The essay Empty History: Un-Working Queer Progress is a programming-related essay published by VTape. It follows shared queer history post-Stonewall's 50th anniversary. In this essay, Adam Barbu plunges into the facade of queer progress and criticizes the ideas of homonormativity, homonationalism and gay conservatism.

Barbu seeks to remove the barriers of documenting queer history and by "un-working" the narrative, hopes to free the discussion of history and let progress move forward into thinking about and understanding the limits of how we identify queer history.

In 2021, VTape published Empty History: Adam Barbu & John Paul Ricco in conversation in junction with the exhibition and curator's talk given in 2019 that Empty History: Un-Working Queer Progress was created in conjunction with.