Lesbian Bars, Archival Media Bricolage and Research-Creation

This article reflects on the author’s research-creation project entitled After Hours Chez Madame Arthur as a speculative practice of archival media bricolage. After Hours was a multimedia installation returning to the 1970s lesbian bar Chez Madame Arthur mounted at the Centre Never Apart in summer 2019. Made possible by the support of co-researchers, community groups, technicians, research assistants and artists who share my fascination with local queer women’s history, After Hours restaged this storied bar deploying diverse archival media traces and period objects. This essay discusses some of the possibilities of research-creation and non-representational theory for lesbian, feminist, and queer historical projects. I explore the affordances of archival media traces for forging affective and erotic relationships between past and present, with a particular emphasis on presence, metonymy, storytelling, and space.