[00:02:00] My name is Caitlin.
[00:02:02] I'm just doing some behind the scenes work just helping these guys. But yeah, I've been lucky enough to be involved in this amazing project that Will's going to talk to us more about before we get into that I've got a few health and safety things to keep note off. If there's an earthquake, drop cover hold in beware of the glass. So yeah, try to try to be centred. And since I was back at the bathrooms pretty popular
[00:02:30] in the corridor and the steel well in the corridor over there. But just let us know if you can't find the metre. Grandpa ones are gender neutral.
[00:02:39] And And finally, if there's a another kind of emergency or alarm goes or whatever, the staff here will guide us out. So just follow the lead. Yeah, so now Will's gonna talk a bit about what this project is, why, how it came about, and why, why it's important or why we have to pretend doing it. And then we're gonna let some of the participants come up here and just speak a little bit about about the page or the experience of exploring logins. And, yeah, and then we'll close off the ceremony with a formal submission of lean to the archives to you know, tie up.
[00:03:20] Awesome cake by late will take it away. Thank you.
[00:03:27] Everyone. Thank you so, so, so much for being here. I'm feeling really overwhelmed with the amount of support and everyone that showed up, we were expecting, like, 15 people. So, you know, thank you so much for coming out. For those who don't know me, my name is wil Hanson. I'm one of the queer historian and a trustee of T prong attack attack way out to erode the lesbian and gay archives of New Zealand, otherwise known as Liggins. Yeah, thank you so much for coming along to this event. This is the first launch party of the collaboration between Wiggins and Wellington things this for the first edition of our collaborative zoom that we made, hopefully, the first of many events, some things that will have, we called the same, the archive is alive because history is always talking to us. And it sounds cliche, but it's important that we listen and that we learn to listen well. Something that I've learned when I've been studying history for the last few years is that the ability to listen to and learn from history is really a skill that everyone is always engaged in. And for queer people, it can often be a life saving one, learning the legacies of quit struggle and quit joy and quit everything else.
[00:04:37] The kind of everything that we're born into, that has been silenced, that has been suppressed, that has been taken away from us, gives us the sense of belonging, a sense of place, a sense of pride and a sense of power. Now, history is so important. I believe that our histories do sit at the heart of our activism. You know, for me personally, history is absolutely vital, as when I'm feeling
[00:05:00] hopeless, I think about all of the change that my elders my queer ancestors have made, and how that means that I can make change to how things have changed so much before now and how things will inevitably change in the future. We also called the xinli archive is alive, as a reflection of the fact that despite attempts to erase queer history, and specifically to destroy and against against was subject to an arson attack in 1986.
[00:05:28] The archive still is here, the archive still alive, still thriving.
[00:05:34] Another title we've played around with, but we ended up discussing it because it just didn't really fit on the cover was the presence of queer history, which was a play on words supposed to indicate that queer history is a gift. So something that is so important and heartwarming and joyful for us to explore, but also to indicate the fact that history is constantly unfolding, that it's not just about the past of the past, but also about what's happening today. And the fact that we need to try really hard to document it, especially in this digital age, when things are getting lost, because they've posted on Facebook events and such. And then once they take them down, they get lost to the internet. So it's about kind of really given people that sense that what's happening today is queer history. And it is important and it is important to be archived. Yeah, this project came about between conversations with me and Caitlin, Caitlin from Wellington seems best, because we both felt this real importance of archives of history. And we also felt the inaccessibility of both of these, both of these institutions, you're both of us has been really lucky to study history courses up at university, and they bring you down to the archives, and they give you a really warm welcome to the archives. But for people who just don't have never had access to an archive, before, I've never been able to go to an archive that can be really intimidating and a really daunting place. And although you know, we try really hard at logins to make queer history accessible. We are entirely volunteer run, and we rely on grants and the goodwill of donors to survive. So you know, if you want to see our archives, you have to be in person in Wellington on site. And you have to have the confidence and the privilege to negotiate these kinds of institutions. So, again, yeah, it can be really daunting. So we're always trying to create new pathways of access. One exciting thing that's happening, which hopefully a lot of you have already heard about is that logins, we're going to digitise our archive soon. So that's really exciting.
[00:07:32] That'll make things so much easier for everyone to access, people will just be able to Google, you know, trends, history, I'll get all that, and we'll come up and they'll be able to see the primary resources for themselves, which I think will make a huge difference. But in the meantime, you know, I've been thinking a lot about how to make logins more accessible for the kinds of communities that I'm part of trans communities, young queer communities. And so talking with with Caitlin and with the rest of the crew, Wellington zimfest,
[00:08:05] we came up with this project, because we hope that will be helpful for our community, and we kind of joined together and misbelief that, that, you know, queer youth need to be uplifted and knowing that they are queer history in the making, that their lives are important and just as their lives important, so are the archives. So I hope that everyone who engages with this theme can feel understand that and feel that same emotion. So, this project began with a call for a small group of participants. For an intensive two day workshop. The first day we had here at the National Library, thank you to the National Library and henner in particular for hosting us. were gone, Hannah.
