (2014), In the and Cinema (2015), the Muscle Panic Handbook Queers in Little Joe: through research, writing, and archival interventions. Past projects include an essay Hazel and Cait’s collaborations explore histories their shared attachments to queer to the videos we watch, which will for the first time in decades. This is out our own fantasy compilations improve access by lending catalog especially true of the homemade while imagining the tape Bearchell records specificity beyond the tapes. While the estimated life of might dub for herself. Bearchell’s high-level description of “erotica.”8 High Grade VHS tape stored at ongoing presence in our research From a pre-determined drop-down ideal temperature and humidity method helps us root our questions menu in the archives’ computer is thought to be sixty years, these about the archives’ digital future database we can choose from sub- particular tapes have been kept in in a reverence for its past, and in a jects like “lesbian,” “bareback,” and basements, garages, or hot apart- longer history of queer appropria- “leather.” This is cataloguing that ments in their pre-archives’ lives. tions of media. Through Bearchell confronts the limits of representa- we think through what it means to tion in queer and kink practices.9 Digital files efface the materiality be feminists advocating for access We have a lot of conversations that of tape by promising to separate to sexual expressions in which we sounds like this: content from cassette, but the re- don’t recognize our own desires. search we’re doing in this collection But more importantly, Our Diamond Cait: “Is he wearing Rubber?” is steeped in the physicality of VHS: and her Dream Tape keep us going we rifle through boxes and handle as we shuffle through boxes, play, Hazel: “I think it’s Latex.” cassettes, sliding them in and out of rewind, and repeat. their cardboard sleeves. We squint Cait: “Ok, but this is sort of Drag to read labels and play ambiguous isn’t it?” tapes in hopes of finding the kind of videos we seek. Our favourite tapes Hazel: “I don’t think something can are the homemade collages of be “‘sort of’ Drag.” dubbed clips. These compilations

1 Kipnis, Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999), 161. 2 Kendrick, The Secret Museum: Pornography in Mod- ern Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996 [1987]). 3 Dean, “Introduction: Pornography, Technology, Archive,” in Porn Archives, edited by Tim Dean, Steven Ruszczycky, and David Squires, 1-26 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2014), 10. 4 Ibid. 5 On the CLGA’s porn collection in relation to other LGBTQ community archives, see Marcel Barriault, “Hard to Dismiss: The Archival Value of Gay Male Erotica and Pornography,” Archivaria 68 (2009), 22. 6 Chris Bearchell, “Why I am a Gay Liberationist: thoughts on sex, freedom, the family and the state,” in Resourc- es for Feminist Research 12, no. 1 (1983), 59–60. 7 Susan G. Cole, “Chris Bearchell: 1952–2007,” Now Magazine, 1–7 March, 2007. 8 Kendrick argues “erotica” lends porn a “specious aura of antiquity” (244). 9 David Squires, “Pornography in the Library,” in Porn Archives, edited by Tim Dean, Steven Ruszczycky, and David Squires, 78–99 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2014), 86–87.

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(Semiotext(e), 2015). His other books include include books other His 2015). (Semiotext(e), Wound

