The mission of Dyke TV’s founders and participants was to get lesbians in front of and behind the video camera. Volunteer producers and journalists, artists pitched segments weekly and no one was ever turned away. As Mary Patierno said in a 2016 interview for the lesbian herstory archives: “Literally anyone can do any segment and if they had problems with the material they were told to come down the studio and make some stuff.” The underlying impulse was not to craft a singular history, or push a campaign, but to give everyone a chance to make the media that they wanted to see.
We as weekly watchers of Dyke TV archives have been inspired by this philosophy and hope you are too. In an age of social media where so many people individually produce content with high circulation potential, there is something unfamiliar about the collective. There’s even something unfamiliar about the power of the videocamera itself. So I present to you a video camera, some questions to consider, and the challenge of standing before, or behind the camera and making some stuff.
1) What’s changed since 1993?
2) What is an archive? How do you interact with archives?
3) What’s worth documenting right now?
4) What do you want to see on TV?
5) What’s missing in your media? What are the strengths and limitations of the media you make and consume?
6) Are you a dyke? What does dyke mean to you?
7) What is queerness?
8) What are queer issues?
9) What does Dyke TV mean to you?
10) What can we learn from Dyke TV?
11) What about the concept of world building? How did Dyke TV envision and enact world building?