A new work based on material from my short film MyMy for Glitter Militia’s NIGHTCRAFT exhibition and performance night at the MCA ArtBar in Sydney in January 2014.
The show was co-curated by Justin Shoulder, featured in MyMy. Nina Buchanan composed a new soundtrack for the single-channel video work, based on key scenes from the film around ritual dance, techno-magick, and queer symbology.
Nightcraft was an incredible celebration of our queer family (coven) of radical artists in Sydney.
The queer Nightclub is constituted as a gathering or collective body with powerful political & spiritual potential. It is a collective psychic space facilitated by the aesthetics of club architecture- light, sound, installation and costume- and enhanced physical states, where we craft our alter-identities and performatively inhabit and communicate them beyond the languages of the straight world. Magics, shamanism, gender orders and queernesses that operate(d) beyond patriarchal understandings of subjectivity and society have suffered oppression under sanctioned witch hunts, the Inquisition and colonization, often justified by ideas of gender/sexuality non-conformity in Eurocentric terms. In linking the history of the patriarchal-lead persecution and suppression of women and queers to the inquisition and witch-hunt, we are interested in the potential for the Nightclub to be a critical safe space where we can establish our social utopias, however fleetingly, and practice our own rituals and magics. Come join this queer gathering of powerful political and spiritual potential. Enter a psychic space where you are asked to inhabit your alter identities. Witness and partake in club covens, runway witchuals and craft-werk. Wander the labyrinth and discover performance installations by Kelli-Jean Drinkwater, Cleo Gardiner, AñA Wojak, KT Spit and Emily Hasselhoof, Bhenji Ra, Annabel Lines, Emma Price & Glory Hole. Uncover craft incantations by Samara Shehata, Olga Wennergren, Myke Vescio, Anna McFee, Vincent Silk, Lennox Cakes, Jackson Stacy, Hanako Ufo, Anna Helme, Nina Buchanan, Bec Stegh, Joe Pol, Dan Bell & Justin Shoulder. Underground performance poster retrospective with Matthew Stegh, Megan Oliver and Hana Shimada.
