QUEER NIGHTLIFE

QUEER NIGHTLIFE -- a seminar about time, nightlife, creativity and politics

[vcuqueernightlife]

Getaway

Going to clubs and partying are the perfect way to end a stressful week at school.You have so much to do and the weekend is the only time you have to relax.

[vcuqueernightlife]

“Ephemera…is linked to alternate modes of textuality and narrativity like memory and performance: it is all of those things that remain after a performance, a kind of evidence of what has transpired but certainly not the thing itself” (Munoz, 10)

Munoz's definition of ephemera resonated with one of my weirdly favorite after effects of a good show/performance, a sore neck. Although sometimes uncomfortable, for me, having a sore neck when I wake up the morning after a show means it was a great show. I like to use my whole body when I dance, including flailing my arms, legs, and head in every direction. If an artist is giving a great performance, the more I flail, and the more I am sore in the morning. If I wake up with no soreness, this usually means the music/sound wasn't strong enough to inhabit my body and cause me to dance my ass off, meaning the night wasn't very good. This after effect of soreness is a reminder of the night I had before, and in its own way is a sort of ephemera in my mind because it remains even though the night has ended. Often I find the best way to deal with the soreness is to do it all over again and dance the pain away. 

[vcuqueernightlife]

“In several episodes of the show [Hoarders], hoarders are often asked to assess their sense of value by pointing to their erratic (deemed unacceptable) ideas about which objects are valuable and need to be kept for posterity and which are trash and should be thrown away… the bifurcation between value-filled/treasures or valueless/trash creates not only binaries but also teleologies of value” (98-99 Manalansan).

  I think this quote demonstrates how mess is another example of some of the ways society polices itself. It reminded me of an earlier week in the semester when we discussed fun as relating to time - for example, we can only wear certain outfits at night or we seem out of place, and if we are out drinking during the early hours of the morning we are deemed irresponsible or out of control. I think not having things neat and proper is another one of these ways that we police ourselves to maintain the capitalistic organization of society. Organization as a baseline in all physical arenas of life translates to ensuring other types of organization of aspects of life, like the ones I discussed above. When mess is present, that is when things become harder to control. Mess can be viewed as protest in that way.

The show Hoarders illuminates why lack of mess is so imperative. It can be broken down to expose the belief that an item’s worth is simply its usefulness, so anyone who keeps items for other reasons is at risk of basically being pathologized. Organization is an extension of this ‘usefulness’ ideal. It could be argued that we organize things according to why/how they are useful to us, to make them easier to access in order to be used. With items that we keep for other reasons besides usefulness (mementos, photos, etc), we often store them away in boxes and in drawers out of sight. Hoarders is a dramatic example, but I think it still holds true when translated to other less dramatic scenarios. For instance, if I have a really messy room (clothes in the floor, belongings disorganized, things are out instead of put away) it often may come across as me not having my life together as much as someone whose room is organized and ‘clean’. Or even assumed that I’m experiencing some kind of mental problem. Not keeping things organized or possessing a lot of things you don’t typically use is very often blatantly pathologized.

I chose this image from Frosty the Snowman because it is a demonstration of disgust for things that are deemed ‘messy.’ It also reminds me of my childhood and my relationship with my sister because we always thought that moment in the film was funny and still occasionally joke about it as adults, so it’s a type of memento in that way.

[vcuqueernightlife]

“Objects, bodies, and other materials may seem new, can bring pleasure, and can provide some kind of function, but at the same time they all decay, rot, fall out of use, and get lost in the rubble. Objects, Natalia and Imelda agreed, have their allocated time and space. Once these objects go beyond their allocated temporal and spatial existence and usefulness, it is time to throw them out, albeit sometimes with a heavy heart.” (Manalansan, 102)

Impermanence is a great part of the Queer experience. Having to learn to let go of things, even if we don’t really want to, is a lesson many of us have to learn quickly. Often, relationships are ended when our identities are made known to others. Queer people must be highly observant and ready to move on. In a way, this makes ephemera all the more important. It’s also why we tend to hold on to small things that remind us of better time or future good times. Markers of the past, goal posts for the future. I relate to Natalia and Imelda’s desired future for the bowl, but also their understanding that it may never happen. I’ve had a habit of holding onto scraps of pretty fabrics in case I need them even thought I never do. It reminds me of the things I made and the possibility of the future ones. The picture above is the jar of scraps I keep so I can see the process of things I’ve made. Some of the things in this jar were thrown away, ripped apart, or changed dramatically. I let them go but keep the smaller pieces for now.

