My project was an archival exhibit of Montreal鈥檚 queer food and drink history. The title of the project is 鈥淭he History of Queer Food and Drink in Montreal鈥� and I was supervised by Professor Alex Ketchum. The project includes a physical exhibit and a digital exhibit complete with visual and oral materials.
I was interested in this project because food and drink have historically been the center of many gathering sites for the queer community. Bars are arguably the most prolific site of queer gathering, but the prevalence of food and drink continues in gay-owned restaurants, fundraiser dinners, events of political resistance, coffeehouses, picnics, potlucks, and more. Additionally, I was very interested in the opportunity to work in the archives and see the breadth of documents that have been collected from the community鈥檚 history. I was interested in what kinds of aesthetics and means of transmitting information would be most prevalent. Finally, I was interested in the opportunity to present this history in an exhibit, providing much-needed representation to an underrepresented community. With a minor in GSFS, I am always looking for work that fills the gaps left by the oppressive history of western society.
My learning objectives were to develop archival and curatorial skills, which I acquired by learning the mechanisms of an archive, labelling materials, and assembling audio clips for the exhibit. I can now move into future projects with a broadened skillset and a background in managing various kinds of resources.
My highlight of working on this project was being in the archive and having exposure to so many different historical materials. I saw many materials related to food and drink, many more than we were able to include in the exhibit, but I also saw materials pertaining to political resistance, social events, and the queer community outside of Montreal. This allowed me to learn about topics far beyond the scope of my project. I also enjoyed learning about the past and present of queer nightlife in Montreal. In clipping audios for the oral exhibit, I worked with interviews from prevalent figures in Montreal nightlife, and I gained so much insight into the mechanisms and challenges of event-planning and business-owning. My challenges were working with new software such as Audacity, an audio editing software. I overcame these struggles with persistence and outside research and quickly adapted to the requirements of the project.
I believe this project has shaped the course of my education because I was not previously interested in historical or archival research. My interests were more focused on theory in gender studies and anthropology rather than working with physical materials. However, this project has piqued my interest in history, and I would love to continue working with archival materials in the future. Specifically, I would love to work in the AGQ and the ALQ again. I have come to greatly appreciate the role of archives in the queer community, and the storage of materials that are not traditionally considered telling of history, such as matchbooks and party flyers. Without these materials, we would be missing an integral portion of the history of queer community building.
Without receiving the Faculty of Arts Internship Award, I would not have been able to dedicate so much of my time to putting the exhibit together. I visited the archive almost every week in May and June to collect materials and spent time outside the archive labelling images and collecting additional information. I am grateful for the funding I received which allowed me to work on this project full-time.