The Well-Dressed Well-Dressed The is book latest McCormack’s Derek The Boy withtheThorninHisSide(Dir:Fred Stars:ChrisBurns, Mike Halsted; Davis, 1986) Stretch OutandWait (Dir:WilliamHiggins;Stars:Travis Williams, Jeremy Scott;1985) I Want theOneICan’tHave (Dir:WilliamHiggins;Stars:MichaelChristopher, Mike Dean;1985) Canyon, EricClement;1985) Stars:Rod (Dir:LancerBrooks; Rusholme Ruffians Stars:Fred Gage; Ritual(Dir:Joe Richard Halsted, The Headmaster Locke; 1985) This CharmingMan(Dir:ColinMeyer; Stars:Casey Donovan, AlParker; 1984) Allen;1984) Handsome Devil Joel (Dir:WilliamHiggins;Stars:AdamStewart, Hand inGlove (Dir:MattSterling;Stars:ScottAvery, LanceChisholm;1984) Derek McCormack https://instagram.com/p/BFPf3i4SMjs/ @squirrelofmystery jes sachse Tenderness A variety of “pussy hairdos,” more laughs and silly things. differentskincolours Different bodies, cream Culo withwhipped TetasSuper Amor ywet dreams Hands, lickingybesos Mi conchitafavorita Luminous Tits Guillermina Buzio fast enoughforthem,andpatienceisaprivilege. that thingsare improving it’s fastenough,because orpretend tendtosimplyshrugorapologize people almost everywhere Iwould like abletobe, so tobe There are somanystairseverywhere inthiscity, the world thatis? live, andtolive well. Untilthen,what willwe dowith rage, toenjoy, toheal,share, tocum,relish, to capacity totalk,create andrecreate, tomourn, pleasure, and tohave oflifethesupport inallparts all toenjoy, withsexualexpression toconnect and andrightsof through pleasure theneeds thatmeet if onlytemporarily. worlds tosee created Ihope done,sex, inhealingthedamages over theyears, with pleasure andfinding and refuge relief through creating anewsomething soemotionalabout world expressed withpride, confidence, joy. There is desirecan imagineandfeel thatishot,erotic, fully When Icanmake withtheworld asitis, peace I itwillbecome. theworldhave asIhope been, theworldworld as I wishitcould asithasbeen, or radical fantasies?Iimaginetheworld asitis, the forsharingone’smostintimate more specifically: fordreaming, imagining,and conditions necessary gay andlesbian?Whatare thematerialandsocial inanarchive,tape letaloneonethatcallsitself findingmydreamCan Ieven tothinkabout begin Nick Matte

jes sachse is a Toronto-based poet, artist, and curator obsessed with disability culture. Living across the Guillermina Buzio is a Toronto-based visual artist Nick Matte is a creative spirit, interdisciplinary blurred lines of whiteness, poverty, lifelong disability, genderfluidity, and madness, they are currently working who uses video, installation, and performance. historian, and kinky, genderqueer trans man living on their first illustrated novel, Gutter, which will portray these dilemmas through a multi-modal narrative form, Her work focuses on human rights and women’s with disability. He teaches transgender studies at reflecting at once on both a crip navigation of contemporary culture, and the permeation of traumas in spaces identities. She teaches video and editing. the University of Toronto’s Mark S. Bonham Centre of invisibilized violence. guillerminabuzio.com for Sexual Diversity Studies and works with the CLGA through the LGBTQ Digital Oral History Collaboratory. Dana Bishop-Root to open a neighbourhood grocery store, grocery General Sisters, Braddock, Pennsylvania. in North a neighbourhood to open Dana Bishop-Root of LTTR, projet project, and touring musical act MEN. She is currently MOBILIVRE BOOKMOBILE working with quiry, actively alternative building community and nurturing forms of information distribution. She is co-founder Brooks Takahashi’sGinger collaborative practice project-based in - is an extension of feminist spaces and queer

