DANCING WITHOUT A FLOOR: THE ARTISTS’ POLITIC OF QUEER
CLUB SPACE
Ken Moffatt
Club events have been an important element of queer
culture in urban
The analysis of the club event named Vazaleen was accomplished through
participation in the event over a three and a half- year period, and extended
interviews with the founder Will Munro. I have also reviewed articles about
Will Munro and Vazaleen
in
Historical Context of Vazaleen
The club event, Vazaleen, was started as a queer night at
It can be argued that the
type of queer space that exists within Vazaleen is
similar to many other existing queer commercial spaces. The importance of queer
space within commercial venues is well documented in the queer history of
The intent of Will Munro is to embrace this history of queer
spaces. However, the creation of Vazaleen is based
on the perception that a number of commercial queer spaces have resulted in a
homogenized capitalist culture for queers. At times, the homogenizing influence
is experienced through the imagery that is present in commercial space. At
other times, homogenization is experienced because the participants in the
space have similar identities and diversity is discouraged. Will Munro is
intent on constructing a not-for-profit event within a commercial space. The
imagery, explicit politics of the organizers, and the not-for-profit character
of the event is meant to allow for a unique mixing of people and a different
experience of engagement among community members.
Although
Vazaleen is
an event that is collaborative in nature, its conception and implementation has
been the passion of Will Munro. In the same manner that it is impossible to
separate Andy Warhol from the Factory, it is impossible to write about Vazaleen without
considering Will Munro’s vision of the event. Will Munro, an artist and
impresario, moved to
The
abject, all that is expelled due to its perception of perversity and “being
outside” (Kristeva, 1982), is present in Munro’s art.
According to Kristeva (1982) social rites exist to:
…separate
this or that social, sexual, or age group from one another, by means of
prohibiting a filthy, defiling element. It is as if dividing lines were built
up between society and a certain nature, as well as within the social
aggregate, on the simple basis of excluding
filth (Kristeva, 1982, p. 65).
Both
Munro’s art and his events defy this form of ritual. At times, the underwear is
purposefully stained by bodily fluids (Hirschmann,
2003). The limits of gender and the body are challenged through the
reconstruction of the underwear so that gendered expectations of the items are
overturned. The presence of bodily
fluids on the underwear suggests a type of grotesque defined at the limit of
the body and the blurring of boundaries (Bakhtin,
1984b). Ambivalent and feminized garments are vilified in Western culture,
since they challenge the closed non-porous body of the male. Munro’s art is a
challenge to all that is represented as ‘pure and clean’, in particular the straight male (Kristeva,
1982).
Munro’s
conceptual, artistic experimentation with gender, diversity and boundaries is key to understanding the event Vazaleen. Munro imagines a space
in which all that is normally perceived as grotesque and abject is explored.
The bodies of participants at Vazaleen are imagined to be open-ended and irregular rather
than symmetrical and balanced.
Participants can relax into the communality of imperfect bodies and
porous boundaries rather than the individualizing forces of fastidiously
perfected beauty (Emerson, 1997).
Upon his graduation from
art school, Will Munro hoped to create a new social scene in
While
challenging the lack of spatial alternatives for queers in
The nurturing of this
alternative space marked by diversity came out of an overtly queer community
whose membership included punks and activists. The punk queer community places
a value on creating a community for outsiders (Treleaven
and Munro with Hart, 2004). According to Scott Treleavan,
a
The cultural musical side
to the queer punk community is made up of an international network of homocore groups. In cities such as
Munro
took his “experience as a punk kid” and as someone who went to house parties to
conceptualize Vazaleen as an expression of punk ethos. Will Munro credits punk rock with
teaching him how to be a critical thinker. His older brother’s punk records
were a seminal influence on Will Munro’s thought. The “do-it-yourself” ethos of
punk culture with its emphasis on self-sufficiency has continued to be
appealing. Popular, local forms of communication such as punk zines have been influential to his mode of communication
(Munro, March, 2003). The promotion of Vazaleen as an event is about the promotion of punk cultural
values such as respect for diversity and local autonomy in art (Munro, January,
2003). His early posters and flyers were hand-made. The Vazaleen posters continue to be designed by local artists. The posters,
placed in a variety of neighbourhoods, serve a number of purposes beyond
promoting the event. The posters claim queer space where it is unexpected. The
posters also champion local art through the do-it-yourself aesthetic as
artworks (Munro, January 2003).
