I organized Together On the Air, a hybrid exhibition that explores the legacy of radio as a vehicle for LGBTQIA+ Latinx community building, belonging, and advocacy from the 1980s and 1990s. This was one of the most memorable projects I worked on at One Institute.
The exhibition chronicles the history of Radio GLLU, the first bilingual LGBTQIA+ radio program in the country. From the mid-1980s through the 1990s, Radio GLLU was hosted and run by the Los Angeles-based Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos (GLLU), one of the first LGBTQIA+ Latinx organizations in the country.
As the project’s creative director, I was working toward a vision of an audio-forward exhibition where archival audio is not a secondary consideration, but as a primary site of mediation and interpretation. I wanted the narrative, the spectacle, and the transmission of sound as experienced through multiple dimensions.
I brought together a team of talented curator, archival researchers, audio production professional, and graphic designer for the project. What we produced — an interactive sound web exhibit with audio documentaries, in-person programming including a radio recording session, oral history recordings, and a temporary installation on view at ONE Gallery, West Hollywood — was phenomenal.
I was particularly excited for the possibility of bringing together web archives and audio streaming to make a multimedia documentary work. I envisioned a web exhibit with topically organized listening rooms, each with archival ephemera such a photos and flyers from the movement work.
I ended up producing the audio documentaries myself. With the audio team, we created short-form narrative, between 12-15 minutes each, to reanimate the archival audio recordings from the radio program.
The resulting work was a tapestry of the rich contents of the archives — community conversations, demonstrations, activist conversations, music, literary readings, and ephemera — structured around excerpts of newly produced oral history recordings of former GLLU members, created by the terrific curator/oral historian Ángel Labarthe del Solar.
The difference in audio fidelity between these sources gives a warm intergenerational dialog. I wanted the listener to feel like they can sit inside these listening rooms, much like how the listeners would experience the radio program from the 1980s-1990s, perhaps within the privacy of their bedrooms or apartments. I wanted to evoke the experience of radio as a lifeline, with the feelings of intimacy and safety central to the community historically and today. Also I wanted the listeners today to be able to feel like they’re in a room with their queer and trans elders, listening to their stories.
To complete a full circle, I was excited to partner with dublab to program an event to re-enact the experience of live radio, a forgotten medium in our time. The opening event “Together On the Air: LIVE on Radio” also reunited original Radio GLLU co-hosts Rita Gonzales and Eduardo Archuleta for a live recording of an exclusive radio session, featuring activist Irene Martínez and historian & author Lydia Otero.
Produced in the radio program’s “Gay Day” format from the 1980s, this radio show recording was broadcast by Los Angeles nonprofit radio station dublab. The archived show recording is available to stream on dublab’s online repository.
More:
Together On the Air web exhibition
Together On the Air LIVE on Radio with dub
Credits:
Ángel Labarthe del Solar: exhibition curation
Diego Dela Rosa: Research and exhibition design
Saphir Davis: Graphic design
Shei Yu: audio editing
Umi Hsu: audio documentaries, sound design, programming, creative direction
Alejandro Cohen / dublab: radio audio engineering and recording
Organized by One Institute