Ginger Brooks Takahashi Nica Ross Kiley May

This tape I found in the Lesbian Herstory Archives. People in the woods, amongst trees, with hands in each A shoe box with three VHS-C tapes, small, about a In a clearing in the woods at twilight, a group of It was in a box of things that was labeled “garage sale,” other’s pants, with gender expressions not easily read- third the size and length of a VHS. These tapes fit into smooth, strong Indigenous men sit on furs around mixed up with some stained tee shirts and some mag- able. One is straddling a fallen tree, maybe they are tied small consumer camcorders and can be played back a sacred fire, waiting in front of a wood lodge. nets. Not sure if it was meant to be there or what, but I up? Another person is jerking themselves off, sitting in a VCR using a hollowed, VHS-sized adapter. Then, slowly, teasingly, She emerges. Her white snagged it cause it looked promising and I thought that against a big rock. Waterfall, a big waterfall with a pool buckskin leather dress draped in furs, wearing it might end up unappreciated. I saved the tape for a of water underneath and sun-drenched rocks. Lesbian The first tape has a list that reads: white knee length lace up moccasins and turquoise special night. I was visiting some friends and brought it or lesbian-looking loungers, some on the rocks, some adornments. Her hair long, dark, magnificent. Some out for our after-dinner treat. half in the water, half out, fully fucking, splashing water Cameo men start drumming, rattling and chanting as this all the while. Towel scene, soaked towel. Double fisting, David sacred sex ceremony begins. Tonight She is the FUCK WATER I mean one fister / two fistees. With lots of ejaculate Adonis guest of honour, for She is the Jewel Of The People, SEX PARRTY spraying all over the fists, thighs, and towels. And lots of King the Sacred One. She is a Two Spirit Woman. A sex GROUPON laughing too. Bijoux goddess, a witch healer, the saviour for these men. It is Her night to be celebrated and honoured, with And in the corner a name, “Chip.” a ceremonial orgy, the gifts of these men’s bodies and then feasted with their essences. So the men The next tape: rise, beginning to move around Her and the fire, each one a peacock performing their seduction Eudora dance. Methodically, the men undress Her, piece Muriel by piece. They take turns anointing Her body with Morgan M Page Afrekete oils and braiding flowers into Her hair. Singing to Her, massaging Her, reciting poems to Her, feeding Her Dream Transsexual VHS Mixtape: This time initials in the corner “A.L.” sumptuous juicy berries. Dark red and blue juices dripping down Her lips and cleavage. What follows Gendertroublemakers, Mirha-Soleil Ross + Xanthra MacKay, 1993 And the third: is a fiery and sensual orgy, the absolute worshipping Kiley May is a Rotinonshón:ni Mohawk storyteller and artist from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory Territory River Six Nations of the Grand May is a Rotinonshón:ni Mohawk storyteller and artistKiley from in work do creative They queer transgirl. is a two-spirit Kiley settled in Toronto. and is now “the rez”) (aka which is an art form; her greatest And transitioning, fashion, and dance. film, photography, writing, theatre, art work to date. Linda/Les and Annie: the First Female-to-Male Love Story, Annie Sprinkle, 1989 of Her trans body and the idolizing of Her special

Lambda Literary Fellow.Lambda Odofemi.com. the Vaults, and was a 2014 trans podcast, history She is the creatorMontreal, of One From Quebec. Morgan M Page is a transsexual in writer and artist Mirha-Soleil Ross’s Gut-busting, Ass-erupting, & Immoderately Whorish Compilation Tape! Mirha-Soleil Ross, 2001 Rocco gift. She is exalted, revered. She is adored and Let Me Die a Woman, Doris Wishman, 1978 Frankie and Johnny beloved. With gratification flashing in Her eyes and G-SPrOuT!, Mirha-Soleil Ross & Mark Karbusicky, 2000 Ruth flickering firelight licking the glistening skin of all the bodies around the fire, the animals stars and moon I dream of an archive in which bodies like mine and people who fuck like I do exist. The name in the bottom corner reads “Jess.” are their only witnesses. Nica Ross is a visual artist whose work challenges Nica Ross is a visual artist whose work the expectations using performance, light, of reality light shows, gaymes, parties, produce They and play. performances, nicaross.com. and images.

syrusmarcusware.com

PDA Collective (Performance.Disability.Art), co-organizer of Blackness Yes! and co-producer of Blockorama. Blockorama. of co-producer and Yes! Blackness of co-organizer (Performance.Disability.Art), Collective PDA She’s currently pursuing her love of petting cats, drawing comics, and making zines. morgansea.com zines. making and comics, drawing cats, petting of love her pursuing currently She’s

installation, and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture. He is part of the the of part is He culture. activist black and frameworks justice social explore to performance and installation, clude radio host, hardcore backyard wrestler, power bottom porn actress, and piss-drinking performance artist. artist. performance piss-drinking and actress, porn bottom power wrestler, backyard hardcore host, radio clude