[vcuqueernightlife]

"PRIDE"

"... alterity is currently in vogue. This trend doesn't really translate into validation of non-traditional critical work in other aspects of the institutional matrix- fellowships, tenure, promotion, funding, etc" (Munoz 7).

Being weird and off from the mainstream is what makes people stand out and be recognized as "cool" in this community. This becomes complicated when you take into account that the weirdness is only acceptable if it is in the form of a costume, a mask, something removable. Weirdness and in turn queerness, is only accepted when it is wrapped up in cute same sex family household product commercials and rainbow flags on an assortment of food labels. When it comes to the real everyday world of queer, there is less beauty, more mess, and not as much acceptance. It is obvious queer gets treated as a trend in terms of style or popularity as a means to reach a wider audience through a target niche community, and neglected when it comes to the professional world and not the nightlife. The institutions are set in place to actively throw off queerness from succeeding in its presence let alone thrive or healthily grow. There are less assistance programs and support for identities under the queer umbrella yet there are rainbow stickers plastered all over these establishments around us. It gives the marginalized communities a false sense of support because they know that the immediate public acceptance of their identity is a facade and not really rooted in the community and the actions it takes to help support or uplift the  community. This is the reason I have an issue with LGBTQ acceptance being called Pride because when the companies are using their "Acceptance" for the community as an opportunity to make more money yet not actually assist the people it supposedly claims to support they take Pride in what they are doing on the front but not behind the scenes.

[vcuqueernightlife]

"Ephemera, and especially the ephemeral work of structures of feeling, is firmly anchored within the social. Ephemera includes traces of lived experience and performances of lived experience, maintaining experiential politics and urgencies long after these structures of feeling have been lived. Queerness, too, can be understood as a structure of feeling. Since queemess has not been let to stand, unassailed, in the mass public sphere, it has often existed and circulated as a shared structure of feeling that encompasses same-sex desire and other minoritarian sexualities but also holds other dissident affective relationships to different aspects of the sex/gender system."

Queer history has long been washed away from the grand narrative of history as a whole, in an effort to maintain an cis/hetero normative mainstream society. Yet the farther society chooses to push queers away, the stronger we continue to grow. Through parties. clubs, and various other social gatherings, it is a unique sensation to be able to wholly be oneself and feel comfort and safety while surrounded in community. There is a brilliant sense of love, compassion, and safety surrounding queer-centric events that allows the community to remain strong. Physical remnants, such as posters, photographs, wristbands, or x's in sharpie are reminders of the warmth one can feel while in a space where they are allowed to wholly and unashamedly be themselves.

[vcuqueernightlife]

“Disapproving tabloid stories legitimize and authenticate youth cultures. In fact, without tabloid intervention, it is hard to imagine a British youth movement. For, in turning youth into news, the tabloids both frame subcultures as major events and also disseminate them. A tabloid front page, however distorted, is frequently a self-fulfilling prophecy; it can turn the most ephemeral fad into a lasting development.”

Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures Ephemeral fads are trends that are short lived. If there is no response, it dies down and is often left forgotten. Some ephemeral fads may return decades after and succeed the second time around but it all relies on the response of the public for this to be so. For youth’s especially, there lies in a desire to garner a response from the older generation, even more-so young queer youths. It is about embracing the rejected and making something out from it. Its about creating something completely new, a revelation that has yet to occur, and yet to be accepted. 

[vcuqueernightlife]

Ephemera as evidence

To me that is what is interesting about this topic is that we see many lesbians at bars and clubs getting drunk more than the males. Lesbians usuallu are the ones that like to go out and spend money on drinks more than gay guys do. Gay guys are more often to do sexual activities more than lesbians. Usually at clubs if you are not 21 or older you get marked with an x. Anyone with an x is not allowed to purchase alcoholic beverages.