Will
Munro is also a member of
The club space has taken
on an important role as an intermediary space between the street and the
commercial gallery. Within such venues a form of artistic immediacy is apparent
(Ricard, 1981). Smaller clubs or special events
within larger nightclubs have become an urban
institutional phenomena within
Will
Munro’s struggle to create and nurture queer space is part of militant
contemporary Canadian queer organizing (Warner, 2002). The right to queer
space, a space that is defined by the mores, norms and standards of the queer
community, has been central to the fight for Canadian queer liberation. (Grube, 1997; Kinsman, 1996; Warner,
2002). In 1981, demonstrations by gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered Torontonians and their allies after the
bathhouse raids marked the beginning of an extended period of community
organization for queer space (Grube, 1997).
Similarly, lesbians were involved in community organizing in 2000 to challenge
police raids on the Pussy Palace, a
lesbian organized bathhouse (Warner, 2002).
Warner
(2002) argues that those queers who demand the right to self-defined space are
members of a radical group of queer organizers. The fight for queer space has
challenged the taken-for-granted assumptions about Canadian social institutions
and community moral standards. The limits of tolerance and inclusivity
within both mainstream and gay cultures have been challenged through this
battle (Warner, 2002). Public space for contact among queer people has been
gained only through “cumulative victories against repression” (Grube, 1997, p.145). The spaces have been created based on
the willingness of queers to fight for and to inhabit those spaces on their own
terms (Delany, 1999; Grube,
1997).
The Elements of Vazaleen: The Sense-Based
Specificity of a Local Cultural Space
Vazaleen
has drawn participants of all genders, including women, men and transgendered persons. As well, the appearance of
participants suggests a diversity of sexual types are
in attendance at the event. The diversity of the participants has contributed
to the characterization of Vazaleen as an alternative space (Boles, 2003; LaBruce, 2003; Mitchell, 2003) and a “queer fringe thing” (Treleaven with Murphy, 2003). Bruce LaBruce
(2003), artist, filmmaker, pornographer and social commentator, has enthused
that due to the radical nature of his events “Club impresario Will Munro has
put homosexual
…like
your gay rock and rollers um as well as your dyke kind of like punks um also
you get into like leather subcultures. So you have like dykes who are into
leather … as well as fags who are into leather. As well, you get all those sort
of trans subcultures - so your getting tranny boys and tranny girls. You
are getting people who are into gender fuck, um you are getting like bear
subcultures, you’re getting swingers, you’re getting
cool straight hipsters, music kids. Um, its pretty
shook up. …I’ve seen most sexual subcultures. I think there’s also a pretty
strong bi contingent that shows up … You get a lot of people who come out who
have wanted to ah explore queer things ah and they identify mostly as being
straight and will come to this event specifically. (Munro, January 2003)
The
social contact within the space has fluidity both by purpose and type. Vazaleen is a
social space where people of differing classes, professions and work status
mix. Members of the
The space that is Vazaleen is best understood as a scattering of
social fragments. Depending on the focus of your glance, Vazaleen can appear to be a
leather bar, a transgendered space, a discotheque, or
a rock and roll club. These fragments are constituted through the participation
of queers. Vazaleen
is part of networks of social possibilities, such as, the Queen Street Art
Scene, the punk subculture, and any number of sexual subcultures. The presence
of the diverse social influences within the space informs the nature of the
event. The unpredictability of the consequences of the social mixing define Vazaleen as an art event (Rajchman,
2001).
Will
Munro values social experience between people such as those relations “between
the young and old sharing knowledge” (Munro cited in Liss,
2003). He worries that experiential relations across difference are eroding: “ Instead it’s all about fucking. That’s great. That’s fine.
But if you don’t have anything else, then what’s gonna happen to our culture? Is our culture gonna become Queer as
Folk” (Munro cited in Liss, 2003)? The principle
of encounter is key to the form of experimentation at Vazaleen. The
social relations are constructed so that sense based phenomena and the abstract
are integrated. Forms of relations are
created so that thought, art and social life are informed by the sense based
experience of another person (Rajchman, 2003).
The
artistry of being at Vazaleen is based
in a practice of un-working or
de-transcendence of heterosexual culture.