Syrus Marcus Ware is a visual artist, activist, curator, and educator who creates work within drawing, painting, painting, drawing, within work creates who educator and curator, activist, artist, visual a is Ware Marcus Syrus - in lives past Her masturbator. chronic reformed a and trades all of jack a is Sea Morgan (see following spread) spread) following (see - Footage of the POC focused gay bar in 1940s/50s couples got hot n’ where Street on Yonge Toronto heavy upstairs. Footage of Grace Jones and her secret affair secret Jones and her with Footage of Grace both Queen Kravitz. Latifah and Lenny Footage of the black power S & M demos for Aslan S & M demos for Aslan Footage of the black power Leather on the stage at Pride in 2005 Copies of the amazing VHS sexy porn-as-sexual-Copies of the amazing Transsexual video “Madame Lorraine’s health-promo featuring Monica Mirha Soleil-Ross, by Touch” Forrester. length cut of Queen director’s Feature Latifah and her during Set it Off girlfriend in the garage . Footage of the black trans (sexxxy) vogue perfor (sexxxy) vogue Footage of the black trans mances at Manhattan on Saturday nights at 2am on Saturday mances at Manhattan between 1998–2004. My dream tape would capture these scenes, telling the these scenes, tape capture My dream would between the struggle. and around stories of the love 1.  2.  3.  4.  5.  Chapman’s sex tape 6. Meshell Ndegeocello & Tracy 7.  Syrus Syrus Ware Marcus brimming with activ- in the 70s and 80s was Toronto homelessness, QTBIPOCs, organizing around ism by education, activism, HIV/AIDS, anti-apartheid LGBTQ and and challenging racism activism, disability justice, - marginalization and oppres other forms of systemic getting were Folks examples. sion to name but a few together letters in support to write of activists fighting against apartheid on the continent, including to South artists were Simon Nkoli; African gay rights activist coming together to form political like arts initiatives of the Arts and the Festival Mayworks Desh Pardesh, the Gay Asians like festival; groups Two Counting Past supporting queers racialized were found in of Toronto in 1981. Soap/ Bathhouse raids the Operation and trans in the midst of all of this, And somehow, each loving finding each other, queers of colour were dating, fucking and supporting each other. other, parties pulsed hot and sweaty and up Fantastically Parliament Street, and then Church Street Yonge down on Richmond (B Side), and on King (The Rose), Street Vashti Nik Red, Verlia, (Mockingbird). DJs Zahra, Street D’Asia,” and others spun at parties called “Moist,” “Afro BIPOC folks queer and trans Asia” and more. and “Funk pounded day and the dance floor by by the streets night, grinding and whispering activist porn into each did in my fantasies! other’s ears…. Or at least they Jessica Jessica Karuhanga @kichokaru https://www.instagram.com/p/BFO9PDVzT5Q/ I remember on a friend suddenly blushing stumbling had just witnessed as if they something sacred, red I moments This blushing mirrored private. dirty, Less tense. reverie. in on some lover’s walked have told me their partner just sent them They Nervous. a “sexy snapchat” and as soon as it was explained to me I began see to propensity the for this frame to and pornographic sensuous, the erotic, to take fleeting more Somehow another site/place/space. as physical can revisit then a sext or a letter you form; a liminal site within the virtual spectrum. I am Snapchat and save can download learning that you otherwise of moments passing. videos, records Still this tension between private and public, various devices our and deletion across erasure in terms of archiving, and platforms is interesting experience the that follows and tracing recording, A The flash goespeephole. out. first touch. A taste. An open A leaf for stroking. A diary. A light dims. I think I chose twelve of a story. Fragments gesture. or Zodiacto match the months, or maybe signs, it was Lemonade. Curatorial notes for a performance artCuratorial survey exhibition called That 70s Ho. “Queer Gush,” diary entry about fucking girls in 1997, in 2004. feeling closeted and over-professionalized Anger, Exhibition text about Jarman, Kenneth Derek and Jack Smith biopics. clerk who fucks a girl with a Story about store a record behindbuzz cut in an alley the shop. recipe soup Carrot and list of AIDS art videos for a had a one-night stand with in Montreal. I woman diary entry about J. reading “Moment of clarity,” Halberstam book: but fabulous.” “It is hard the history on Annotated of censorship in bibliography the arts in Canada. List of fantasy personal ads offering “studio assistant artists,” “fucking in for senior women and more and seeking mostly the outdoors,” “diy haircuts,” “shameless bottoms.” of Macho re-release of the 20th-anniversary Review Califia. Patrick Sluts by Anthea Black Anthea below) (see illustration Tape The scene in my Dream and wrote ago, years I had several is based on a dream for the When I searched with a lover. to share down of personal in my own original, I found myself archive the narrative—but a different writing—reconstructing turned up. itself never dream 2004–09): (Chronological Sources Tape Dream •  •  • A list of queer people I knew. •  •  •  •  •  •  •  • Diary entry about queer suicide and sexual trauma.