The reason why I chose this article is because I like how the x on your hands determine how old you are at a club. Women at clubs mostly have more wristbands for drinking than men do when they go to clubs because women love to drink more and have fun. Males like to have fun as well but most would rather stay at home and watch tv with their friends. Either way it is great how they have the x and wristbands to determine age.

[vcuqueernightlife]

When we emphasize the experimental, heuristic, and performative aspects of our work, we sometimes deploy the anecdotal in the hope of conveying a point that is not backed up by routinized understandings of proper evidence. We do so knowing that we are leaving ourselves open to charges of being ahistorical or flimsy. This critique is elaborated in Heather DuBrow's introduction to a recent PMLA issue about the status of evidence, in which she examines the "power" of "proof as opposed to the power of a certain kind of performance which "silences" demands for real evidence. In fact, she goes so far as to suggest that "often performance functions as an alternative to the presentation of evidence" (emphasis added; 1996, 17). (pg. 8)

This made me think of who is allowed to have public sex. And by this, I mean who is allowed to express their sexuality and desires openly in public and who are either forced behind closed doors or are discriminated when they exercise their right to express. Analyzing this is so difficult because of exactly what Munoz is saying in this passage. One group that public sex is used to control is women of colour, particularly black women. This can be seen particularly in the image of the welfare queen, a figure that capitalized on the stereotype of the overly sexual woman of colour that was sucking up national welfare resources (despite the fact that the majority of welfare recipients are white people). This is work that was pushed to importance partially because of the lack of acceptable evidence. Statements and evidence brought forth by people of colour are often dismissed because they may not fit the way data is acceptably performed in the academic community. These often take the form of performances as described in this piece. These performances need to be seen as part of the evidence, rather than the alternative to the presentation of evidence.  

[vcuqueernightlife]

“In several episodes of the show [Hoarders], hoarders are often asked to assess their sense of value by pointing to their erratic (deemed unacceptable) ideas about which objects are valuable and need to be kept for posterity and which are trash and should be thrown away… the bifurcation between value-filled/treasures or valueless/trash creates not only binaries but also teleologies of value” (98-99 Manalansan).

  I think this quote demonstrates how mess is another example of some of the ways society polices itself. It reminded me of an earlier week in the semester when we discussed fun as relating to time - for example, we can only wear certain outfits at night or we seem out of place, and if we are out drinking during the early hours of the morning we are deemed irresponsible or out of control. I think not having things neat and proper is another one of these ways that we police ourselves to maintain the capitalistic organization of society. Organization as a baseline in all physical arenas of life translates to ensuring other types of organization of aspects of life, like the ones I discussed above. When mess is present, that is when things become harder to control. Mess can be viewed as protest in that way.

The show Hoarders illuminates why lack of mess is so imperative. It can be broken down to expose the belief that an item’s worth is simply its usefulness, so anyone who keeps items for other reasons is at risk of basically being pathologized. Organization is an extension of this ‘usefulness’ ideal. It could be argued that we organize things according to why/how they are useful to us, to make them easier to access in order to be used. With items that we keep for other reasons besides usefulness (mementos, photos, etc), we often store them away in boxes and in drawers out of sight. Hoarders is a dramatic example, but I think it still holds true when translated to other less dramatic scenarios. For instance, if I have a really messy room (clothes in the floor, belongings disorganized, things are out instead of put away) it often may come across as me not having my life together as much as someone whose room is organized and ‘clean’. Or even assumed that I’m experiencing some kind of mental problem. Not keeping things organized or possessing a lot of things you don’t typically use is very often blatantly pathologized.

I chose this gif from Frosty the Snowman because it is a demonstration of disgust for things that are deemed ‘messy.’ It also reminds me of my childhood and my relationship with my sister because we always thought that moment in the film was funny and still occasionally joke about it as adults, so it’s a type of memento in that way.

