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FAQS
General
Q: What is at the core of the VHS Activism Archive ?
A digital collection of one scholar-teacher-activist's entire VHS collection, these ~200 tapes are its core! But there is a core questions as well. VHS Activism Archives considers how to store, transfer, share, research, and reactivate analogue media collections facing obsolescence. It is also a generative database with more information, citation, links, and new work made in response, and added to, its initial holdings: see "Archive of Past Courses" and "Sister Sites" for recent and live work.
Q: Is this a living or active archive?
The archive is active in that it grows with student work made in response as well as the requested addition of user suggestions or contributions. The original VHS tapes are finite in number.
Q: Can I take FILM 7032 or the other CUNY classes where this archive was activated? Where/when is this class offered?
Such classes are offered on an irregular basis. Graduate students in CUNY can enroll. Students from other institutions with shared interests have sat in, audited, and sometimes used cross-institutional workarounds to enroll. Feel free to reach out to learn when the course will be offered in the future. In the meantime, most of the syllabi, and strong coursework by scores of students are available on the pull-down menu "Archive of Past Courses."
Q: Is the entire collection digitized and available for viewing?
We are planning to finish total digitization in the Fall of 2024. When we complete this slow, hands-on task, all the tapes will be available for viewing using CUNY Library credentials. You can request access through this site for teaching or research use through the Contact Us link.
Q: What if I don't have CUNY credentials?
Please reach out to via the Contact Us link.
Q: Where are the tapes stored? Can I rent them out or view them on-site ?
The tapes are stored at the Brooklyn College Library. They can be viewed in person at the library.
Q: Why are some of the digitizations of the tapes hard to watch, glitchy, without sound, partial recordings and/or troubled in other ways?
We were told that VHS had a tape life of 25 years. Most of these tapes are older than that and most all of them play fine. But some of the tapes have deteriorated. However, there is more to this story including the old or faulty decks we used to digitize the tapes (one broke from the strain and was replaced)! And, none of us working on the project are professional or even trained media preservationists. The project was unfunded, volunteer, ad-hoc, and a work of love.
Q: Why did you include the bad recordings in the archive?
The change of the tape over time; lack of (full) access; the need for care; the role of partial records for underserved communities; are all themes and practices of this project.
Q: Where can I find additional resources on the films, if they exist?
There are links to more resources at the bottom of each entry, often found in the category “Is Referenced By.” If you know of or find out more about any video in the collection and want us to add this to the entry, please reach out via the Contact Us link.
Q: If I create an original work inspired by or deriving from the videos in the collection, may I submit them for consideration into the archive?
Please! And do include some explanation.
Q: Can I add to, take down, correct, or dispute information on the site?
Please! We are eager for the people and communities who are represented in the collection to interact. Nothing should be on the site that is not approved by its makers; more can enter the site as contributed by its communities.
Alexandra Juhasz
Q: Where can I see more of your work?
alexandrajuhasz.com
Q: How did you acquire the tapes in the collection?
Most of the VHS tapes in my collection were gifts from friends, colleagues, fellow-teachers, or activists. That is, they were given to me for free so that they could be used for teaching or research. Some are tapes that I made by recording programming off the air or by making a dub from another tape. A small number were purchased.
Q: Do you have personal connections with the filmmakers and/or people featured in these tapes?
My personal relations, almost always to the filmmaker, are accounted for in the descriptions for each tape that we have kept purposefully anecdotal. The media archivist for the project, Brianna Jones, has been keen on keeping the personal layer of the archive accessible through my descriptions of my relations to the tapes. More formal or professional information about the tapes is also included.
Q: Is there one tape in particular that you found yourself consistently reaching to or teaching from throughout your courses?
I loved a two tape compilation that I had called Bad Girls Video, a series curated by Cheryl Dunye in 1994 for the New Museum and commissioned by Marcia Tucker. I taught 1-2 of these short videos in almost every class I taught for many years. Eventually, both were stolen from my office. They held a beautiful, complex, diverse bounty of queer, feminist, and BIPOC expression from the 1990s! I wrote about that series in the 1999 essay: Bad Girls Come and Go … But a Lying Girl Can Never Be Fenced In. The fact that these tapes are missing, but well-remembered, points to some of the beauty of this project in storing and letting go!