Oral History as Social Practice: Penny Arcade, David Hirsh, and Steven Watson in conversation

Oral History as Social Practice: Penny Arcade, David Hirsh, and Steven Watson in conversation. 

Sunday, July 26, 6pm at PARTICIPANT INC 116 Elizabeth St floor one, New York, NY 10013

Join Soft Network for a panel on the social practice of oral history with Penny Arcade, David Hirsh, and Steven Watson, moderated by Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez. Discussion will revolve around audio and video excerpts of interviews with some of the subjects in Baykal’s photographs, including Agosto Machado and Minette. Each panelist will speak about their oral history practices as part of three distinct organizations / projects: the Lower East Side Biography Project, the David Hirsh Tapes at Visual AIDS, and Artifacts.

Lower East Side Biography Project:

The Lower East Side Biography Project is a biography series and video oral history archive that was created in 1999 by theater artist Penny Arcade and video producer Steve Zehentner. The project’s biographies stream weekly every Monday at 11pm on public access television. The project’s archive holds over 1600 entries primarily comprised of nearly 100 one-on-one interviews conducted by Penny Arcade featuring Joel Markman, Taylor Mead, Jonas Mekas, Quentin Crisp, Sarah Schulman, Judith Malina, Tom O’Horgan, Ken Bernard, Lola Pashalinski, Rene Ricard and many more. The archive also holds the 1996 Steal This Radio 88.7FM - Lower East Side pirate radio series, the 2000 interview web series Virtual Arcade filmed at The Knitting Factory, and documentation of dozens of live events, performances, readings and memorials. The Lower East Side Biography Project seeks to stem the tide of cultural amnesia by bridging the cultural gap between longtime residents of New York’s Lower East Side and newcomers to the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

David Hirsh Tapes at Visual AIDS:

Between 1990 and 1995, the journalist David Hirsh recorded hundreds of hours of interviews and oral histories, spread over nearly six hundred tapes, with over three hundred artists who were active in the queer downtown New York arts scene. Doing three to four interviews a week as he worked as the on-staff art critic for the Downtown LGBTQ weekly newspaper the New York Native (published 1980-1997), Hirsh’s scope was wide-reaching in terms of the artists he recorded, spanning multiple generations from well-established older artists to the young and emerging. Hirsh’s relentless preservation effort through the tapes, as well as the Visual AIDS Archive he co-founded in 1994 with artist Frank Moore (1953–2002), was a race against time during the most fatal years of the AIDS crisis in the United States. In 2025, Hirsh donated his entire tape collection to Visual AIDS, who has recently secured a grant to digitize and make the tapes available to the public. 

Artifacts:

Artifacts was founded by Steven Watson, a cultural historian renowned for his documentation of artistic and cultural movements in the 20th century. Watson’s vision for Artifacts was born out of a lifelong dedication to capturing the stories of artists, thinkers, and cultural disruptors. Over more than 40 years, Watson compiled a unique archive of interviews and footage, representing some of the most groundbreaking moments in modern cultural history. Artifacts houses over 40 years of archival footage, featuring rare, firsthand accounts from pioneers such as Marsha P. Johnson, John Cale, Quentin Crisp, Betsey Johnson, and many others. By presenting these invaluable narratives, Artifacts ensures that these voices remain relevant and accessible for future generations. Artifacts’ extensive collection of video interviews and multimedia content is available for free on https://artifacts.movie.

PARTICIPANT INC is located at 116 Elizabeth Street, floor one, between Broome and Grand Streets. The closest trains are the J/Z (Bowery) and the B/D (Grand); the closest wheelchair accessible stop is the 6 (Canal). Entry is on grade and the gallery is barrier free throughout with an all gender,  wheelchair accessible bathroom. Service animals are welcome.