[vcuqueernightlife]

“On the deepest level of meaning, Voguing is about the adaptation of mass media conceptions of beauty as predominantly White, visually-focused, and commodified. In contrast to this beauty in Voguing, is culturally diverse, sociopolitically contested, deeply felt and embodied.” -Jonathan David Jackson, The Social World of Voguing Voguing was, and is a complex subculture that is built on different elements that were able to craft an art that was unique to its performers. But in a way it seems as much as Voguing succeeded in, it also created rifts. Success in the Voguing world impacted the social standing of Houses, and failure could lead into the end of family ties. Voguing was meant to create empowerment and to display diversity, but it seemed restricted to the greats.

[vcuqueernightlife]

The “Stuff” of Archives

“To equate the analogy between hoarders and these queer immigrants to one of simple correspondence would be too cavalier and irresponsible. Hoarding carries particular cultural and psychological baggage. I do not intend to place the Queer Six in a category that is always already pathologized.” (Manalansan IV, pg. 98)

In this reading, the author is talking about looking at mess through different lenses and not just as a mess that needs to be cleaned up. One way was to look at it as a part of understanding social phenomena as a way to see and portray everyday social interactions. You can probably see if a person has a busy life or what kind of life they live by looking at the messes they make or have around their home. Mess can be symbolic to maybe a goodnight if it’s a mess from a party that happened the night before. The author mentions hoarders when talking about mess in the household. I would say you could picture that in your mind, but it’s a bit extreme when we do not know how big or small the mess is and why it’s there.

[vcuqueernightlife]

“ I have advised—friends , colleagues , and students to make their projects look "straighter" : conservative in thematics and rigorous in methodology . Rarely do I suggest that someone "queer up " their application for a fellowship or play up the heuristic or performative dimensions of a book proposal . Academically and institutionally the communities of scholars that I live in are often in the position of ideologically and theoretically dressing down.”

  -Ephemera as Evidence: Introductory Notes to Queer Acts by José Esteban Muñoz

  This quote hit me in the gut its something I have encountered this time after time in both my academic and art work. It's always so discouraging to come in with an idea for a project just to be told it must be toned down so everyone with finds it attractive. I still have one of these interactions burned into my mind I had made a sculpture on being queer and disabled, and one of my straight, able-bodied classmates just wasn't feeling it. He told me “ I should use imagery that is more universal so everyone could enjoy it and get something out of it” I remember getting so angry because I had just bared my soul and he was telling me that my experience didn't cater to him. I don't make work like this for people like him; I make it for other queer and disabled people. Something about that comment at that moment really crushed me and I started to cry my teachers response  was to tell me that maybe “I shouldn't make such heavy work if its hard for me” this just made me angrier .she had been unhappy with my work on being disabled and queer all semester and that statement reeked of privilege. I think Doreen Garner( an artist whose practice focuses on the treatment of black bodies in the medical field) sums up my feeling on making difficult work perfectly. “I’m a Black woman horrified by these actions, and yet I have to show all these actions so that it’s not a situation where people are able to overlook this information anymore.” .This is how I feel about making work on the queer and disabled body it's hard, and sometimes I find myself crying for those who came before me, for my comrades, and even for myself but that does mean that I should stop or change my practice to one that is easier to stomach. As angry as these comments make me they tell me I'm doing my job, these people I encounter are indoctrinated into a system that has told them that their experience is the stander and that we should all want it. By continuing to work as an artist the way I do I hopefully will push them to rethink this and learn to leave space for stories that are not at all like theirs.

  For my media this week I have included a video on the problems of being gay and disabled that really highlights a lot of the problems with being queer and disabled. The line “ the second I realized I was gay I was just like that's really fucking rude life” sums up my feeling on this intersectional identity really well.

