WHAT IS RCMA?
The Roaming Center for Magnetic Alternatives (RCMA) is an ad hoc mobile media and research center exploring the correlation between queer history and a medium on the edge of obsolescence. Traveling across Mid-America, we transform everything from strip malls and lecture halls into media centers for outlying and underrepresented LGBTQ+ populations. RCMA provides free videotape digitization, film screenings, videography equipment access, and more.
PRESERVATION
Do you have a video you want to share? Or tapes gathering dust in your basement? We provide a FREE, on-site analog to digital transfer service. Videos of all shapes, sizes, ages, and origins are digitized and preserved by contributors like you!
EVENTS
RCMA may be coming to a venue near you! Our mobile digitization service is currently on the move in and around the Kansas City region. We also facilitate hands-on artist-led workshops, video screenings, and convenings celebrating the VHS era.
ARCHIVE
Our online archive features countless hours of home movies and community videos contributed by LGBTQ+ identified individuals from across Middle America. To date, we have still uploaded only a fraction of the videos that have been donated and transferred thus far.
WHY A MOBILE MEDIA LAB?
Archives around the world are struggling to address a magnetic media crisis. Due to the impending expiration of videotape (whose shelf life is much shorter than that of film), outreach has proved essential to preserving the precious glimpses of everyday life captured on video before it is too late. RCMA is attempting to fill in the gaps with a community-centric approach to preservation/archiving. And we are not the only ones!
Check out these other like-minded archiving initiatives: