Matchmaking in the archive: 19 conversations with the dead and 3 encounters with ghosts
In: Q+public
"Matchmaking in the Archive draws the reader into intimate paired relationships between the living and the dead. Each pair was formed through a unique matchmaking process that took place in the archives of The Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society. The author, who is also the matchmaker, issued an invitation to wander through one archive, to connect with one person, and to invent a creative response. The nineteen relationships that emerged generated a powerful body of creative work that has been exhibited and performed on four continents. It has encompassed live monologue, poetry, an aria sung by a male soprano, sculptural installations, paintings, photography, personal letters, a jam session, a short film, and the author's uncanny photographic portraits of each matched pair. Underlying the creative work are questions that crop up repeatedly: What is our lineage? How do we remember individual people after they die? What does a person's archive reveal? And, just as critical, what is absent from the archive, what secrets do the artifacts suggest, what shimmers in the gaps?"--