Saturday: John Q's Memory Flash sets the record (not so) straight

A photograph depicting a Miss Joy Lounge pageant during the 1960s is one of several memories that will inform Saturday's John Q performances. Photo courtesy the artists/Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

In the midst of Atlanta’s at times awkward but occasionally earnest efforts to carve out its identity as a city, a new artist collective has emerged with a mission of its own. The collective, dubbed John Q in reference to “John Q. Public,” is composed of Wesley Chenault, Andy Ditzler, and Joey Orr. Their mission: to enact artistic interventions that are meant to create new memories based on Atlanta’s long (and frequently overlooked) queer/LGBTQ history. In that sense, the Q in the group’s name has a double meaning; it plays for both teams.

John Q’s first project (made possible by Flux Projects) is a multi-stop evening of enticing events called Memory Flash this Saturday, April 3, from 5-9PM.

Each project site was selected for its historical significance in Atlanta’s LGBTQ history and is designed to lend gravity, establish context, and ignite interest in the topic at hand by means of performance, installation, and film projections.

John Q follows a movement being perpetrated in art scenes nationwide by such organizations as Creative Time and the Public Art Fund. These groups adhere to the notion of public art as the modern means of public record; each act typically is transient, temporary, and site specific in nature. Regardless of the form it takes, each project has one goal: imprinting into the public mind a collective memory that perpetuates its artistic mission.

Memory Flash map courtesy the artists and Flux Projects.

Memory Flash begins at 5PM this Saturday at 532 Wabash Avenue in the Old Fourth Ward. The neighborhood is the former home of Roger Hodges who, when the family was away, would play host to a (gay) band of brothers who would march down the street in a great color-coordinated line. Original participant Freddie Styles will tell the story and lead the crowd along the route once traveled.

Public interventions progress through the city with stops at 6PM at the Joy Lounge, the former strutting grounds of drag pioneer Billy “Phyllis Killer” Jones, 7PM at the Piedmont Park ball fields, and will conclude with a 8:30PM screening of Andy Warhol’s Lonesome Cowboys at Mixx at Ansley Square. The screening commemorates a 1969 Atlanta showing during which the film was interrupted and confiscated by the police and the audience members were all photographed. It was this event that led to the organization of the Gay Liberation Front of Georgia.

Beyond Memory Flash, John Q encourages the contribution of relics of queer pasts–personal papers, photographs, etc.–to local repositories of such historical artifacts. The John Q website can point you in the right direction. The overall hope is that our future history will be more encompassing and comprehensive than our present past.

Maps, directions, and more info for Memory Flash can be found on the Flux Projects website.