As archives increasingly move toward digitization of old video and audio materials, they must grapple with decisions about what is important to preserve, and The ArQuives are no exception. 
As an archive devoted to a sexuality-based community, The ArQuives’s holdings include a significant collection of old porn videotapes, giving rise to some profound questions. What exactly is our community’s relationship with porn? Do these represent an important and valuable piece of queer history that should be preserved, or should The ArQuives prioritize other video collections and risk allowing the porn videos to deteriorate even further and possibly become lost entirely? How much is the answer to that question influenced by the fact that the collection is disproportionately weighted toward white gay male porn, while leaving lesbians, bisexuals, trans people and even gay men of colour underrepresented? And does the process of digital conversion itself change the historical context of the video? 
On June 16, Tape Condition: degraded opened in The ArQuives’s gallery space. Curated by Cait McKinney and Hazel Meyer, the show features a digital video transfer station, archiving shelves filled with crates of videotapes from the collection, and a rec room porn viewing area as the backbone of the installation, around which artists contribute fantasy video titles on VHS tape labels to name their outsider desires, a video installation, and a two-page comic to address and interrogate the theme of their own, and the wider LGBT community’s, relationship with porn. A publication, addressing the show’s themes through the writings of the curators and the participating artists, is also available. On July 8 at 7:30 p.m., a performance lecture will take place at Buddies in Bad Times on the show’s theme, followed by a VJ party featuring tapes from the collection. For further information, please see the event’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/events/986912761426322/ 
Participating artists are Derek McCormack, Guillermina Buzio, jes sachse, Nick Matte, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Morgan M Page, Nica Ross, Kiley May, Anthea Black, Jessica Karuhanga, Syrus Marcus Ware, Aidan Cowling and Morgan Sea. The publication was designed by Cecilia Berkovic.
