QUEER NIGHTCLUBS AS IMMERSIVE FANTASY

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 sixth film is Queer Nightlife as Immersive Fantasy. This has three screens and three speakers, two of which play the main content and one which plays a heartbeat sound. These films project on a variety of surfaces including curtains, ducts, and existing walls. These are the most rapidly shifting collaged films that make it difficult at times to fully take it all in. Some parts of the soundscape become quiet which allows the sounds from other speakers to erode into this one. The visual array overlays a chaotic, kaleidoscopic video of bodies moving in the club on top of parade footage, archival party footage, and the more sensorial clips I captured. The audio array pounds along with the heartbeat and contains fractured moments of my pain interrupted with more happy sounds in the middle.