Unfortunately, my suspicions were confirmed when I saw the exhibit: they tried, but not too hard. The result? Not many more people know more about their history now than they did before pride week. I have plenty of evidence to back up that previous statement after Sunday, when I saw equal amounts of senior and baby-queers walk by the exhibit (and me) without slowing their pace. That was a shame, because Ottawa's queer community has a lot to be proud of in what it has achieved over the decades.
Now, the blame should not totally be hoisted on pride's shoulders. I am glad they did something, anything, to show the gay community its own history, a history that generally is under-appreciated, by young an old alike.That said, the displays could have been so much more; if they had perhaps more people would've stopped and the generosity of the folks who provided material would not have gone mostly unnoticed.
While I am really grateful pride even bothered, the exhibit was not very effective in conveying the evolution of Pride, which is a drag since exhibits like these represent one of the few opportunities Queers get to learn about their history, especially their local history. While I am loathe to whine and moan about the work of a bunch of volunteers, I feel a critique is necessary, considering that next year is the 40th anniversary of the first gay rights protest in Canada (known as 'We Demand'). I have heard that Pride wants to do another exhibit to commemorate that date, but I believe it needs someone skilled to do a better job.
First off, before I (humbly) present my critiques, I want to say I am not a public historian; I don't know how to make one historical exhibit more attractive, engaging and informative for a non-academic audience than another. However, to paraphrase Monty Python, I know what doesn't work, and the display in After Stonewall Books didn't:
First off, my friend Maureen pointed this out to me after she waited for a bus in from of the bookstore (the one advantage to this exhibit was that it had a constant audience of people waiting at the stop): putting old newspapers in the sun for a better part of the week is a bad thing. There is a reasons all those horrible, brutalist libraries that sprouted up in the 60's and 70's have small windows, and it is not just because of some anti-human aesthetic (although that is a part of it): the sun destroys newspapers! Maybe because they are only 25-ish years old that no one thought of it, but if you have been around archivists long enough, you learn that it does not take too much to make newsprint really brittle and delicate, and a week in the sun does plenty. Once these are gone, they are gone, 25 years young or not.
At least the were not in direct sun, since the window had posters for other pride events in it, effectively covering the papers and photos. Why have a exhibit if it is blocked by other posters?
Although I am mentioning this here, this is a complaint for all the exhibits: few if any of them had any tags explaining what the artifacts were, or how did they relate to pride. Frankly, a lot of them didn't: they were just GO INFO's from the 80's thrown down on the floor along with some pictures of people I had no clue they were. Were they pride organizers? Activists? Both? Neither? Or were they included on the merits of their awesome haircuts?
The display at the Second Cup on Bank/Somerset was better, partly because the documents were in from the sun, but also because they attempted to explain what the photos up on the wall were about. However, there was no overall narrative to them, just a general theme of overcoming obstacles and protests to having pride.
More pragmatically were the issues of setup and access. These panels (examples are pictured left) were on the walls around the shop and above the tables. If you wanted to take a good look at them, you were often wandering up to a table and placing your crotch in the personal space of anyone seated there. While I am a great fan of faces meeting crotches generally, having them meet in this situation was not a great situation for either party. If there were two people at a table you would basically have to interrupt their conversation to look at the exhibit. So, keeping a respectful distance from the patrons meant also keeping the exhibit at a distance too.
The Sunday exhibit at town hall allowed people to get up close with the material on display, finally. The material at After Stonewall and at Second Cup weren't transferred to city hall on Sunday, and I am of two minds about that: It was good, because the diffusion of materials meant more people could see it, but the strongest of the displays -the Second Cup panels- were not at pride for an audience that I suspect would have found them really engaging, as I had.
The picture above shows how the place was set up after I rearranged it. Changing things around was not a problem: When I came in at 3pm, the time I was told to, pride was already in full swing and while there was a table there for me already, the whole day I did not see one pride official. I know they were busy, but really, anyone could have come over and either taken over the exhibit space, or simply taken whatever they wanted from the displays. I couldn't even find someone with duct tape to fix the banner that had fallen down (see pic).
Needless to say the exhibit was kinda a jumble and needed some help ASAP; It was set waaaay back against the windows, far from where most people were walking. I moved it forward by about 20 meters. all the tripods were clustered at one end of the exhibit behind a table. I spaced them out between tables so the exhibits had a more balanced feel and people could get up close to the tripods. The materials on the tables I didn't do anything with , what could I? The materials -pictures, pamphlets, newspapers and posters mostly- were assembled in a collage; lots and lots of stuff overlapping each other, making it impossible to read any documents of look at any picture with out part of it being obscured. The materiel was not even thematically assembled, it would have made sense to have the material on each table cover either a particular era, or a theme/event important to the community. But there was nothing like that, just a lot of gay stuff on a table covered with a plastic tarp to protect it, but also reflected light all over the place, making it difficult to look at some parts of the 'collages'.
