How Conchita Wurst became real for me.
I didn't need to think about Conchitta Wurst until Matt Format won the Eurovision Song Contest at Voguey Bear last Thursday night. Before, the contest was an über-camp television event that perennially flooded my Facebook. Last night, Miss Format dragged Eurovision into my life for a few perfect moments.
Of course, I already thought that it was great that Conchita Wurst had won. Great because her award fucked gender so comfortably; great because it was a LGBTQI celebration, to which Russia predictably freaked out; great because now we are talking about Trans* politics in many forums. Bearded Tom Neuwirth, in drag with a song that meant nothing to me, was just a new face in the international queer world – more evidence that our differences are being seen positively, something else for homophobic reactionaries to panic about. But if you have been going to Voguey Bear every Thursday night, it takes more than just a beard on a drag queer to attract attention. Conchita Wurst is completely lacking in glitter. She looks like a nice girl. I am used to a queer, chaotic mess of cinnamon-flavoured over-sensation with sex and lights and crazy too-much-everything covering crystal-clear eyes that peer out from the hilarious mess of colours and diaphanous fabrics and long-lost dresses. And that beard. And that massive, regal, renaissance-gentleman, move-over-hipsters, sensuous, glittered beard. Since I met you, that beard has been covered in white powders and glitters and flutters and every colour of the prisms of the light from the dark side of the moon. I have been lost deep in the scintillating glow that radiates from that lipsticked pink hole in the centre, holding my breath as you mouth the words to whatever. After this. Every Thursday. After this, in a room not-quite filled with many of my favourite people, dancing, to music played by Jonny and Paul, with mass birthday hugs growing out of the love in the room. After this, I really can't get that enthused about watching television.
Voguey Bear brings together two elements – a queer drag show by Matt Format and a seven hour set by Stereogamous and their guest DJs. At the Queermas centre of the season, the truly beautiful Shaun J Wright joins them. Voguey Bear is a line dotted every Thursday night between Kookys. A school night for partiers, not a messy night. A queer night for escapees from the university. Lots of warm bears to gets squished into. Lots of easy dancing as the music gets amazing and I get lost, every single week. Lots and lots of hugs. It feels like a functional family lounge room, a house party with different music every week. After Christmas, it was a place of rejuvenation. Before Lovecult and Kooky, it was packed with excitement of the weekend to come. After, it was a place to celebrate how good they'd been. A place of queer homosociality that keeps things together between people. And a place were every week the music is fantastic, right on the edge of Berlin tech-house with beautiful Chicago warmth singing through. Some of the best music in Sydney in the past year has been at Voguey Bear. (Those times when the techno is entrancing and it is three o'clock and you are still dancing and think that you should get going and then it's four o'clock.)
* * *
In the dark corner of the room, Matt appeared. Somehow, the Infanta Margret Theresa had sprung from Las Meninas, grown a sparkling beard of refracted silver, and wrapped a white shimmering shower curtain around her body like a cape. On her glittered head, a found white mortarboard, tied in place with shimmering transparent gold tulle that made a gilt halo for her glittered skull. Barefoot. Beautiful legs. A light was projected onto her; the song started: “Rise Like A Phoenix”. It was the only song possible in the week were bearded ladies had been seen in daylight. And reformatting the drama of the cinematography of the Eurovision clip, with the focus set as it so often is on Matt Format's polychromatic face, at that moment where Conchita's beard is about to be revealed, Matt did what she so often does – she disappeared, like a perfect courtier, and let the real essence of the event unfold. She did this before, with Jonny's fifty-person birthday hug. She did it before, at Day for Night, when she orchestrated a mass hug that she could step out of and let grow of its own accord. At the moment when Conchita's beard was revealed, Matt bowed her head and the white mortarboard became the perfect screen for Conchita's bearded face. Eurovision was here in the heart of queerest Newtown.
Choreographing happiness is what Matt Format does best. She didn't compete. She didn't force herself to the front or stamp off because another bearded lady had some attention. From loving heart of the glittered empire, Matt became blank, an unformatted screen, a medium onto which queer politics could be projected. She became a vessel for Conchita. In doing so, Matt Format made Conchita Wurst ours, bringing her into the room as she stepped back from the apparition she had summoned. Before she was something on Facebook about something that was shown on television that I had missed. Matt Format won the Eurovision Song Contest for me when she made Conchita Wurst real.