Participants are involved in the contradictory exercise of undoing the
work of culture while demanding a culture based on specificity (Haver, 1997) and the sense based experience of others.
Similarly,
the club participants are invited to engage in the outsider status whose
productivity is tied to their sense based experience of each other (Deleuze and Guattari, 2000).
A
metamorphosis or a passage, in any case a movement, from pathos to
affectivity…from the interiorities of subjectivity and identity to an
exteriority that is not merely the outside of the inside…from community to the
being in common of whatever singularities, from history to historicity, from
society to sociality, from authority to power, from communication to
significance: from the cultural to the political (Haver,
1997, p. 291).
Will Munro, as one of the D.J.s for Vazaleen, keeps alive the politic
through his choice of music. He has relied heavily on 1970s rock and roll in
his play list because the music was created during a decade of change and
movement. His choice of music is not
simply a history lesson but informs the historicity of the moment. Often he
plays music that is unexpected in a queer club so that it provides surprise and
disruption at the event. The queer connotation in ‘straight’ rock and roll
music is made explicit when played at Vazaleen. Queers “take back” music that has had racist,
misogynist and homophobic connotations to free the revolutionary potential of
rock and roll (Munro, September, 2003). This music is offered in the context of
the other elements of the club such as queer positive video projections and/ or
stage presentations. The interaction of the elements subverts the original
intent and meaning of the music or at least brings it into question.
The D.J. is key to the creation of contemporary performance space as she
or he sculpts aural sound-scapes key to the tone of
the event.
Specific
activities within the space of Vazaleen promote performance by both guest stars and club
participants. Munro offers a description of the event:
You
are going to see sheets projected on, that are hanging from the ceiling on two
sides of the room. Your are (sic) going to see all
kinds of different projections: slides, super eights, sixteens,
video. Sometimes, video mixing. And there is a stage
where a lot of performances happen, ah people in the audience are encouraged
to, you know, come on stage and participate in certain themes or events…as well
as performers who are brought in as a main act. Then sometimes we will set up
things that are more interactive in another corner of the space by the side of
the stage. We’ve done various different photo shoots…we once did a biker shoot
with a low rider bicycle…Other things happen in the space we’ve done roller
derbies, we had drag races once, drag queens and drag kings racing on bicycles…
all sorts of things that happen …the audience is participating so in a sense
the performance is happening everywhere…For example, when we had the prom night
massacre …forty per cent of the audience was wearing some kind of weird gore or
prom outfit so that then makes the whole space a kind of performance (Munro,
March, 2003).
Some
performances at Vazaleen
are based in political critique that is suitable for public spaces rather than
the formal stage. In this manner, the performances are a type of artistic agitational propaganda (agit
prop). Historically, in
During
Agit prop need not be severe
and sombre. In fact, much of the performance at Vazaleen is remarkable for how it
incites laughter as well as the celebratory tone. The performative
and the playful are means of addressing social, political issues. According to
Munro (March 2003), a Vazaleen
event focused on so serious a theme as challenging the war in
In this respect the
performances contribute to the Bakhtinian carnival
flavour of the event. Vazaleen is an oppositional culture based on
alternative cultural production and expression of desire. All that has been
marginalized becomes the centre of activity and awareness (Bakhtin,
1984b; Stam, 1989). Vazaleen is a form of carnival as understood by Bakhtin. According to Bakhtin
(1984b) carnival:
is by no means a
purely artistic form nor a spectacle… It belongs to the borderline between art
and life. In reality, it is life itself, but shaped according to a certain
pattern of play… Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in
it… During carnival time life is subject only to its laws,
that is the laws of its own freedom. (Bakhtin,
1984b, p. 7)
Those relations and concepts that are dogmatic or
repressive become incomplete and open, so that all that was formerly fixed
becomes fluid (Bauman, 2000; Harvey, 2000; Irving and Young, 2002).
Eccentricity is encouraged as a form of challenge to the external, hierarchical
ordering of social relations (Bakhtin, 1984b; Irving
and Moffatt, 2002). Will Munro is interested in
relations that are non-conventional, sensuous, and experimental in spaces that
are elusive and transitory. While political
consciousness and social identities are based on good will, communality and a
critique of corporate capitalism, they also multiply in all their eccentric
permutations.
