We met with Dr. Harrison Apple (they/them) on November 7, 2024 to discuss their work as an archivist and oral historian. Dr. Apple is the creator of the Pittsburgh Queer History Project and Associate Director of the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. Through our discussion, they detailed how they got started doing this work and the importance and nuances of collaboration, authority, and ownership in archival work.

To begin, Harrison relayed that the STUDIO was founded in 1989 by Lowry Burgess, who at the time was the Dean of the College of Fine Art at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). By the time Dr. Apple had joined the staff at CMU, there was a large collection of artifacts, documents, and files that they were able to look through. Among these files were books that Lowry had authored in the 1970s, one of which was titled Fragments. This book contained prompts, the first section of which was called “Enduring Activities”. This idea of endurance has informed work that Dr. Apple is doing today, as have some of the prompts themselves. One particular prompt that stood out was to research a forgotten artist and bring their work to life. While attending CMU, Dr. Apple did just that when they and a friend came across an abandoned nightclub space.

Dr. Apple began the endeavor of cataloguing the space as a practice in archaeology, documenting what was found and where and mapping out the club. As this work continued, they looked more for connections to people to figure out what happened and why the space was left in the first place. Following the trail left by business cards and other artifacts, Dr. Apple was able to engage with people who had been a part of this scene who led them to more and more people to talk to.

Upon further research, they found that at the center of this nightclub network was a man named Lucky. Dr. Apple details how they connected with older people in bars: drinking, taking notes and asking questions plainly to eliminate worries of ulterior motives. Eventually Harrison got Lucky’s phone number and address and paid him a visit. This was an eye-opening interaction where Dr. Apple realized the importance of balance between their desires and Lucky’s. They had to figure out what Lucky wanted or he would stop talking, and had to figure out what they wanted or they would not understand what Lucky was telling them. Figuring out what people want from history and how they wish to be remembered and giving them the authority to decide that for themselves had been at the center of the work that Dr. Apple is doing.

 Over the years of interactions with Lucky, Dr. Apple was given many artifacts and other personal belongings of Lucky’s. One such item was a box of DVDs with pictures that were taken while Lucky’s clubs were in operation. After digitizing the images and making them more clear, Harrison set out to find the people in the photos and learn more about what happened. With the nature of the club and the changes in technology since the 80s, there is no way the people in the photos could have consented to these images being put on the internet to be immortalized therefore this was a critical practice. Dr. Apple held identification parties and was very open about everything, listening to people and letting them tell their stories and agreeing to destroy the images if that is what someone wanted.

 The Pittsburgh Queer History Project was born from this effort, with goals of person to person preservation and getting to know people to figure out what they want and to make that happen. Dr. Apple explained that not everything you find should be shared and giving people the authority to tell their own story or be omitted from the larger story is crucial to archival work. People want control over the way they are reproduced and shared.

 The trust between people involved in Dr. Apple’s practice and willing erasure and destruction alongside celebration and inclusion has not always sat well with others in academia. Dr. Apple has been told before “I can’t wait for you to die so I can get my hands on all the stuff you won’t share.” Harrison describes this as ‘archival pessimism’ which is not only quite depressing, but also undermines the authority of those who have shared parts of their life with Dr. Apple.

 All of this informs the approach Dr. Apple takes in their current position at Carnegie Mellon University. They are less interested in ‘getting the stuff’ and more interested in bringing people into the conversation. They are focused on returning agency to the people who are typically exploited for their information and allow them to tell their stories in the way they feel is right, such as parties, drag shows, etc. Dr. Apple is also able to apply for grants to fund transgender and other LGBTQ+ people and provide them with the supplies to do public and oral history, treating those who have been excluded as experts and working to remove barriers.

Following their discussion of stumbling into this line of work and continuing into their current practice, Dr. Apple answered a couple questions from the audience. The first question was concerned with how Harrison generates text from this research and how they decide what to include. Dr. Apple reiterates that it is important to figure out what you want and the balance between that and the desires of the people who are a part of this history. Work Dr. Apple generated from the nightclub focused on the perspective of someone looking back on the time with nostalgia and was informed by building community and maintaining connections with those who were there, obtaining consent to display or destroy, and leaving things out if they were not sure they could show it. This process also facilitated the reconnection of survivors as this community was ravaged by the AIDS epidemic, and inspired some to bring other materials and artifacts to Harrison. The final question asked of Dr. Apple revolved around how they contend with terrible things occurring in Pittsburgh, such as gentrification and destruction of places within the city. Dr. Apple responds that they see their work as in parallel to these processes, emphasizing that Queer history IS Pittsburgh history and labor history. None of these things can be isolated from the others.

Thank you again to Dr. Harrison Apple for sharing this important work and thoughtful perspective with us! - Report by Madeline Elizabeth Kay