[00:08:46] Thanks, Hannah. Most important place to be.
[00:08:51] Hannah helped us so so much, spread it out stacks and stacks of things.
[00:08:56] And helped us navigate the world of the Arizona tumble libraries Photo Stream, which is now listed with naked gay male images. So I'm really sorry to anyone who got really surprising those Thank you, Hannah, for putting up with all of that. Um, so day one was here with Hannah with the National Library, Roger Swanson from Liggins, who's really one. He's the lifeblood of logins. We were so lucky to hear from him about his involvement in the organisation, his own journey with with archiving and with queer history. And then I gave a couple of talks about how we can engage critically with our histories and our archives. And we had lots of really cool discussions about this. We talked about questions like How can Mulligan's make itself more useful for for our, you know, diverse queer communities?
[00:09:46] How can Liggins take more of a role in activism Liggins was founded as an aide for the National Gay Rights Coalition, which was an activist organisation that sprung out of gay liberation. So how does how does that activist history translate to
[00:10:00] De all of these kinds of things we considered. And then finally, the participants were given the opportunity to sit down with the archives and have like a good in depth look at them. I really wish we'd had like two weeks to run this workshop because you could spend so, so long, just talking about all of this and sitting down looking at the archives. But unfortunately, we only had the days we did that all in one big long day, thanks to all the participants for getting through all of that no data source going over to machico, which is on Ghazni Street, it's a new place that started up that's really important to support, because they're doing a lot of creative stuff in the community. And they gave us the space to start designing housings. So we did all of the cool everything you see in here was all made made there out of the photocopies that Hannah painstakingly printed off for us.
[00:10:46] Yeah, and that was really, really fun.
[00:10:50] I think that I'm really, really happy with the final product. I just Yeah, I just wish that we have more time to do even more. But printing cost is a lot. So it's probably good to be done.
[00:11:02] I just want to say some final thank yous. Thank you, Raja, and Hannah, for all of the efforts you've put into making this workshop work. We just just couldn't have done it without you. And the knowledge and the skill and the patience and the time and the patience that you brought to working with us. Thank you, Liam, and Caitlin from Wellington zimfest This all started with just us having a little chat, and you guys actually made it a reality, which is really cool. You work so hard on getting the funding application, and just doing all of that organisational stuff that goes right over my head. So, you know, thank you for your passion and your dedication to local creators. And we see as well, I'm always so impressed with Wellington zimfest and the way that you support local creatives and local communities. And if you don't know licencing Fest, I feel I must do here because of them. But if you don't know them, definitely check them out. They're like the most one of the most important and vital institutions that we have employ Nikki really uplifting, uplifting local creatives. So turning dreams into realities as in this case. So thank you. Well, instantaneous. Thank you, Caitlin, and Liam and Lucy.
[00:12:06] Who else Ah, um, and lastly, I want to thank all of the phones all of our contributors so ailish Willis bucklins. Andrew McCauley. Caitlin Lynch, Kira, O. Callaghan, compass Ramsey, Emma Hurley, Francie Berry, Khloe Keifa hunt Liam galta on me
[00:12:26] then thank you to me. No, thank you to everyone for participating I'm really really stoked that hope you guys it will start with it came out so well we spent so long that we have today shape bring this out. And also everyone be sure to check out the hidden little sticker on below. We printed out some stickers, stick those around people have been tearing down by stickers by stick them right back up. And now you will have some stickers
[00:12:49] to stick out. So thanks so much for coming along and listen to me ramble.
[00:13:04] So now to any of the contributors want to come up and talk about this in pages.
[00:13:20] Hi, I'm not gonna talk alongside hope that the same kind of talks for itself.
[00:13:26] But
[00:13:28] this was a really cool experience for me, I think it was very validating it kind of was zero to 100. Like, a lot of the time when you're looking for queer representations or history, it's like you're looking for like a needle in a haystack or you watch like eight seasons of a TV show to find the one maybe lesbian couple. And
[00:13:47] so being able, just being bombarded with like pages and pages of like
[00:13:53] queer history that wasn't just like, I don't know, orientated around law, reform or suffering was very empowering. And I made this page let's reclaim the past.
[00:14:08] The future is quits.