Ps. I know its Buzzfeed and I normally hate their neoliberal trash too but this video is pretty good( most likely because its a video about someone outside of their company)   

[vcuqueernightlife]

"This is true despite the fact that, on the level of publishing and not much else, alterity is currently in vogue. This trend doesn't really translate into validation of non-traditional critical work in other aspects of the institutional matrix—fellowships, tenure, promotion, funding, etc. ( I cannot begin to count the times I have been advised—or I have advised—friends, colleagues, and students to make their projects look "straighter": conservative in thematics and rigorous in methodology. Rarely do I suggest that someone "queer up" their application for a fellowship or play up the heuristic or performative dimensions of a book proposal. (and institutionally the communities of scholars that I live in are often in the position of ideologically and theoretically dressing down. )"

Upon reading this section of the passage, I felt a connection to Munoz's frustration and note that academia requires a certain "straight" understanding and expression of evidence and thoughts. This becomes a problem when it comes to validating marginalized communities. If a community or field of thought is not valued in Western society, often there is not a lot of empirical research or evidence attached to it. This keeps these communities and values invisible. It becomes a loop of not being valued enough to be researched, and therefore not having value because there is no empirical evidence. The emphasis placed on "hard" research and studies in Western society is problematic in that it traps oppressed people by ignoring them and simultaneously invalidating their experiences as not objective enough.

[vcuqueernightlife]

"Ephemera includes traces of lived experience and performances of lived experience, maintaining experiential politics and urgencies long after these structures of feeling have been lived (Munoz 11)."

I really enjoyed this quote because it speaks volumes to the way I interact with my nightlife experiences. One of my friends and I's favorite things is getting X's on our hands when we go out. Many people would disagree because they're physical signifiers of young age and such, but we love them. For me, having an X on my hand is a symbol of an amazing night that lives with me for days and sometimes even a week after the experience. The X holds all of the excitement and emotion that I had when the ink was put on my skin, as well as the experience of the entire night, and every time throughout the week that I look down and see the X I remember the night out that I had and the connections I made with my friends as well as others. The memory stays much longer than the "permanent marker" ever could.

That's one of the greatest things about Ephemera, as the quote discusses. These small trinkets of the event allow us to carry that experience on with us long after it has ended and look back fondly on the time and experience that we had.

[vcuqueernightlife]

Queer Histories

  “It accesses a hidden queer history of public sex outside the dominant public sphere's visible historical narratives . It taps into the lifeworld of tea room sex, a space that is usually only shadowed in semi-publicness, and makes this space legible outside of its insular sphere. But it does this through negation, through a process of erasure that redoubles and marks the systematic erasure of minoritarian histories. While seriously engaged in establishing an archive of queerness, it simultaneously disrupts the very notion of officially subsidized and substantiated institutions.” (Muňoz, page 6)

  Queer histories have been erased from mainstream society because there is no space made for it in the curriculum of public schools. In this heteronormative society, the people making the rules are erasing these queer histories so young people have no exposure to them and hopefully won’t get curious about them. Queer spaces and histories are pushed into the shadows, into the darkness of night to be hidden from the public eye for only some to discover. That is why people like Brandalin in the picture above are unaware of all the “battles” the LGBTQ+ community had to fight to gain visibility and rights and the queer people that fought in the military for this country that hates them or barely acknowledges them. Queer people everywhere are invalidated because people have their perceptions but know nothing about them and what this community has been through. Controlling history and knowledge is a way to control the people through their perceptions, a tool of socialization. We need to include queer histories in public education because kids take in information easier and this could be a way to open their minds at a younger age and make change for generations to come so that the queer community won't be trivialized any longer.

[vcuqueernightlife]

Work that attempts to index the anecdotal, the performative, or what I am calling the ephemeral as proof is often undermined by the academy's officiating structures. (Munoz, 5)

I stuck to this excerpt from the Munoz piece because this is something i am working through in my own art practice right now. As I am considering how my performance and other creative outlets intersect with my interest in academic research I often encounter the dreaded 'Imposter Syndrome,' coupled with doubts about the validity, rigor, or value of the work I am interested in pursuing. My practice falls between the study of sexual behavior, subcultures, and psychology, creative impulses of performance and social practice, and autobiography. In attempting to translate this into a viable academic career I often find myself worrying about whether there is a place in the academy for this sort of niche work, or whether my investments and practice will be read as "low," un-professional, overly personal, inappropriate or without merit. The image i included is the cover of a book I'm working through currently on Intersectional Trans* performative practice and also the troubles of trans studies as a discipline. - Andrea