Perverters of Culture — Homocult, Queercore and Public Space (Chapter 1: Visibility and Invisibility)

This is part 3 of the dissertation I wrote for my Masters in art history with the Open University, which I completed in October 2022. It’s also the basis of the PhD I’ll be starting at the end of 2023. This is pretty much exactly as it was when I submitted it, at some point I hope to do some posts/videos talking about the issues it explores in a less academic/more accessible style. I’ve uploaded the bibliography, but unfortunately the Medium formatting doesn’t allow footnotes. If you’d like to see a version with footnotes intact please do get in touch.

The question the dissertation is answering is: “In What Ways Were Homocult’s Interventions Into Public Space A Response To Queer Marginalisation?”

Chapter links:

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Visibility and Invisibility
• Chapter 2: Queercore and Anti-assimilationism
• Chapter 3: Public Space and Queer Perspectives
• Conclusion
• Bibliography

Chapter 1: Visibility and Invisibility

‘Being seen by the other brings you into the world, but […] it is also that which might bring you out of it.’ - Eric A Stanley

The question of visibility is complex for many queer people. Much queer oppression is facilitated by the erasure of queer people and narratives from public space, and visibility can enable queer people to emerge from the margins and take space in society. However increased visibility can perpetuate oppression by increasing homo/transphobic backlash, state surveillance and violence. Furthermore, institutions with the resources to facilitate widespread visibility are prone to misrepresenting or cherry picking people and ideas to further their own agendas. In 2019, transgender activist Miss Major tweeted on the subject of International Transgender Day of Visibility, ‘I don’t really understand why we need a Day of Visibility, since for most of us, especially Black girls, we are as visible as we need to be. Our visibility is getting us killed.’ Historically, queer people have navigated the balance between the desire for visibility and the possible risks associated with it by finding ways to be visible to each other while remaining invisible to a cis-het observer. An example of this is the ‘hanky code,’ the practice of wearing different coloured handkerchiefs to signal specific sexual preferences that was common amongst gay men in US cities in the 1970s and 1980s. There is also the practice of speaking Polari, a slang lexicon primarily spoken in the UK in the early to mid twentieth century which allowed queer people to communicate without being understood by cis-het observers. For marginalised artists, visibility is often only possible through assimilation into institutions such as galleries, archives and academia, causing queer perspectives to be forced through an institutional lens and queer work to be read through a cis-het gaze. This chapter examines these complex issues of visibility and invisibility, the ways Homocult navigate and are subjected to them and what this means for those researching their work. It also looks at the impact of art institutions on the visibility of marginalised work and how they can better support it.

Homocult emerged at a time when the erasure of queerness from public space was not just a cultural norm in the UK but a state-sponsored endeavour. The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 decriminalised ‘homosexual acts’ carried out ‘in private,’ amending previous laws that criminalised homosexuality completely. Queer cultural historian Gregory Woods argues that the act emphasised privacy as an attempt to erase queerness and queer people from public space. The vagueness of the wording and the subjectivity of what was considered a ‘homosexual act’ and ‘private’ under the act meant expressions of queerness and queer desire were still erased from public space. While parts of the act were amended throughout the 1990s, most notably to reduce the age of consent for queer men from 21 to bring it in line with that for heterosexual sex, ‘homosexual acts’ committed outside of the act’s strict definitions of ‘private’ continued to be criminalised until 2003. In addition to this, in 1988, Section 28 of the Local Government Act banned the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ as a ‘pretended family relationship’ in schools by local authorities and would not be repealed until 2000 in Scotland and 2003 in England and Wales. While in theory Section 28 only prevented homosexuality’s ‘promotion,’ the vague nature of the language meant any positive or neutral mention of queer people could contravene it. Despite no prosecutions occurring under the act, its influence was significant and spread well beyond its legally stated bounds, leading to institutions other than schools, such as arts and cultural institutions, being wary of public expressions of queerness. Interdisciplinary artist Nicholas Lowe has written about his experience of having work depicting queer themes censored by galleries following the passing of Section 28 and describes how it changed the culture of what was accepted by arts institutions and the nature of his own work. By removing queerness from the public spaces of schools, Section 28 taught queer students their orientation should not be spoken of, denied cis-het students the opportunity to understand people different from them and caused queer teachers to intensely guard their private life in a way cis-het teachers did not feel the need to. Looking into into the effects of the Sexual Offences Act and Section 28 shows how homo/transphobic legislation influences cultural attitudes beyond its stated legal intention to support the erasure of queer perspectives from public space. Much UK queer activism at the time was focused on the repeal of these laws, particularly Section 28.

