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Queer Switchboard is a hub for work co-created with—and centering the lived experiences of—currently and formerly incarcerated queer, trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming people. Collaborating with a community group of LGBTQIA2S+ people incarcerated in Washington State, incarcerated participants shape and direct our work through creative workshops and oral history-based storytelling sessions. Recognizing and building upon the critical insights and theoretical frameworks developed by queer and trans scholars, activists, and creatives impacted by the justice system, we rely on incarcerated queer and trans people's experiential knowledge as a vital form of knowing that builds upon and extends academic and creative work on carceral systems, gender self-determination, and mutual aid networks. Drawing on the legacy of telephone switchboards in trans/queer activism and mutual aid, our interactions with justice impacted people intend to create, develop, and sustain networks of understanding and support while reaching audiences and viewers unfamiliar with these experiences.
Collaborators
alejandro t. acierto
Assistant Professor of Digital Arts at Wayne State University & Curator for the Archive of Constraint
alejandro t. acierto (he/him) produces creative projects, exhibitions, and performances that highlight the impact of colonial legacies across technologies, material culture, and the environment. Often taking shape within and across expanded forms of documentary, new media, creative scholarship, and sound, his works have been shown internationally at the Havana Biennial in Matanzas, Cuba, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), ISSUE (NYC), Radialsystem (Berlin), and MCA Chicago, among others. He has also published works with Parse Journal, Dilettante Army, Media-N Journal, and Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture. He was Artist in Residence for Critical Race Studies at Michigan State University, a Core Faculty Teaching Fellow at Warren Wilson College in the MA for Critical Craft Studies, and a Digital Humanities Faculty Fellow at Vanderbilt University. He was also a Center for Craft Archive Research Fellow and an Ansel Adams Research Fellow at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. acierto is currently an Assistant Professor of Digital Arts at Wayne State University located in Waawiyaataanong on the ceded lands of the Three Fires Confederacy, including the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, and Wyandot peoples.
Ava Aviva Avnisan
Assistant Professor of Art and Design at San Diego State University
Ava Aviva Avnisan (shey/they) is an interdisciplinary artist and creative technologist whose work is situated at the intersection of image, text and code. Using a host of emerging technologies including 3D scanning, augmented reality and virtual reality, she creates applications for mobile devices, interactive installations and technologically mediated performances that seek to subvert dominant narratives through embodied encounters with language. Ava’s expertise in developing bespoke new media tools within a human-centered design and participatory research framework was developed through both her creative practice and her teaching practice. From 2017-19, Ava served as Artist-in-Residence at University of Washington Bothell, where she played a lead faculty role in the Interactive Media Design program. While there, she served as project lead on unARchived, an open-source, human-centered design project that uses augmented reality to empower marginalized local communities to share the underrepresented stories of their neighborhoods. From 2019-2023, she served as Assistant Professor of Emerging Media and Technology and Media & Journalism & Media Studies at Kent State University, where she played a lead faculty role in the Design Innovation Initiative, including regularly teaching project-based human-centered design courses. Ava’s current role is Assistant Professor of Art & Design and Journalism & Media Studies at San Diego State University.
Molly Merryman
Associate Professor in the School of Peace and Conflict Studies at Kent State University & Research Director for Queer Britain
Molly Merryman, Ph.D. (she/they) is an associate professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Kent State University and is the research director for Queer Britain, the UK’s national LGBTQ+ museum. Her doctoral training was based in Cultural Studies and gender studies. She co-founded the interdisciplinary LGBTQ Studies minor program at Kent State University and led the creation of Ohio’s first Transgender Studies course. She established the university’s Victimology concentration and has taught courses on corrections and restorative justice. She has been a leading voice in filmic sociology, co-creating the film stream of the International Visual Sociology Association and working with the Ethnografilm Paris festival since its inception. Her pioneering work in digitally-based oral-history work, documentaries and queer studies led to her appointment as research director for the Queer Britain museum, where she established (and still leads) the Virtually Queer oral history collection. Her documentaries and exhibition work has been featured in museums and at universities in the US and abroad.
dana middleton
Lecturer in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, at the University of Washington Bothell
dana middleton (they/them) is an organizer, educator and writer focused on the intersections of queer and trans liberation and prison abolition. dana has organized with currently and formerly incarcerated queer, trans and gender nonconforming people since 2016 and has sponsored Washington Department of Corrections facility programming as a volunteer since 2019. They are a co-founder and lead sponsor of the Gender Identity Awareness program and Gender Identity workshop series at the Washington Corrections Center for Women, which include a transgender support group and a certificate program aimed at improving social conditions for incarcerated trans and gender nonconforming people through peer education. They are also a lead sponsor of the Alliances/Unity LGBTQ2S+ program at Monroe Correctional Complex. In addition to having long-term working relationships with incarcerated trans people, dana brings a specialized knowledge of navigating prison bureaucracy and negotiating guest access to facility spaces. They are currently a lecturer in the school of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell.
Dan Paz
artist & Ph.D student in Cultural Studies & Science and Technology Studies at the University of California, Davis
Dan Paz (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist working in lens-based practices across still-to-moving images. Their research is deeply concerned with the labor and lifecycle of images, spanning distribution and circulation, intellectual property, and the historical frames that encode information as metadata. Through material and archival research, as well as transnational projects, Paz examines the connections between Latine (and global south) diasporic relationships to the US, alongside the converging realms of capture, architecture, and abolition. Paz’s work has been featured in internationally and nationally with recent solo exhibitions at Michigan State University and Entre Gallery in Vienna, Austria; and group exhibitions at Hayward Gallery London, UK; the 12th Havana Biennial, Havana, CU; The New Media lab and The Latinx Project at NYU, NYC; The Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Seattle, WA; Holding Contemporary, Portland, OR; and Stoveworks, Chattanooga, TN to name a few. With twenty-years of experience in the arts, education, and public engagement, Dan brings their extensive knowledge in production, installation, and exhibition, as well as skills in documentary photography, video, and filmmaking. Dan was a 2023 Public Scholars for the Future Fellow and is currently a is a Ph.D candidate in Cultural Studies and Science and Technology Studies at University of California Davis.
Doug Rosman
Assistant Professor in the Art & Technology / Sound Practices Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Doug Rosman (he/him) is a Chicago-based artist and creative coder whose practice centers computation as both artistic tool and subject of critical inquiry. His work frequently examines the feedback loops in which we find ourselves, using generative imagery and interactive installations to contend with how the technologies we shape in turn shape us. He has exhibited internationally, including at the Ars Electronica festival in Linz, the Ming Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai, The Wrong Biennale in Chicago, the Recto VRso 2020 festival in Laval, and most recently at Canal Connect 2021 in Madrid. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019 from the Art and Technology Studies program, where he now teaches studio art courses in web programming, machine learning and blockchain.