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Summary: Lucky After Dark: Gay + Lesbian Night Club Communities in Pittsburgh, 1960-1990
Harrison Apple
Invisibility still dominates the discussion of GLBT community formation
in the 20th- century. Assumptions that gay life evolved in San
Francisco, New York, or LA while smaller cities lagged behind or
remained off the grid are rebuked by the example of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, where a queer working-class world evolved in reaction to
local conditions, opportunities, and restraints.
“Lucky After Dark” tracks the emergence of a gay and lesbian demimonde
in post-war Pittsburgh utilizing an extensive archive of primary
material collected by bar owners and community members from 1960-1990,
including oral histories, photographs, videos, and material culture. One
key informant is “Lucky,” or “the Pope of gay Pittsburgh,” an
entrepreneur who was central to gay nightlife for thirty years.
Profitably exploiting a niche between legal authority and criminal
activity, Lucky and other club owners developed a network of
institutions that eventually acted as a precursor to broader political
engagement and recognition.
'Clubs That Don't Exist Anymore': Viola Johnson's Mobile Archive + Pin Sash
Andy Campbell
Viola Johnson is an archivist (untrained) and a self-identified
black, lesbian, submissive (highly trained). Johnson’s story of leather
identity and archiving traces a path from New Jersey to Oklahoma and
back again. Spurred by a childhood book-burning incident in her hometown
library in Rossell, New Jersey, Johnson began, as an adult, to collect
and store materials related to BDSM cultures (both straight and LGBTQ)
in her house. Unlike the more formalized Leather Archives and Museum in
Chicago, which would also provide a fascinating case-study on the myriad
ways that leather history is being written and presented, Johnson’s
library and her pin sash of many thousands of pins is less formalized,
more improvisatory, and importantly, more mobile. Composed of over 9,000
books, papers, magazines, posters, clothing, photos and sex toys, The
Carter/Johnson Library ambitiously tours gay, lesbian and pansexual
leather events across the country. The library’s presence at these
events – often held in hotels and ballrooms - is meant to bring history
to the playroom, with Johnson and her crew of “griots” presiding over
the ad hoc archive. This paper considers the lineaments of Johnson’s
archival practice/performance as an alternative method of mobilizing
community around unofficial and overlooked histories of sexuality.
Through examining a small number of pins from Johnson’s pin sash (the
archive within the archive), I offer a way of “reading” leather history
centered on processes of differentiation and destabilization. Johnson’s
mission of service to others – which she takes seriously as a leather
player and archivist – has the radical potential to reformat the
library/archive as a place of un-mastery.
Against Equality: Reinvigorating the Queer Political Imagination
Ryan Conrad
The Against Equality archives serve as an introduction to the diverse array of radical queer and
trans critiques leveled against mainstream gay and lesbian politics. Our
hope is that by engaging with the ideas in our archives, readers can go
on to build broader and more nuanced critiques that best reflect the
specificity of their own communities. Our archive is by no means
exhaustive or complete, but represents what we found to be some of the
best and most convincing critiques articulated through textual and
visual means over the last century.
Beyond the immediate purpose of building a larger, more critically
engaged community of radical queer and trans folks, we see the relevance
of our archival work as even more important today than ever before. As a
collective we have witnessed the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA) in the summer of 2013, the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) in
autumn 2011, and the passage of federal hate crime laws in the 2010
National Defense Authorization Act; we want to be sure that voices of
resistance to this staunchly conservative gay agenda are not erased and
written out of history. The visual and textual works in our archives are
like bread crumbs, laying out different pathways to justice and
resistance for those that dare to imagine a more just world. When people
look back on these desperately conservative gay times, we hope our
collective voices can be an inspiration to those who come after us—those
that look to our queer histories, just like we did, as a site of
rejuvenation, excitement, and hope.
Harrison Apple is the 2013 Artist in Residence for the Center for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his BHA from Carnegie Mellon University where he was awarded the Dietrich Humanities Prize and the Samuel Roseburg Fine Art Award. In 2011 He founded the Pittsburgh Queer History Project and has since cataloged thousands of photographs, articles, and conducted extensive community profiling and interviews. He has presented his work at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, the Andy Warhol Museum, and has acted as a researcher and design assistant for the Museum of Sex in New York.
Andy Campbell, Clubs That Don't Exist Anymore': Viola Johnson's Mobile Archive & Pin Sash
Viola Johnson is an archivist (untrained) and a self-identified black, lesbian, submissive (highly trained). Johnson’s story of leather identity and archiving traces a path from New Jersey to Oklahoma and back again. Spurred by a childhood book-burning incident in her hometown library in Rossell, New Jersey, Johnson began, as an adult, to collect and store materials related to BDSM cultures (both straight and LGBTQ) in her house. Unlike the more formalized Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago, which would also provide a fascinating case-study on the myriad ways that leather history is being written and presented, Johnson’s library and her pin sash of many thousands of pins is less formalized, more improvisatory, and importantly, more mobile. Composed of over 9,000 books, papers, magazines, posters, clothing, photos and sex toys, The Carter/Johnson Library ambitiously tours gay, lesbian and pansexual leather events across the country. The library’s presence at these events – often held in hotels and ballrooms - is meant to bring history to the playroom, with Johnson and her crew of “griots” presiding over the ad hoc archive. This paper considers the lineaments of Johnson’s archival practice/performance as an alternative method of mobilizing community around unofficial and overlooked histories of sexuality. Through examining a small number of pins from Johnson’s pin sash (the archive within the archive), I offer a way of “reading” leather history centered on processes of differentiation and destabilization. Johnson’s mission of service to others – which she takes seriously as a leather player and archivist – has the radical potential to reformat the library/archive as a place of un-mastery.
Carlos Motta, The Queer Art of the Counter Archive Introduction
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