Two exhibition views and three participants with their match archives.

The following quotations are taken directly from Matchmaking in the Archive.

E.G. Crichton:

“As matchmaker, I found browsing the shelved collections to be somewhat like cruising, threaded with the thrill of chance encounters, the lure of fantasy, and the possibility of probing deeper. To open a box, pry apart its folders, touch personal artifacts, scrutinize photos and diary entries is unsettling in its voyeurism. An awareness of death imbues each object with unearthly allure, while what is absent urges further inquiry. Desire was my retrieval mechanism, or maybe it was the fuel: how to select a box, dive in and open myself fully to what I discovered inside. There was a distinct feeling of crossing a boundary. In the words of one participant, Bill Domonkos, “My experience was unsettling. I felt as if I had stepped into a stranger’s house and gone through their drawers.”

Bill Domonkos, matched to Helen Harder; Bill’s work: The Poppy (experimental film)

E.G. Crichton:

“Everyone has a lineage – somewhere. But not all of us can touch it or talk about it. Things get in the way: poverty, exile, war, shame, silence, isolation. And if that is the case, where do we go to search for connection, to find antecedents, to identify our spot in the historical scheme of things? Community archives have become a crucial resource for preserving the most ephemeral histories. In the case of queer archives, preservation of the past is often a rescue effort against the wishes of families and communities who want to keep their privacy, or institutions interested in image control. If they are saved at all, queer artifacts are often secreted away, held in reserve until people die, left in basements or anonymously passed on. While this shame slowly lifts, we still rely on institutions like the GLBT Historical Society to preserve evidence from our queer past.”

“Most of the time, archives sit safely in their boxes, waiting for the occasional researcher. But as an artist, I can instigate a process in which the responses of participants form new kinds of archives, archives in motion, ones that widen our kinship networks and reflect the activism that Queer collecting organizations have in common. For people whose traces are so often erased even by our biological families, omitted from official histories, or just plain lost, archives are a way of fostering our own lineage, of taking charge and imagining a future—a process that is rarely static.”

“LINEAGE: Matchmaking in the Archive provided one model for how to bring archives, our history, off the archive shelf into creative visibility. It provided a strategy to bring new people into the archive, to foster uncanny lineages, and to spark our imaginations. In this process, desire crosses time, crosses into and out from the archive, and lurks in liminal spaces between life and death. Personal archives arouse prurient curiosities, inappropriate speculations, and impossible longings – perfect provocation for art that inscribes queer history in new ways.”

TT Takemoto, matched to Jiro Onuma; TT’s work: Gentleman’s Gaman (for Jiro Onuma): A Gay Bachelor’s Japanese American Internment Camp Survival Kit (mixed media installation)

Tina Takemoto, matched to Jiro Onuma:

“I have always been skeptical about matchmaking and blind dates. But when artist E.G. Crichton declared that my “perfect match” was a deceased gay Asian American dandy named Jiro Onuma I was intrigued….Crichton set up my first “blind date” with Onuma at the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco where his personal collection resides. Compared to some of the other collections in the archive, Onuma’s is rather modest, making the details of his life quite spare and mysterious. All of his materials fit into a slim, six-inch-wide file box containing two photo albums, some personal documents and papers, and an assortment of homoerotic ephemera.”

Lauren Crux, matched to Janny MacHarg; Lauren’s work: Dinosaurs and Haircuts (live solo performance and artist book)

Lauren Crux, matched to Janny MacHarg:

“When I think of friends who are younger than me and who, if all goes well, will outlive me, I wonder how they will hold me in memory. I wonder what objects of mine, if any, they will keep or treasure. What will get tossed away as junk? In Janny's archive box there is an emerald green dress. I have also saved an emerald green velvet full-length sleeveless dress my sister made for me when I was 20. Even after I came out I wore this dress to big events, because it looked good and I liked wearing something sexy, elegant and formal to complicate my butchiness.

Maya Manvi, matched to Dodi Horvat; Maya’s work: Tools for (Re)Construction/Ruelle (mixed media installation)

Maya Manvi, matched to Dodi Horvat:

“Ever since I began to engage with Dodi Horvat's archive, I think about it constantly. It's as if Dodi's writing and photos, in all their ambiguity, crawled their way up into my corpus callosum and carved the tissue and gray matter, making a home for themselves…The more I try to take the material fragments of Dodi’s life and reconstruct some sort of narrative, the more I find the story reminds me of myself.”

Camille Norton, matched to Nancy Stockwell; Camille’s work: Breath (poem and spoken word performance

Camille Norton, matched to Nancy Stockwell:

“Now more than ever, I value the archives of ordinary people who help us reconstruct the culture of those last decades of the 20^th Century, which is, for better or worse, my century.”

 Tammy Rae Carland, matched to Jo Daly; Tammy Rae’s work: Jo Daly Ransom Letter 1-7 (framed paper “cut-up” collages)

Tammy Rae Carland, matched to Jo Daly:

“Jo, I have been told you were vivacious, loved a good argument and had a laugh that could call down the goddess. I have no doubt.”

Troy Boyd, matched to George Choy; Troy’s work: Letter to George (framed as broadside)

Troy Boyd, matched to George Choy:

“I feel enlightened, saddened, afraid and hopeful when I look at George’s life. I have read his emails, cards, letters and random thoughts, and looked at pictures of his young adult life. George faced his fears in the midst of a struggle to live. I am inspired by his curiosity to know those different from himself.”

Luciano Chessa, matched to Larry DeCeasar; Luciano’s work: Prayer of an Aspiring Musician (aria and libretto, sung by soprano Don Tatro)

Luciano Chessa, matched to Larry DeCeasar:

“Larry offered me a chance to experience a world I knew next to nothing about—the world of piano bars in post-World War II America… In Larry’s box, I had to face my future. I had to face my failures.”