While I was disappointed at the turnout for the display and the general disinterest showed by passer-bys (I suppose they were in a rush to go see the performances, or get to the beer tent), I can't say there was a lot to lure them in. I regret I was not thinking about pride until a week before the event. Had I, I would have offered my humble skills to the project, and wrangled a few hundred dollars and some AV equipment out of them, to make some narrative storyboards, and get some news footage out of the local archives to show.
Next year, I will to not just sit here and gripe, but will get involved. Promise.
First off, my friend Maureen pointed this out to me after she waited for a bus in from of the bookstore (the one advantage to this exhibit was that it had a constant audience of people waiting at the stop): putting old newspapers in the sun for a better part of the week is a bad thing. There is a reasons all those horrible, brutalist libraries that sprouted up in the 60's and 70's have small windows, and it is not just because of some anti-human aesthetic (although that is a part of it): the sun destroys newspapers! Maybe because they are only 25-ish years old that no one thought of it, but if you have been around archivists long enough, you learn that it does not take too much to make newsprint really brittle and delicate, and a week in the sun does plenty. Once these are gone, they are gone, 25 years young or not.At least the were not in direct sun, since the window had posters for other pride events in it, effectively covering the papers and photos. Why have a exhibit if it is blocked by other posters?
Although I am mentioning this here, this is a complaint for all the exhibits: few if any of them had any tags explaining what the artifacts were, or how did they relate to pride. Frankly, a lot of them didn't: they were just GO INFO's from the 80's thrown down on the floor along with some pictures of people I had no clue they were. Were they pride organizers? Activists? Both? Neither? Or were they included on the merits of their awesome haircuts?
The display at the Second Cup on Bank/Somerset was better, partly because the documents were in from the sun, but also because they attempted to explain what the photos up on the wall were about. However, there was no overall narrative to them, just a general theme of overcoming obstacles and protests to having pride.More pragmatically were the issues of setup and access. These panels (examples are pictured left) were on the walls around the shop and above the tables. If you wanted to take a good look at them, you were often wandering up to a table and placing your crotch in the personal space of anyone seated there. While I am a great fan of faces meeting crotches generally, having them meet in this situation was not a great situation for either party. If there were two people at a table you would basically have to interrupt their conversation to look at the exhibit. So, keeping a respectful distance from the patrons meant also keeping the exhibit at a distance too.
The Sunday exhibit at town hall allowed people to get up close with the material on display, finally. The material at After Stonewall and at Second Cup weren't transferred to city hall on Sunday, and I am of two minds about that: It was good, because the diffusion of materials meant more people could see it, but the strongest of the displays -the Second Cup panels- were not at pride for an audience that I suspect would have found them really engaging, as I had.The picture above shows how the place was set up after I rearranged it. Changing things around was not a problem: When I came in at 3pm, the time I was told to, pride was already in full swing and while there was a table there for me already, the whole day I did not see one pride official. I know they were busy, but really, anyone could have come over and either taken over the exhibit space, or simply taken whatever they wanted from the displays. I couldn't even find someone with duct tape to fix the banner that had fallen down (see pic).
Needless to say the exhibit was kinda a jumble and needed some help ASAP; It was set waaaay back against the windows, far from where most people were walking. I moved it forward by about 20 meters. all the tripods were clustered at one end of the exhibit behind a table. I spaced them out between tables so the exhibits had a more balanced feel and people could get up close to the tripods. The materials on the tables I didn't do anything with , what could I? The materials -pictures, pamphlets, newspapers and posters mostly- were assembled in a collage; lots and lots of stuff overlapping each other, making it impossible to read any documents of look at any picture with out part of it being obscured. The materiel was not even thematically assembled, it would have made sense to have the material on each table cover either a particular era, or a theme/event important to the community. But there was nothing like that, just a lot of gay stuff on a table covered with a plastic tarp to protect it, but also reflected light all over the place, making it difficult to look at some parts of the 'collages'.
While I was disappointed at the turnout for the display and the general disinterest showed by passer-bys (I suppose they were in a rush to go see the performances, or get to the beer tent), I can't say there was a lot to lure them in. I regret I was not thinking about pride until a week before the event. Had I, I would have offered my humble skills to the project, and wrangled a few hundred dollars and some AV equipment out of them, to make some narrative storyboards, and get some news footage out of the local archives to show.
Next year, I will to not just sit here and gripe, but will get involved. Promise.
Great critique Grant! Very good points--will look forward to future years should your comments be noted as they truly should! Keep haranguing!
ReplyDeleteSo Pride isn't known for its ability to organize, administer or action anything as a general rule.
ReplyDeleteMany people have tried getting involved with it over the years and given up because institutionally it's just an impossible group of people.
It's more notable for not having its act together than really anything else... I'd say over time that's its most notable feature: being a mess as an organization.
I'm glad they came up with something but honestly, I haven't gone to pride in years. I didn't even know what they had planned this year.