The Philosophy of Vazaleen: Art
Space Defined by the Encounter in the Planar
Although complex, the
politic of Vazaleen
is best understood by a logic that involves the
encounter (Rajchman, 2003) in the context of planar
relations (Rajchman, 2003; Sedgwick, 2003). The
planar, purposefully placing elements beside one another, serves an important
queer politic. By placing elements such as sexual identities, gender
identities, performative acts, and symbols in
proximity to one another, a dualistic interpretation of social life is avoided.
Dichotomous categories of subject versus object, antecedent versus precedent, cause versus effect are subverted. Furthermore, the “spatial positionality
of beside… seems to offer some useful
resistance to the ease with which beneath
and beyond turn from spatial
descriptors into implicit narratives of, respectively, origin and telos” (Sedgwick, 2003, p. 8). The shift from dichotomous thought opens the
possibility of multiplicity in subjectivities and expressions of agency.
Juxtaposing the various elements makes possible “a wide range of desiring,
identifying, representing, repelling, paralleling, differentiating, rivalling,
learning, twisting, mimicking, withdrawing, attracting, aggressing, warping,
and other relations” (Sedgwick, 2003, p.8). Space, in this case queer club
space, has a rich dimension (Sedgwick, 2003) from the philosophical, artistic,
social and moral points of view.
The ephemeral quality of
the space further enriches the experience of the planar (beside) rather then the historical origins of the event (before) and/or the psychology of the
participants (beneath). By its nature
the rock and roll bar is a transitory space, since the crowd changes according
to the event and the performer; people coming for a particular show constitute
the culture of the space accordingly. To place a queer event in a ‘straight’
space is still more elusory (Munro, January, 2003). The principle of encounter
in the moment is heightened as other explanations for the social politic are
diminished.
Through the aesthetics of
the self, that is, making oneself present, ‘taken for granted’ social codes are
challenged (Foucault, 1997). The
unfolding takes place in a form of heterotopia,, a place where signs, languages, interpersonal relations
are incongruous, disordered and multiple (Foucault, 1973). The unfolding of a
diversity of selves allows for the “violation of the usual” (Bakhtin, 1984, p.166). Rather than ask why our selves exist
or what our selves do, we are interested in the negotiations involved in the
empirical existentiality (Haver, 2003). We are not
present to serve capitalist production through preoccupation with exclusion,
safety, security, and predictability (Bronski, 1998; Delany, Kinsman, 1996; Munro, September, 2003; Vaid, 1995). Rather, we are interested in productivity of
the self and the expression of eros which “undoes the
work of culture altogether. It is the unrecognizable face of the stranger each
of us is at the brink of pleasure – or death” (Haver,
2003, p. 283).
In coexistence with this
openness, there is comfort with “a discovery of the new and as yet unseen
things” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 166). Within the dramatic
‘being in common’ (Haver, 2003) at Vazaleen, an open
endedness of subjectivity is possible. Support for
each other occurs even as personal subjective possibilities are uncertain (Kristeva, 2002). According to Munro (January, 2003),
journalists, authors and performers comment on how “mixed up” the audience is.
Some comment that they “have not seen a slice of life like this since the early
80s.” Cultural codes are rewritten without yet understanding the outcome of the
change. Underlying this risk however lies a good will
marked by openness – a refusal to rush to judgement of others (Rajchman, 2003).
Freed
of a preoccupation with origins and telos, an
experimental space, an art space is created. Within this space, all
participants perform in the context of anarchic social relations based on situatedness, specificity and historicity. The performative within such an experimental space challenges
bourgeois values such as monogamy or consumerism. In fact, the concept of fundamental precepts
or values is challenged. Brought to task is “a model of humanity that had
absorbed into itself the transcendent ideal (God) and which, from his immanence
was in hot pursuit of values and objects” (Kristeva,
2002, p. 25).
A
solidarity is created based on “awareness of one’s discontent” (Kristeva,
2002, p. 42), rather than a stable code of values (Kristeva,
2002). Change occurs in the revolt against the ongoing capitalist ethos of
calculation and management (Kristeva, 2002; Munro,
March 2003). Within the queer punk community members are “
always politicized… There are problems facing our community and … there
are issues that are ‘pissing people off’…”(Munro,
March, 2003). As Kristeva (2002) states: “I revolt:
Therefore we are still to come” (Kristeva, 2002, p.
42).
