Tuesday Night Cafe: A Home (And Family) Away From Home
/EDITOR’S NOTE: When not logging considerable hours digitizing transparencies contained within the VC Archives, Rino Kodama, one of our Summer 2019 Program Associates from UCLA, devoted much of their off hours working on a photo-journalistic project documenting portions of the 21st season of Tuesday Night Cafe, the longest running spoken word/open mic venue in all of Southern California since 1999. Armed with one of VC’s cameras, the project also allowed Rino to become reacquainted with a vital tool of expression that continues VC’s ongoing legacy of documenting the ongoing Asian Pacific American Movement. — Abraham Ferrer
2019 LACAC Archives Associate Rino Kodama (Photo: Abraham Ferrer/Visual Communications Photographic Archive)
By Rino Kodama
As my time at Visual Communications comes to a close, my last assignment was to share the following photo essay capturing the Tuesday Night Cafe (TNC) shows I attended this summer. Although my primary job as VC’s Archives Program Associate was to digitize color slides to build onto our archive, as well as programming the “At First Site” event with the other interns, this photo essay was my side project throughout the past ten weeks here. I saw this as an opportunity to practice my photo making skills, and to finally have the chance to experience TNC.
Although I heard about Tuesday Night Café pretty early on since moving to Los Angeles for school, the LGBTQIA Show was the first one I ever attended this year. Before, my excuse for not checking it out sooner was that Little Tokyo is a distance from Westwood (especially when you don’t drive), but I am so grateful to have been able to share space and witness so many wonderful artists for four shows this summer. I was constantly inspired and in awe of the intergenerational group of artists that performed,
TNC has become a safe haven for me, where I run into many individuals who I call my chosen family. I appreciate how the organizers of the event make an effort to put queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming artists at the forefront of the shows. Little things like introducing ourselves in the volunteer circle with our name and pronouns are big things to me. It is comforting to know that I will always run into a familiar face, or potentially make a new artist friend. The individuals featured in this photo essay are new artists I had the privilege of getting to know this summer, as well as many queer siblings and elders who continue to create and do wonderful work in the Little Tokyo community.
All photos and captions: Rino Kodama/Visual Communications Photographic Archive