[00:14:11] Kind of,
[00:14:13] to like, represent something that I saw is like ubiquitous between what we looked at from decades and decades, decades ago, and what I see in my own life, which is like queer, joy, queer dancing, queer, partying and smiling and fun and love. And I think it's really important to represent that and that we should talk about that just as much as we talk about suffering and oppression. Because that is what queer people are as well. You know, we don't just die at the end of movies.
[00:14:45] We don't just cry because we can't get married.
[00:14:49] We don't just have unrequited love it for me and like probably every queer person I know and every and looking through these archives as well like this magazine called devotion, which was
[00:15:00] All About devotees and what you love and queer dance parties. And, you know, there's so much positivity in that. And I think that's something I really bought,
[00:15:08] like I took away from, from this experience and something that we should all remember.
[00:15:15] And kind of the idea of countering mainstream narratives of LGBT plus history
[00:15:23] and celebrating love as much as we kind of mourn suffering and loss, which is also a really important part. But we shouldn't orientate kind of LGBT history around how we've been treated, it should be about how we treat each other. And all I see from like, even just an example of this workshop is just like, love and interest and curiosity. And I like feel lucky to be queer. I don't feel like
[00:15:51] something's dead. So I feel like that's it.
[00:16:00] So yeah, just a shout out to all the people on that page and all the people in Wellington ended up with their and leaving, and well and Caitlin and everyone who organised this whole workshop because it made me very happy and also emotional.
[00:16:13] So yeah, thank you
[00:16:23] but compassing keep coming to talk to us
[00:16:31] with trans so we should pages about that, which is super fun. We enjoyed it very much.
[00:16:38] Yeah, I think going into the hallway I also put together the page that has all of the naked men on it.
[00:16:45] Yeah, that one? Yeah.
[00:16:50] Yes, there it is. Yes, sir. Basically, just the green page that I keep writing I did together. It was like right at the end of the second day, and we were like, Oh, no, we finished everything. What should we do now? And then I basically just like glued gender to a page and then we just kind of went with that were like what is gender and then like gender is really stupid.
[00:17:10] Um, some examples that we have up there is like gender is everything that I've dropped on the floor so far.
[00:17:17] genitalia just hate it all that sort of stuff. We have Casper the Friendly Ghost, which has keepers contribution, love. That wasn't the promise, every all of the, like pictures on that are from Keisha because I said, that'd be like how much I write down and then keep actually went and did.
[00:17:37] Yeah, um, then this next page is my page I did by myself. And that being non binary, because being non binary is like super sexy.
[00:17:47] And all of these quotes, there are thrown trends care, which was a magazine that I don't really know that much about, but they have like, really cute things in them just being like being trans is like, really awesome. And I wanted to put that on a page. And just be like, there wasn't really anything about being non binary in the archives, just because that language didn't really express back then. So I was like, I'm gonna make it myself. So that like the next archives, like non binary people can look at it and be like, Oh, yeah, that existed.
[00:18:18] Cool. Yeah. So I made the next couple pages which are quite like minimalistic. But I wanted to focus on the fact that like, throughout my, by the way, that's me and my boyfriend who is here, so shout out to him.
[00:18:32] And I wanted to focus on the fact that like, I think I've grown a lot throughout my own, like transgender because I started off being like, nobody can know, I'm trans. I gotta like transition. And then I got to be like, this, this hideous guy you've ever seen. And then it's like, nobody can know ever. And then it was like, through events such as these and like meeting other like, wonderful trans people.
[00:18:53] I realised that actually, it's okay to be proud to be trans and like, I'm okay with people knowing and I think it's cool that people not, and I got, like, I had to focus on top surgery scars, because I got top surgery in January of this year, which was like a really big thing for me because it was like I could, I could suddenly switch from like hating my body to like actually enjoying it. And I enjoy living in my trans body. And I focused on that, because I'm near the start of it, I was like, I'm going to have scars and like, that's fine. And like, it's going to be kind of weird to my nipples might be kind of weird, but that's fine. And now it's like, now it's like, like, I have scars when I think they're awesome. And I like looking at them in the mirror and like my knuckles kind of aren't fully coloured, but I'm proud of my body because I managed to heal that way. And it's like, it was a big surgery. So I'm like, proud and I appreciate how my body healed. So I wanted to focus on that and in sort of the just the idea of like, it's beautiful to be trans and I'm, like so proud of all my trans spawn out who like exists like that because it can be hard, but I appreciate it so much. And I also
[00:20:00] Really appreciate my family for helping me get top surgery. And like, when I first transitioned, the person who was like, on it straight away was my little assistant I don't think I've ever heard in my cup ever, even though she's literally known me her whole life as,
[00:20:17] like maybe something else will but
[00:20:21] but yeah, so this is a really important experience to me, especially as I'm moving to Miami next year, because it's like my final sort of thing of like, leaving something behind with the queer Wellington community. Even though like the back like, this is my home. It's like, I, I like the idea of having something permanent in the archives to be like, yeah, that's me. So yeah, thank you.
