Printed Matter as Queer Method: Tracing Stains, Ruins, and Utopian Shadows is a virtual program presented by Nathan Storey, founder and director of STOREY GALLERY and UNDERTOW. Storey is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator based in New York whose research traces the relationship between printed matter and queer desire, memory, and loss. STOREY GALLERY is a contemporary art gallery located off the Bowery in New York, supporting queer, underrepresented, and experimental artists through collaborative, interdisciplinary, and research-driven programming. UNDERTOW, Colorado’s first and only queer print press, supports queer artists’ printed matter and ephemera.

The program begins with a 40-minute illustrated talk exploring how zines, photographs, flyers, magazines, matchbooks, photobooth strips, and other forms of printed matter functioned as queer evidence, memory, and survival from 1969–1995. Drawing from Storey’s research on queer visual culture, the talk examines how print moved between public organizing and private desire during the post-Stonewall period and the AIDS crisis, introducing key concepts including stain/trace, ruin as method, and the utopian shadow. Following the talk, a small panel conversation with LA-based and national queer visual artists, archivists, and/or writers will connect these histories to contemporary queer artistic, archival, and publishing practices. The program concludes with an audience Q&A, inviting participants to consider queer history as living, circulatory, and materially felt—recorded, shared, and imagined through print.

Printed Matter as Queer Method: Tracing Stains, Ruins, and Utopian Shadows is organized by UNDERTOW as a part of the 2026 Circa: Queer Histories Festival, presented by One Institute.