Gay bars london 1980s
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One such work that caught my eye was by artist duo Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings who began filming in 170 gay bars around the UK to create their 6-hour film The UK Gaybar Directory. Council documents, meeting minutes, promotional flyers, and oral histories from venue regulars are accompanied or interrupted by artwork from Tom Burr, Evan Ifekoya, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, and Prem Sahib.
GAY BARS LONDON 1980S ARCHIVE
In the Whitechapel’s archive gallery, contemporary artists and archives from ten of London’s queer centres, pubs, and bars join together to explore the locations where queer identities have been able to flourish in the city. The Whitechapel Gallery’s Queer Spaces: London, 1980s – Today, is one such example of institutional recognition of queer sites past and present. But in the face of such violence, which is often levelled in places where queer folk are simply trying to grind or go about their business (the homophobic shooting at the Latino nightclub Pulse in Orlando and policies such as North Carolina’s recent bathroom ban both come to mind) there has been a renewed interest in the importance of queer spaces. So where can we congregate to discuss or temporarily forget The Current State of Things?Īfter all, between 20 the number of venues for the LGBTQ+ community in London fell from 125 to 53. The continued media furore over trans lives, the vitriolic public discussion about the nature and purview of queer and trans rights, and the violence directed at the queer and trans community, all no doubt contribute to this sort of hyper-vigilance. These include but are not limited to: straight bars and clubs, bathrooms, the workplace. There are certain other times and places where this feeling that one is being surveilled is heightened – especially as a gay, trans person. I know this is what going out in London is like, but I don’t like it. I went out to lose myself.īut instead – to say nothing of the airport-style ID-check, bag search, body pat-down preface – once I got inside, I kept unwittingly finding myself in the stark flash of the event photographer’s camera, or in the back of people’s Instagram stories.
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I wanted to not feel oriented in a particular space or time.
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GAY BARS LONDON 1980S SKIN
I wanted music so loud it hits you right in your solar plexus, lights like full moons, the olfactory hit of everyone’s perfume at once, the stop-motion swish of someone’s long hair beneath the strobe, all my organs vibrating under the skin the way they say happens just before you die of sperm whale song. I’d gone out to displace the all-encompassing emotional toll of having been in receipt of bad, no-less than world-changing, news. On a night out recently, I was struck by this feeling of being watched.