When the lights go down, where do the edges of place, person, or picture start and stop? How to engage the invisible lines drawn around regions, neighborhoods, genres, relationships, and the like? Do I squint, or raise my hand? Looking longer, listening forward. 

Join us on a chilly winter evening for a screen reading performance wherein several artists will make the audio track for a most unusual VHS selection. Performers Amos Leager, Flannery Cashill, Zophia McDougal, Emily Eyrie, Jori Sackin, Ana Maldonado, and Megan Pobywajlo will read to a silent screening of early 90’s television recordings found on tape in one woman’s basement in Kansas City, Missouri. (Photo courtesy of Megan Pobywajlo)

The Roaming Center for Magnetic Alternatives (RCMA) will temporarily convert Open House into a vhs library and media center. Visit us on the dates/times below to browse titles, check-out tapes/vcrs, and take advantage of our free analog to digital conversion service. Open House is located at 4419 State Line Road, Kansas City, Missouri 64111.

*Note: These events are not climate controlled, dress warm! Hot drinks provided. Access accommodations available on request. Parking at the house is limited and should be used on an as needed basis. Street parking is available on adjacent streets.

RCMA is an ad hoc media and research center dedicated to exploring the correlation between queer culture, video history, and a medium on the edge of obsolescence. Home to the Cry Now Free Video Library, our collection is comprised of over 1000 VHS tapes, with content spanning late 80’s to early 2000’s theatrical releases, pornos, and home videos. RCMA’s mobile operation is outfitted to move approximately 400 tapes and associated technologies from one location to the next, transforming strip malls and lecture halls into classrooms for communities uncovering and telling their own stories. Visit roamingcenter.org to learn more.

RCMA is generously funded by Mid-America Arts Alliance, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Windgate Charitable Foundation, Inc., and the state arts agencies of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. In addition, support for this work is provided by a Rocket Grants project award, a program of the Charlotte Street Foundation and the University of Kansas Spencer Museum of Art. Funding is provided by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.