[00:20:52] Thank you so much. Um, does anyone else want to share anything?
[00:20:58] Yeah.
[00:21:05] So I did a couple pages and come from a history, pure History Background, looking at claims recycle, it'd be interesting to sort of capture the vibe of what we were going for with the workshop in sort of reclaiming our history and making history as well has already talked about, through making missing. So
[00:21:27] me. And so the at the bottom has parts from the pink triangle magazine.
[00:21:34] And I'm sure a lot of you are aware of what that pink triangle symbolises but, and so there's like, a little explanation of how it was used during the Second World War for homosexual men in,
[00:21:48] in concentration camps. And sort of like a bit about how, during your gay liberation time sort of reclaiming that symbol that was used as something to demarcate and oppress and sort of making that part of our own
[00:22:02] sort of joy in history, like switching that up. And then at the top was this part from also from pink triangle magazine, about reclaiming the past and looking for
[00:22:13] it's mostly focused on queer women in the past and looking for that sort of history. There's a bit where it's like Sappho, Joan of Arc.
[00:22:23] And me sort of
[00:22:26] making those connections to people in the past,
[00:22:29] which I thought was just really cool images as well sort of someone else's put those together. And I've now stolen them and put them on my
[00:22:37] channel.
[00:22:40] And then I also done
[00:22:43] a page that sort of took snippets from yet took snippets from the mike white papers and magazine pitches, which isn't dikes.
[00:22:54] And sort of I just started looking for things that I think is still sort of relevant to queer community and protests and
[00:23:04] things that we talk about now. And like looking at why that is in the past and how it might have been talked about them, as opposed to now so there's like bits about
[00:23:13] the treaty,
[00:23:15] screwing capitalism over but at the police. This is really fun cartoon sort of like the top rack where it's these two lesbian lovers and the low capitalism festival. Why don't we talk about politics before this goes any further?
[00:23:33] Yeah, just looking at like, those intersectional struggles or ideas that we still talk about now, which I thought was cool to find that in the archive? Yeah. So there's
[00:23:52] any loss.
[00:23:55] Cool. Okay. Well, I think we will move on to our final event of the evening the official handover.
[00:24:04] And
[00:24:08] so we've got Rhonda here from
[00:24:13] William, do you wanna
[00:24:16] saunas from the legal deposit team? visual library? I am. Yeah, and this is just really beautiful. So yeah, that's amazing. So So what are we doing?
[00:24:39] On behalf of looking?
[00:24:56] Thank you. Well, and um, thank you all the team that put this together.
[00:25:00] It's really amazing. It was a great privilege to have Well, let me get get material out for the for the, for this workshop, and we had long list of suggestions. And, and so I spent a few days hauling stuff up, which was great. And I think you Well, that's interesting what what's going to come over cuz I have not much idea busines it's not my territory at all. And, and so it was that it's great having people expressing their reactions to collection items. And I know in the Trimble library, we have people in tears, people dancing in the room, because I found something that I've been looking for, for ages, what's moved them. So with the motion, that that little object, they found this bit of text, the letter that I've just read from, from an ancestor have been really moving, and this is our ancestry. And this great, we have people being moved by it. And it's great that it comes alive. And that's the idea of the archive is not a dead thing that you put in boxes and never see again, it's something that's brought out and used and makes change. And this will say the archive was founded as an activist organised as an actor, this thing, and was there to make change in the world. And, and hopefully this is this is another step along the way. So thank you. Well, thank you, Caitlin. And thank you everybody, for coming tonight. And for the group that put this together, well done.
[00:26:36] Thank you for for Roger and Hannah's
[00:26:40] will deliver.
[00:26:44] The one final thing I want to say is that we as you may have noticed, we've sold out of copies tonight, because about five times as many people came as anticipated, which is awesome, too great. But if you want to copy one option is to come to Wellington Xin Fest, which is next weekend on the 10th and 11th of October at
[00:27:05] the action design campus on the main street will and I are going to be there on the Sunday with a store with this thing and also like heaps of other like cool history scenes and cuisines. So yeah, come on down.
[00:27:20] It's caused me to check out.
[00:27:23] The other thing is that like, the only reason we have a price on this is for print costs if you want a digital copy of it for you to print it yourself or like just look at digitally and just email wellingtonzinefest@gmail.com and we'll just send you the PDF. Cool. So it's wellingtonzinefest@gmail.com, or come in catch us. Anyway. Thank you so much for coming.