Tyler Morse and Nia Nottage of STEPH CHRIST COLLECTIVE

Centering the voices of LGBT individuals, women, and artists of color, the Collective Practices Oral History Project: NYC 1980–2005 will feature newly released video oral histories with artists and practitioners working in fields including visual art, media making, theater, performance, and activism, along with transcriptions of the conversations and digitized ephemera related to their practices and productions. The accounts aggregated in the Collective Practices Oral History Project will shed new light on the relational networks that animated art and activism in NY during the seminal period from the 1980s through early 2000s.

During the launch event, Morse and Nottage will introduce the project and premiere supercuts of video footage from oral histories with actor and director of The Family Repertory Company Marvin Camillo Valentine, writer and founder of PARTICIPANT INC Lia Gangitano, visual and performing artist and former Director of Education/Outreach at The Kitchen Treva Offutt, and visual and performing artist Rafael Sánchez.

Following the event, the video oral histories, transcriptions, and additional archival materials will be available for access online here, and, in the future, in the form of a permanent installation at Come Forever.

The Collective Practices Oral History Project: NYC 1980–2005 marks the next phase of a project Morse and Nottage conceived during their participation in The Kitchen’s 2021 Research Residency, during which they spent six months engaging with audiovisual recordings, ephemera, and oral histories contained in the institution’s archive.

BIOS

Tyler Morse, alongside Willie Kearse, is co-director of Archive-Based Creative Arts (archivebasedarts.org), in collaboration with artists and authors incarcerated in NY State and funded by Creatives Rebuild NY. She is part of BAILFRONT, a donation based bail-fundraising operation, and has published books by Mohammed Zenia and Kamal Fardan as Porosity Press. She has co/hosted workshops at Wendy's Subway and The Poetry Project, and is a 2020 Larry J. Hackman Fellow, a 2021 Kitchen Research Resident, and a 2022 Wendy’s Subway Resident. She is interested in open-access archival models and the press as a shared resource.

Nia Nottage is an archivist, video artist, and arts organizer. Their focus includes community activism, performance practice, sexual subculture, and somatics. They have exhibited projects in collaboration with The Kitchen (NYC), BOFFO Performance Festival (Fire Island), Arts Project of Cherry Grove (Fire Island), Performa (NYC), Coalition to Protect Chinatown and The LES (NYC), Performance Space New York, Artists Space (NYC), and The Whitney Independent Study Program (NYC).

STEPH CHRIST is a fag communist collective of artists, archivists, and activists, as well as a small press. http://stephs.net.

Come Forever (CFE) is a social space for cross-accessible contact. It’s home to a variety of free health resources collected via mutual aid as well as public archives, a bookmaking collaborative, public restroom, and a small library. CFE is a mask non-optional space for the promotion of rest, physical and mental health and well-being, and social connection across a disability spectrum.

ACCESSIBILITY INFO

Come Forever is a ground floor space with no stairs, a wide door, and a wheelchair accessible bathroom. Wheelchairs can access the entrance by entering the sidewalk via a curb cut at the corner of S 5th and Hewes St, approximately 200 ft from the Come Forever door. Masks are required while inside of the space and KN95 and N95 masks are available on site. Food will be offered outside in open air. For accessibility-related requests and/or inquiries, please write to comeforeverandever@gmail.com.