“Nobody Likes A Radical Queer” Queer Materials in Audiovisual Collections Name Marin Rappard Address Spreeuwenpark 109 1021GV Amsterdam Phone number +31652213921 Email [email protected] Programme Heritage Studies: Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image Student Number 10464425 Supervisor Manon Parry Second Reader Eef Masson Date 15 January 2018 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I want to thank my supervisor Manon Parry, for her guidance, comments, and patience throughout my thesis writing process. I also we gratitude to Lonneke van den Hoonaard and Jasper Wiedeman of IHLIA, Bas Agterberg of The National Institute of Sound and Vision, Mirella Gelauf of The City Archives of Amsterdam, and Paul de Jong of Jonge Historici, for sharing their time and insights about their organizations with me. Finally, a big thanks to my family and friends as well for their continued support and love. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 4 1.1 Terminology ............................................................................................................................. 5 1.2 Literature Review ..................................................................................................................... 7 1.3 Methodology and Structure .................................................................................................... 13 2. THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF SOUND AND VISION (NIBG) ........................................ 15 2.1 The Archive ............................................................................................................................ 15 2.2 The Catalogue ........................................................................................................................ 18 2.3 The Collection ........................................................................................................................ 19 2.4 The Museum and Current Exhibitions ................................................................................... 25 3. THE INTERNATIONAL HOMO/LESBIAN INFORMATION ARCHIVE (IHLIA) ............ 31 3.1 The Archive ............................................................................................................................ 31 3.2 The Catalogue ........................................................................................................................ 36 3.3 The Collection ........................................................................................................................ 38 3.4 The Exhibitions ...................................................................................................................... 42 4. THE AMSTERDAM CITY ARCHIVES (SAA) .......................................................................... 45 4.1 The Archive ............................................................................................................................ 45 4.2 The Catalogue ........................................................................................................................ 48 4.3 The Collection ........................................................................................................................ 51 4.4 Exhibitions and Projects ......................................................................................................... 53 5. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... 59 SOURCES CITED .............................................................................................................................. 66 3 1. INTRODUCTION On April third of last year, two Dutch politicians marched across the Binnenhof while holding hands to display their solidarity after two gay men were brutally attacked in Arnhem the day before. Major global news providers like The Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times shared a video of this gesture, after which it went viral and was viewed and celebrated all around the world.1 This act of solidarity is just one example of the power of moving images and of how lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexual and queer (shortened to LGBTIQ)-issues have entered the mainstream in the Netherlands. People who identify as LGBTIQ are increasingly represented in popular culture and local communities.2 Museums and archives are, in theory, reflections of the society they function in, meaning they should also be inclusive of these communities, but they are often unmasked as institutions that reiterate canonical thinking and patriarchal power relations.3 In museology, moving towards more inclusive models has long been a topic of study and action has been taken to include minority histories and voices.4 In March of 2015, the International Homo/Lesbian Information Center and Archive (IHLIA), together with the Amsterdam museum and the Reinwardt Academy, organized a symposium called ‘Queering the Collections.’ As is noted on IHLIA’s website, “Queering the Collections (QtC) is a network of cultural professionals, researchers, and local government representatives, collaborating to increase the collection, interpretation, and exhibition of queer heritage and histories in the Netherlands.”5 The aim of this symposium and ongoing project is to offer heritage professionals the tools with which they can research, describe and unlock queer aspects of the objects in their collections.6 I fully support this goal, and in this thesis, I explore how the debates surrounding this subject 1 See Dan Bilefsky, “Dutch Men Hold Hands in Solidarity with Attacked Gay Couple,” New York Times, April 6, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/world/europe/dutch-men-hold-hands.html.https://www.nytimes. com/2017/04/06/world/europe/dutch-men-hold-hands.html; “Dutch Men Walk Hand in Hand for Solidarity After Gay Couple Attacked,” The Guardian, April 05, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/06/ dutch-men-hand-in-hand-solidarity-gay-couple-attacked. 2 Susan Ferentinos, Interpreting LGBT History at Museums and Historic Sites (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); Ellen Schuurman, “Between Tolerance and Acceptance: Homosexuality on Television in the Netherlands, 1980-2013” (bachelor’s thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2014). 3 Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook, “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory,” Archival Science 2, no. 1-2 (2002): 1-19; Terry Cook, “Evidence, Memory, Identity and Community: Four Shifting Archival Paradigms,” Archival Science 13, no. 2 (2012): 95-120. 4 Jocelyn Dodd and Richard Sandell, Including Museum: Perspectives on Museums, Galleries, and Social Inclusion (Leicester: RCMG, 2001). 5 “Queering the Collections – Seksuele en genderdiversiteit in erfgoed,” IHLIA LGBT Heritage, accessed May 21, 2017, http://www.ihlia.nl/queering/. 6 “Queering the Collections – About,” IHLIA LGBT Heritage, accessed October 22, 2017, http://www.ihlia.nl/ queering-the-collections-advisory-board/. 4 can be applied to and used by archives harboring audiovisual collections to reflect critically on their practices and presentations of the past. I argue that audiovisual material could offer a unique view of the history and present of non-normative sexuality and gender and showcase experiences that could create more inclusive presentations. Through in-depth analyses of how sexual and gender diversity is represented within the audiovisual collections, policies, and presentations of three prominent institutions in the Netherlands, I offer an overview of how these organizations fit into the recent upsurge in queering archives and museums. 1.1 Terminology One of the main issues in discussing non-normative sexuality and gender is that of terminology, which has changed considerably over time. The terms we now use, such as gay, lesbian, bisexual and queer, are relatively new in these meanings and will not address the true scope of material that might be available in an archive. As historian Claire Louise Hayward argues in her dissertation, this is especially true because users tend to search using modern terms.7 She uses ‘same-sex love’ instead of LGBTIQ, which “highlights both historical distance, and a historical continuum. It shows that same-sex acts and behaviours have existed throughout history, but that the concept of a sexual identity, and a community group who share this identity, is a modern one.”8 In this thesis, I have also chosen to use same-sex love in recognition of this variability. Additionally, I have decided to adopt the term queer, because it is an identity that encompasses a range of gender and sexual expressions. Furthermore, it cannot easily be categorized, acknowledges the fluidity of these identities, and provides a more politically charged connotation that is lacking in discussions of same-sex love in the Netherlands. Using ‘queer’ also produces an ability to deal with issues of intersectionality, as it is not only focused on disrupting established notions of gender and sexuality, but also on potentially encompassing race, ethnicity, class, and (dis) ability. The use of queer and same-sex love is also done to minimise the potential misidentification of people as lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans when they either did not identify themselves with those words or when they lived in a 7 Claire Louise Hayward, “Representations of Same-sex Love in Public History” (Ph.D. diss., Kingston University, 2015), 10-11. 8 Ibid.,