Matchmaking in the Archive: 19 Conversations with the Dead and 3 Encounters with Ghosts

In: Q+ Public

Abstract

Though today's LGBTQ people owe a lot to the generations who came before them, their historical inheritances are not always obvious. Working with the archives of the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society, artist E.G. Crichton decided to do something to bridge this generation gap. She selected 19 innovative LGBTQ artists, writers, and musicians, then paired each of them with a deceased person whose personal artifacts are part of the archive. Including 25 pages of vivid images, Matchmaking in the Archive documents this monumental creative project and adds essays by Jonathan Katz, Michelle Tea, and Chris Vargas, who describe their own unique encounters with the ghosts of LGBTQ history. Together, they make the archive come alive in remarkably intimate ways