Anthea Black is a Canadian artist, writer, and cultural worker. Her current studio work involves games of chance, Jessica Karuhanga is a Toronto-based artist. Her works has been presented at Whippersnapper Gallery, scissors, mirrors, the writing and photographs of Berenice Abbott, and women’s studio inventions. She has Videofag, Electric Ecletics, Nia Centre for the Arts, and The Drake Hotel. Karuhanga was featured in FADO recently written about artists Nadine Bariteau and Rita McKeough, and her book Craft on Demand: The New Performance Art Centre’s 2014 Emerging Artist Series at Xpace Cultural Centre. Upcoming performances Politics of the Handmade (edited with Nicole Burisch) will be released in 2017. include Archives Matter Conference at Goldsmiths (UK) and Encuentro in Santiago (CL).

Tape Condition: degraded Chair CLGA curatorial committee Acknowledgements June 16–Sept 18, 2016 Sarah Munro The contributions of many CLGA volunteers, artists, archivists, Hazel Meyer & Cait McKinney and community members are gratefully acknowledged, in partic- Exhibition coordinator with video work by Aidan Cowling ular: Rebecka Sheffield, Jade Pichette, Alan V. Miller, Tamara Lang, Robin Alex McDonald Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Mark Pellegrino, Rachel Beattie, Canadian Lesbian and Gay Achives Jearld Moldenhauer, Sam Ashby and Jon Davies, Ryan Conrad, 34 Isabella St., Toronto, ON, M4Y 1N1 Publication design Thomas Waugh, Leah Ataide, Duncan McLaren, and the legacy of www.clga.ca Cecilia Berkovic Chris Bearchell. Dream Tape contributors Printer Front and back cover images are the Start and End graphics from Anthea Black, Derek McCormack, Sonicprint.ca each reel in The Body Politic microfilm series (1973–1987), McLaren Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Guillermina Typefaces Micropublishing Ltd. and Pink Triangle Press. Graphics designed by Buzio, jes sachse, Jessica Karuhanga, Value Serif Duncan McLaren. Kiley May, Morgan M Page, Nica Ross, Larsseit Nick Matte, Syrus Marcus Ware A shorter version of the essay “Play, Rewind, Repeat” originally

Publisher appeared in Little Joe 5 (2015). Comic The Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives Morgan Sea This exhibition is made possible through generous funding from: and Push Rub Press

Tape Condition: degraded Miscellaneous print ISBN 978-0-9952040-0-3