Reeling backward: the haptics of a medium and the queerness of obsolescence

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorWagner, Travis L.
dc.date.accessioned2019-01-31T12:12:00Z
dc.date.available2019-01-31T12:52:18Z
dc.date.issued2019
dc.description.abstractThis article considers the haptics of queer activist footage shot on video, and more specifically footage shot on magnetic media. Despite ideal methods of care, magnetic media faces extreme concern from a preservation standpoint. As a format that is both subject to rampant deterioration (known colloquially as “sticky shed”) and obsolescence (with the ceasing VCR production), the queer activist videotape is an archival artefact irretrievably stuck in a liminal space. To play a tape is to contribute to its destruction, yet to not play the tape is to overlook potentially unique moments in queer history. As such, this article explores the very thing that is the videotape, an item latent with queer potentialities and reminders of queer failure. By approaching the ethical implications of magnetic media and the iterative nature of using magnetic media as a recording method, the article examines this format as key figure in rhetorics of queer time. Infused with archival discourses of the desire for a queer historic touch (borrowing as the title suggests from Heather Love’s Feeling Backward), the article lands decidedly on the side of caution, noting that each move to save queer history chronicled on the failed format of video is to destroy the very thing it longs to embrace.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionPublished Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationWagner, T. L. (2019) 'Reeling backward: the haptics of a medium and the queerness of obsolescence', Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 16, pp. 67-79. https://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.16.05en
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.33178/alpha.16.05
dc.identifier.endpage79
dc.identifier.issn2009-4078
dc.identifier.issued16
dc.identifier.journalabbrevAlphaville
dc.identifier.journaltitleAlphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Mediaen
dc.identifier.startpage67
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/7398
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherFilm and Screen Media, University College Cork
dc.publisherFilm and Screen Media, University College Corken
dc.relation.urihttp://www.alphavillejournal.com/Issue16/ArticleWagner.pdf
dc.rights© 2019, The Author(s). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licenseen
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectQueer archivesen
dc.subjectObsolescenceen
dc.subjectArchival ethicsen
dc.subjectTemporalityen
dc.subjectMagnetic mediaen
dc.subjectQueer historyen
dc.titleReeling backward: the haptics of a medium and the queerness of obsolescenceen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
ArticleWagner.pdf
Size:
578.24 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Published Version
Download
Collections
Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media. Issue 16: Queer Media Temporalities