Against Our Vanishing is a research document, an oral history archive, a series of site-specific video projection installations, and a photographic documentary project. It is one component of a larger study of the evolution of queer culture as a movement that first flourished in public spaces into a culture that now exists primarily in private spaces.

Participants who identified as queer individuals were invited to write out a personal narrative which occurred in and had a relationship to a public space; they sat for a video portrait; and I created a digital mural comprised of these two elements. The mural was temporarily projected back into the space where the narrative had its roots, and this ephemeral installation became one of a series of digital monuments which made visible the lives, stories, and presence of queer people in the present and gestured toward a queer reclaiming of public spaces and renewed visibility into the future.

May 2019