What We Leave Behind: New narratives in a queer archive Posted on July 8, 2009 by Adrienne Skye Roberts
As the first artist-in-residence at the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society, EG Crichton adopted the role of a matchmaker of sorts. After spending hours researching in the archives she had the idea to personally match a living person with a dead person’s archive, extending a unique invitation to ten people to create a response to the experience of exploring a stranger’s life through what they have left behind. Crichton’s matchmaking was largely intuitive and sometimes inspired by shared demographics. The results of this matchmaking is a dynamic and comprehensive exhibition entitled Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive that includes both the contents of the archive itself, as well the creative responses to them. The exhibition features visual artists, musicians, poets, and performers including Elliot Anderson, Dominika Bednarska, Troy Boyd, Luciano Chessa, Crow Cianciola, Lauren Crux, Bill Domonkos, Tirza Latimer, Maya Manvi, Camille Norton, Gabriella Ripley-Phipps, and Tina Takemoto. From cardboard boxes filled with journals, articles of clothing, ephemera, films, letters, and photographs emerged sculptures, poetry, performances, films, letters, and music.
The opening night featured three performances including a poem written by Camille Norton and inspired by the archive of Nancy Stockwell, an aria composed by Luciano Chessa for his match, Larry DeCaesar and the monologue “Dinosaurs & Haircuts” by Lauren Crux. Crux’s performance was inspired by her experience sifting through the archive of Janny Mac Harg, a San Francisco songwriter, cabaret singer, and political activist. Crux discussed the way in which the archive reflected to her her own role as a lesbian in the latter half of her life while humorously and poignantly interrogating the archive itself: “I suppose that eventually we are all only our artifacts but why does this bother me so much? It’s not death I am afraid of. Like most of us, I hope to have a good death, to go out quickly or gently during sleep without much pain. So, why does the idea of archives bother me so much? Oh, it’s the damn cardboard boxes.”
As I sat tucked in the last row of fold-out chairs in the back corner of the crowded room, listening to Crux’s concern about preservation and the inevitability of one’s life being reduced to a collection of objects stored in a box marked “Acid Free,” I realized that I was one of the youngest visitors at the GLBT Historical Society. There was something affirming about sharing space with an older queer community; a group of people whose own experience of gender and sexuality was informed by a social and political context entirely different than today, people whose struggles and contributions paved the way for today’s generation of queer artists and activists. In this moment the title of this exhibition was more than just relevant, it was visible.
