2020 | single channel video | 00:04:27
Shot at New York City’s oldest gay bar, Juilus’, during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, VITAL RESPONSE is a video work that seeks to re-imagine the culturally, historically, and politically meaningful (and complex) space of the queer bar.
From anti-sodomy laws, to police raids, to the Stonewall riots, to the ongoing AIDS crisis, to the Pulse Orlando mass shooting--the queer bar has endured as a necessary site for social gathering and queer world-making, providing a respite from the rigid and prescribed social and cultural parameters of (heterosexual) public space.
Inspired by José Esteban Muñoz’s essay “Stages: Queers, Punks, and the Utopian Performative” in which he describes the empty stage at a gay bar as a ‘utopic space embued with queer potentiality’, VITAL RESPONSE poses the question, how will we choose to gather once it is safe to dance together once more?
The video incorporates a 3D rendering of the stage from The Stud--San Francisco’s oldest gay bar that permanently shut it’s doors in 2020 due to the pandemic. The phrase THIS IS NOT THE END references a banner that was hung outside of the building when the permanent closing of this important site of Bay Area queer history was announced.
During a time of physical distancing and incredible uncertainty, rather than resort to despair, VITAL RESPONSE aims to inspire hope in reminding viewers that there are still dance floors waiting for you, for us, on the other side.
Commissioned by The Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York City and ONE Archives at University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Shot, edited, directed, and sound by Joseph Liatela. Dancers: DaJuan Harris and John Macejka. 3d animation by Jesse Clark.
2020 | single channel video
VITAL RESPONSE (2020) is a video work that seeks to re-imagine the future of the cultural, historical, and political space of the queer bar. From anti-sodomy laws, to police raids, to the Stonewall riots, to the ongoing AIDS crisis, to the Pulse Orlando mass shooting--the queer bar has endured as a necessary site for social gathering and queer world making, providing a respite from the rigid and prescribed social and cultural parameters of (heterosexual) public space. Importantly, the queer bar has been directly connected to many historical moments of triumph, celebration, and struggle in lgbtqia communties. When contemplating the future of the gay bar in our current moment of physical distancing and uncertainty, rather than resort to despair, Vital Response seeks to imagine how queer people may re-enter, re-imagine, and re-configure the socially, culturally, and politically meaningful, as well as complex, space of the queer bar. In other words, how will we choose to gather when it is safe to dance together once more? This project seeks to inspire hope in reminding queer people that there is still a dancef loor waiting for you, for us, in the not so distant future.
Commissioned by The Leslie-Lohman Museum and ONE Archives at University of Southern California.
Videography, editing, soundtrack, and direction by Joseph Liatela
Dancers: DaJuan Harris and John Macejka
3d animation by Jesse Clark