Will
Munro is interested in the construction of the self in a play of productive,
amorphous and desirous relations (Deleuze & Guattari, 2000). Like Deleuze, he
avoids the problems of “the retreat into metaquestions
of judgement - a symptom in fact of…a ‘weak period, a period of reaction’” (Rajchman, 2003, p. 62). In his article “Pride Terrorism”
Will Munro (2003) questions the tone of Gay Pride celebrations in Toronto. He
challenges the reader to reconsider that Gay Pride events were born of revolution
and riot. He states: “Probably over a million people will converge on Toronto
for Pride this year. With attendance figures like this it’s really hard to
imagine that Pride used to be a radical and serious underground event that was
part of a larger struggle” (Munro, 2003, p. 31). Even as he engages in his
polemic based on an acknowledgement of history (before), he still maintains the importance of the present (beside) by writing: “I do not wish to
judge or alienate those involved, my focus is to encourage change” (Munro,
2003, p. 31).
When
encouraged to judge the mainstream audiences over their ignorance about the
queer nature of stadium rock and roll, since queer bands such as the Freddy
Mercury’s Queen are often used at sporting events, he responds with hesitancy.
When pressed to make a judgement about how blinded ‘straight’ populations are to many queer cultural influences, he responds: “I think
people know” and “maybe they just don’t mind so much. It is just about the
unspoken… they don’t want someone to beat it over their heads…”(Munro, January, 2003).
The
success of his events has created a difficult contradiction for Will Munro. The
events are so well attended that lines form and at times people cannot get in.
The popularity creates difficult questions about whether the space should be
allowed to spill over to the street or to other venues or whether it should be
contained to carefully ensure the original subversive
character. Some of the original participants have become alienated. Shannon
Mitchell (2003) interviewing members of the Skinjobs, characterizes the event as mainstream. She asks:
How
do you feel about playing such big events such as Vaseline (sic)? You’ve got
the queer punks but over time it’s become the cool thing to do with that you
get the corporate yuppie queers coming to it…. It used to be really awesome but
now it’s gotten so big, there are even VIP cards! The lineups
are insane with lots of people who aren’t even there to see the bands, and half
the time unless you get there early you can’t get in. Queer punks finally got
their space, to do our own thing but then it gets taken back. Community gets
replaced by scenesters (Mitchell, 2003, p. 23).
Due
to its utopian nature, the culture of laughter as a part of carnival may or may
not lead to full rebellion and fully defined opposition. According to Bakhtin (1984b): “The consciousness of freedom …could only
be limited and utopian… It would therefore be a mistake to
presume that popular distrust of seriousness and popular love of laughter, as
of another truth, could always reach full awareness” (Bakhtin,
1984b, p. 95). The polyphonous voices of Vazaleen allow
for an open interpretation to allow for multiple forms of rebellion.
The
social at Vazaleen
does not seek to be authorized outside the placement of elements beside each
other at the event. The “social seeks no authorization in any putatively
ontological ground that, as a solicitude subject to no necessity whatever, anarchic
sociality founds the ethic-political as such. The very fact that unauthorized
protocols and etiquettes exist here at all is the foundation of ethicality
altogether” (Haver, 1997, p. 282). So, Munro refuses
to rush to meta-judgement, and he continues to speak to the importance of the
planar. He states: “I go to spaces that I do not personally inhabit to
encourage people to come” (Munro, January, 2003). If someone who is not
normally comfortable within the queer ‘underground’ chooses to “come to this
space and think its cool and interesting” then the value lies in the fact that
“something is changing, you know” (Munro, January, 2003).
Conclusion
Within
the space that is Vazaleen, performance challenges the
taken-for-granted. By focusing on the planar (beside) and the encounter, Vazaleen is a queer space that allows for the unworking of assumed cultural codes. The radical
nature of the space is due to the refusal to seek ontological understandings
outside the experience of the elements of the space. The politic of the space
is created through staged performances that comment on social anxieties, social
welfare, repression, and death, alongside the randomness of social encounter in
the context of difference. The space in its entirety becomes an art space as
people seek out sense-based phenomena including the experience of the specific
other person. The performance is existential due to its lack of concern with
psychology (beneath) and its
ephemeral treatment of time (before).
Experientially, participants are artists of their being while intellectually
they are “dancing without a floor.” In this manner, participants begin to
imagine productive life and an aesthetic of existence outside the calculation
and management of the bourgeois, capitalist Western culture.
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