QUEER NIGHTLIFE AS HIDDEN!

A pulsing heartbeat is underneath all of the films which creates a bass-like, somewhat eerie vibration as one travels through the space. The other throughline is snippets from Julian Eastman’s piano piece “Gay Guerilla.” Occasionally, all of the films will show the same clip at once for a few seconds. The fifth film is Queer Nightlife as Hidden. True to its name, this experience is in a small nook near the entrance that could be missed. I created a curtain system that wraps around the body and a cushion to sit on. The projector can be handheld, so people sit on the cushion and cast the video onto the curtain beyond. It can be viewed vertically or horizontally. The visual component is walkthroughs of queer districts in cities across the globe, day and night, calling out the way remnants linger in these areas. The sound element is snippets of stories about lost clubs of the past, old interview footage, and a clip of an old man talking about queer nightlife in the 1930’s which was secretive and coded.