*This event features explicit material/content. Discretion is advised.*
Being played for the first time, the Norm Tape Collection is an autobiographical erotic audio project documenting discreet anonymous sex between men in Pennsylvania and New York during through the 1980s. Join us for this special one-time only listening session cohosted by artist Clint Fisher, Harrison Apple, and Tim Haggerty from the Pittsburgh Queer History Project as part of the MS89 series. In a departure from our usual format, Clint and the PQHP will share these tapes and guide us to listen to them as one of many examples of non-visual and anonymized pornography created out of underground sexual culture.
The MS 89 series is a live & in-person only nightclub archives screening event that pays community members to host screenings and discussions of tapes that they had a hand in creating. Pushing back against the tendency to consume archives, MS 89 packs together to watch and rewatch as a ritual in creating new intergenerational friendships via our shared desire for a shared past. It’s dark, it’s social, and you’re gonna love it.
Dr. Harrison Apple is an oral historian and archivist who began the Pittsburgh Queer History Project after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University. They received their PhD in Gender & Women’s Studies from the University of Arizona. Their work examines local histories of voluntary associations and ‘drinking clubs’ as the context for the Pittsburgh Queer History Project’s archives. Their work asks why these materials come together as a community archives, beyond their relationship to sexual identity, working with the overlapping meanings of “membership” that circulate in the PQHP’s records.
Their research interests include archival studies, oral history, biopolitics, transgender studies, and critical race studies. Their writing has been published in Archivaria, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Outhistory.org and the Introduction to Transgender Studies textbook from Harrington Park Press, edited by Ardel Haefle-Thomas.
Dr. Tim Haggerty is currently the Director of the Humanities Scholars Program, an interdisciplinary honors program in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Carnegie Mellon as well as an adjunct professor in History.
Broadly, his research interests examine changing roles of masculinity and the role of the state in formulating male identities in the nineteenth and twentieth century. This research has produced work that examines new cultural roles for men, as well as examining policy issues concerning sexuality and military service.
Besides his historical work, his satirical commentary appears in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette frequently.
In support of his dissertation research, he was awarded a Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, and, with Jared Day, has received support from the New-York Historical Society and the Bibliography Society of America to support current work on the satirical newspapers of antebellum New York.
Clint Fisher is a multidisciplinary artist born in the back woods of Southern West Virginia and currently residing in Pittsburgh. A graduate of West Virginia University with a focus on studio art and art history, his works embrace themes of voyeurism, sexuality, and individual observation.
His involvement with underground arts/music scenes started in college with while living with DJs and running popup galleries at local house party shows. Within the region he is mostly known for a series of tee shirt designs and murals within the local bathhouse along with his figure drawing sessions held in his home in Lawrenceville.
Cleaner Tapes is a gay art/music label who will also be present at the event. Visit linktr.ee/cleanertapes for Cassettes, VHS, tape cleaners, and live events in PGH!