From 2024 to 2026, the PQHP is producing the MS89 Community Archives Screenings!
The MS 89 series is a live & in-person only nightclub archives screening event that pays community members to host screenings and discussions of tapes that they had a hand in creating. Pushing back against the tendency to consume archives, MS 89 packs together to watch and rewatch as a ritual in creating new intergenerational friendships via our shared desire for a shared past.
Beginning in September of 2023, the MS89 series has received support from The Opportunity Fund,, Carnegie Mellon University’s Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, the Dietrich College Humanities Scholars Program, and the College of Fine Arts, as well as hosting support from the Andy Warhol Museum, Contemporary Craft, and the Carnegie Museum of Art.
Listen to the Conversation with Dade Lemanski, Peter Clay and Harrison Apple!
MS89 Returns on October 18th with “GOGO” Presented in collaboration with Fungus Books
10/18/2024 at 8PM, 700 1/2 Trenton Avenue – No Advanced Tickets / Limited Capacity
A Very Special Screening of “Amateur Strip Night” from the Scott Noxon Video Collection at the Pittsburgh Queer History Project.
This event is dedicated to the dancers on the second floor of Lucky’s where there are no cameras allowed while they’re on the bar.
The evening’s hosts are Peter Clay (Lucky’s dancer), Dade Lemanski (journalist and historian), and Harrison Apple, all of them professionals and admirers.
Every attendee will receive a special edition booklet produced by CORN EDITIONS, a small press by Ed P. Steck, designed by Ben Pease of Ruth Stone House in Vermont!
– STANDING ROOM ONLY AT THIS EVENT –
Co-presented with the Carnegie Museum of Art Heinz Architectural Center
MS89 presents “Queen of the Megamix with special guest host Milan Tre’Zur”
Experience the screening of Diva! The Many Faces of Milan taped during Milan’s reign as Miss Teen Pittsburgh 1994 within Xavi L. Aguirre’s installation, Proofing: Resistance + Ready in the exhibition Everlasting Plastics.
This event celebrates the friendship between Milan and DJ Jimmy Lewis in a step towards recognizing the broad impact of performance and music generated by Pittsburgh’s Black LGBTQ artists in nightlife.
Cleaner Tapes, a Pittsburgh-based gay record label that specializes in cassette tapes and tape cleaner, will be distributing free cassette tapes to attendees, including a download link to a new original tape on Misc. Records (Juan Augusto LaFontaine) based on the track list of the cassettes being handed out at the event, along with original artwork by Mary Tremonte!
NOVEMBER 2023
In the wake of Wendi Miller Day, the Pittsburgh Queer History Project, The Estate of Wendi A. Miller, Casey Droege Cultural Productions, and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust present WENDI MILLER NIGHT!
Wendi Miller Night is one-night only screening and exhibition tracing the impact of the Owner of Miller Frame, trans-activist, filmmaker, and loving parent Wendi Miller. Join the PQHP for this 7th iteration of MS89 with our co-hosts, the friends and family of Wendi, including her son Cooper and TransPitt sister, Robyn Michaels. We’ll retrace the grassroots organizing that forged Pittsburgh’s city level trans protections and person to person gestures that keep us alive.
Earlier that day, the Estate will be hosting an auction through Concept Gallery in Regent Square. Take home a piece of Wendi’s artistic legacy!
*This program is free and open to the public*
JULY 2023
*This event contains sexually explicit content, listener discretion is advised*
Free tickets to this event wont last! www.tinyulr.com/normtapes
Join us on Friday July 14th at Contemporary Craft @sccpgh. Being played for the first time, the Norm Tape Collection is an autobiographical erotic audio project documenting discreet anonymous sex between men in Pennsylvania and New York through the 1980s. Join us for this special one-time only listening session cohosted by artist Clint Fisher @bearfag & Harrison Apple @woolspanx from the Pittsburgh Queer History Project as part of the MS89 series, with a special appearance from @cleanertapes In a departure from our usual format, Clint and the PQHP will share these tapes and guide us to listen to them as one of many examples of non-visual and anonymized personal multimedia archives and artworks.
JUNE 2023
Calling all OG Pgh Leather folks, for an open reunion sponsored by the MS89 series!
MS 89 returns to the Warhol Theater on Thursday June 29th at 6pm with a screening of Ms Pittsburgh Leather 1997.
Featuring an appearance by the contest winner herself, Tammy Resnick. 25 years since her year of service to community and kink, the PQHP are sharing one of many local leather stories.
Come early to join old friends at the bar in the Warhol before we hit the lights and sink in for a treasure from the collection of the Pittsburgh Eagle. All are invited after the show to PTown bar for a special surprise ceremony supported the Three Rivers Leather Club.
The MS 89 series is a live & in-person only nightclub archives screening event that pays community members to host screenings and discussions of tapes that they had a hand in creating. Pushing back against the tendency to consume archives, MS 89 packs together to watch and rewatch as a ritual in creating new intergenerational friendships via our shared desire for a shared past.
- Registration is required
- Doors open at 6 p.m.
This event is made possible by a generous gift from the Dietrich Humanities Scholars Program, the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, and The Warhol.
Calling all OG Pgh Leather folks, for an open reunion sponsored by the MS89 series!
MS 89 returns to the Warhol Theater on Thursday June 29th at 6pm with a screening of Ms Pittsburgh Leather 1997.
Featuring an appearance by the contest winner herself, Tammy Resnick. 25 years since her year of service to community and kink, the PQHP are sharing one of many local leather stories.
Come early to join old friends at the bar in the Warhol before we hit the lights and sink in for a treasure from the collection of the Pittsburgh Eagle. All are invited after the show to PTown bar for a special surprise ceremony supported the Three Rivers Leather Club.
The MS 89 series is a live & in-person only nightclub archives screening event that pays community members to host screenings and discussions of tapes that they had a hand in creating. Pushing back against the tendency to consume archives, MS 89 packs together to watch and rewatch as a ritual in creating new intergenerational friendships via our shared desire for a shared past.
- Registration is required
- Doors open at 6 p.m.
This event is made possible by a generous gift from the Dietrich Humanities Scholars Program, the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, and The Warhol.
PREVIOUS MS89’S
MS89 with LaDonna LaMoore – Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
Cold Hearted Snake with Jazmine Buttefly – Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
Gay Cable Network with Zed Armstrong and Michel Ferruci – Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
Miss Fifteen Minutes of Fame with Jezebel Bebbington D’Opulence – Warhol Museum
MORE ABOUT THE PQHP
The Pittsburgh Queer History Project (PQHP) is an oral history and media initiative, focusing on LGBTQ after-hours nightlife in Pittsburgh, PA from 1960 to 1990. Founded by Harrison Apple in 2012, the project began as an investigation of gay-owned-and-operated after-hours nightclubs where fraternal organization charters acted as semi-legal shelters for sex and social membership. These emergent communities contributed to a broader and self-aware gay and lesbian political community of mutual aid, combatting police harassment and the AIDS epidemic while facing the swift economic decline of Pittsburgh. In the years following heavy outmigration from steel cities like Pittsburgh, these histories have become more difficult to document and pass on.
The PQHP’s mission is to develop robust record of these communities through a combination of community centered events and home preservation education. Co-Directed by Harrison Apple and Tim Haggerty at Carnegie Mellon University, the Project secured funding for exhibitions and public events beginning with “Lucky After Dark.” Mounted in 2014 at the Future Tenant Gallery in Downtown Pittsburgh, “Lucky After Dark” drew over a thousand visitors to see evidence of their own history in formation. Since then, the PQHP has developed more academic and popular publications, events, as well as select archival collections online.