participant updates
Jai Arun Ravine, publishes book!
And and!!! Jai Arun Ravine just released their first collection of works which was published by TinFish Press Books. Click on the TinFish link to purchase a copy of your very own.
“This powerful first collection by Thai American writer Jai Arun Ravine pulls itself and its readers across geographies, cultures, languages, identities, and genders in a performance of transformation. Ravine weaves Thai and English, the past and the present, the lyric and the narrative, into a hypnotizing poetic dance. Additionally, Ravine explores the documentation of identity and citizenship through re-articulating charts, pages of a child’s composition book, and a birth certificate. This collection explores the seams of identity and origin and how they are painfully and beautifully entwined.”
ISO LGBT memories of WWII incarceration
Desperately seeking LGBT memories of World War II incarceration
May 10, 2011 By TINA TAKEMOTO
Two years ago, I was invited to participate in E.G. Crichton’s project “Lineage: Matchmaking in the Archive” in which artists, writers and musicians were asked to respond to personal collections in the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society archive. I was “matched” with Jiro Onuma, a gay Issei who moved to the U.S. from Iwate Prefecture, Japan in 1923 at age 19. Compared to some of the other collections in the archive, Onuma’s is rather modest. It consists of a few photo albums, some personal documents and papers, and a small collection of homoerotic male physique magazines and ephemera.
As I looked through pictures of the elegantly dressed Onuma posing with his male friends and lovers around San Francisco and other travel locations, two photographs captured my attention. Both were taken while Onuma was imprisoned at the Topaz concentration camp in Central Utah during World War II. The first is a group portrait showing Onuma and his mess hall workmates in front of Block #3 Dining Hall. The second shows Onuma, his close friend Ronald, and another man casually posing together on barren prison ground with a guard tower and barbed wire visible in the distance…
Read more at NichiBei.org.
The Ms. Tang Tang Show
On June 23, 2011, as a part of the Queer Cultural Center’s National Queer Arts Festival, two artists created a new live variety/talk show, called the Ms. Tang Tang Show. It was broadcast streaming live all over the US, and a whole slew of Visibility Project participants were a part of the cast and crew. There was also an exhibition of the VP in the main lobby, with over 100 people in attendance. Check out The Ms. Tang Tang Show website for more info.