Archives

The VHS Collection held here, 184 items strong, first sat on my office shelves, commencing in the 1980s in NYC, moving to Philadelphia in the 1990s, to Claremont CA from 1995-2016, and then back to NYC, growing in number and interests over the years. In that final return, I wondered what to do with all those tapes, now in a format that was nearly impossible to use, as well as becoming every more fragile. For twenty or so years, I had used these workhorses to teach and for my research in queer feminist media praxis, with core attention to AIDS, feminism, experimental and activist media, anti-racism, queer, lesbian, gay and trans media, and documentary. The collection looks like me, these areas of activism and culture over those years, and also like my extended community of fellow teachers, scholars, artists, and activists from around 1980-2000 when VHS stopped being a well-supported medium for production, collection, or exhibition.