Hi Stunts,
Love your way!
I went to this really fantastic LAGANZ-run event last month where amazing humans spoke with eloquence about the work they’re involved in with the lgbtqia community as well as the implications of archiving /queer /history /and /or /experience:
Queer History in the Making
Audio from Queer History in the Making, a community show-and-tell event organised by the Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand. It was held at the National Library of New Zealand, Wellington on 12 September 2015.
Lots'a audio here:
News of the day - was reminded at the event that 2016 is the 30th anniversary of homosexual law reform bill!!
I met a LAGANZ board member and was talking to him about our work and our upcoming Christchurch show. He mentioned the queer activist, trade unionist and primary school teacher Robin Duff, born in Hawkes Bay in 1957 who lived in Christchurch and passed away early this year.
Here is a really interesting interview with him - be aware that it's a long interview and the media player doesn't allow you to skip ahead so be prepared to listen to it all in one sitting etc.:
He mentions
Otto von Bismarck
who said ‘Politics is the art of the possible’ but Duff disagrees and says that ‘Politics is the art of the impossible’ - I really like his critique of the false positivism implied in the first statement.
He also speaks of
Local crimes against gay men that had an impact on him
Stonewall
Union movement
Homosexual law reform
Being an openly gay teacher in the 70s/80s
Queer activist groups
"Ponses pussyfoots and perverts"
"Moral turpitude" - (I was reminded of a letter to the editor of our local rag The Kapiti Observer a few years back in which a resident described his alarm at imagining queer people's "dirty little rituals"!) I never tire of laughing gleefully at the letter-writer's expense!
and personal columns - where one might encourage at a personal level things potentially illegal in NZ at the time
LGANZ had a lot of queer publications and ephemera on display at the event- such a wealth of full colour, spectacularly designed queer NZ magazines from the 80s and 90s in particular. The aesthetics are quite close to our’s along with the sense of humour expressed through visuals and texts. I'm keen to read some of these publications if I can get access to the LGANZ archived material again.
Other delights included a description of an empty web page as a ‘Plain vanilla page’
And a story from a gay couple about how they posted an offensive article on gay pets back to the salvation army in one the Sally’s own donation envelopes… protest at the mail delivery level.
It was such a great event, especially as it included groups from across the lgbtqia spectrum, and it involved opportunities for groups to describe what they do but also a panel discussion for more critical thinking, particularly with a focus on archiving queer history, past, present and future… not only going into the implications of archiving in the digital age… but also the quandaries of who can capture and tell queer history… authorship, cultural appropriation, social justice, post-colonialism, gender bias, intersection approaches... all the hard stuff that sometimes gets marginalised at purely celebratory outings... go LAGANZ!