The complexities of visibility and invisibility were well understood by members of the Riot Grrrl subculture, a feminist DIY punk movement of music and art with strong links to Queercore that emerged in North America and the UK in the early 1990s. In response to the movement being depoliticised and reduced to a stylistic trend in the music press, in 1992/1993 prominent voices in the community called for a media blackout in which Riot Grrrl creators would not appear in mainstream publications. It was hoped this could prevent Riot Grrrl being commodified and reduced to a passing fad, however the tactic received criticism as it risked creating an insular, segregated movement that was not accessible to those it was created to support. Like Queercore, Riot Grrrl was a creative/cultural subculture with a political goal. This complicates working within the mainstream press and other institutions, as on the one hand it allows wider transmission of their message, but on the other that message is likely to be warped or obscured completely to serve the interests of the messenger.

We can see both the erasure of queer perspectives from institutions and Homocult’s ambivalence towards visibility in how their work was distributed and has been subsequently documented. They strived for visibility on their own terms, and both rejected and were rejected by arts and cultural institutions. While this presents challenges to researching their work, they also made decisions that allow it to be more visible than it may have been otherwise. Homocult appear to have wanted their work to be visible beyond its initial context, as by publishing Queer With Class as a book with a registered ISBN rather than as a self-published zine it can easily be included in standard libraries. However, Queer With Class is currently out of print and difficult to access. According to the global library search website Worldcat, at time of writing there is only one library in the UK and 14 in the USA that hold copies.

Homocult’s work has been included in exhibitions within the mainstream art world. However it is hard to find their work in art or cultural archives, with a handful of images in the Manchester Digital Music Archives and two posters in the National Archives, which were included with documents donated by veteran queer activist Peter Tatchell. Xerographic prints are not well suited to long-term archiving, with paper that degrades and ink prone to fading. Their cheap, low quality and easily replicable nature means they can be viewed as disposable and not worth saving. However, as discussed in chapter three, xerographic prints can travel far beyond the reach or intention of the artist, which causes them to be simultaneously more and less visible in ways that resist commodification and institutionalisation. Street art is inherently ephemeral, and there are no publicly available images showing their work pasted in-situ. This means research relies on written descriptions such as those by zine author Charlotte Cooper to understand how it was experienced at the time. Homocult maintained the anonymity of most of their members, as is the norm amongst street artists, and have given very few interviews or spoken publicly about their work. While this reduces the available sources, it may have allowed them to take more risks without fear of personal repercussions, increasing the visibility of their work.

Artist and activist Gregory Sholette coined the term ‘creative dark matter’ (CDM) to discuss work that exists outside the visibility of art institutions. in the field of astrophysics, the theory of dark matter describes a substance that is invisible and undetectable but which calculations predict makes up the majority of the universe. This dark matter becomes a metaphor for art not visible to galleries, archives, the art market and academia. It includes both work excluded through barriers created by these institutions, such as work by marginalised artists or that does not fit institutional definitions of ‘art,’ and work intentionally made to exist outside these institutions. As with the dark matter of astrophysics, CDM is vital to the functioning of art institutions and the establishment art world in general, both financially and for generating new ideas and trends. Sholette advocates the creation of a culture where these institutions cannot ignore the work they rely on and are made to recognise CDM on its own terms rather than assimilating it through market-friendly categories such as ‘outsider art,’ reducing the significant power they hold over culture. Whilst some artists/works functioning as CDM seek visibility from institutions and mainstream culture, others have chosen to be CDM and ‘[b]y grasping the politics of their own invisibility and marginalization they inevitably challenge the formation of normative artistic values.’ As shown above, Homocult have not only grasped these politics, they have made them central to their work.

In the context of CDM, Homocult can be viewed as ‘grey matter’ rather than entirely dark, as while their work has primarily existed outside institutional awareness it has been sufficiently documented to prevent it from becoming entirely invisible. According to the theory of CDM, the art we can see implies the existence of a considerable body of work not visible to us. Therefore we must assume work was produced that both influenced and was influenced by Homocult but has remained CDM and may never be made ‘light.’ This raises the question of what enabled Homocult’s work to become at least ‘grey’ if not entirely ‘light.’ As discussed above, if it were not for the publication of Queer With Class, Homocult could easily have remained CDM and much of their work lost to history entirely. The ability to have a book published, even by an independent publisher, implies a level of privilege either through resources or connections and xerographic copying, while cheap and relatively accessible, was usually not free. Unauthorised flyposting on public property was (and remains) illegal in the UK. Many factors can influence whether someone is willing to risk breaking the law, especially as it potentially involves interactions with police. Location may also have played a part, as being based in Manchester, a large city with an active queer community, would likely have granted their work more visibility and notoriety than if they were in a smaller town. They would also have benefited from working as a collective rather than as individual artists as it would have allowed them to share the labour involved in producing and distributing their work and maintaining a public presence. While Homocult’s work is difficult to access and research, one can imagine artists producing work in the same period without Homocult’s privilege, social contacts, geographical advantages or promotional savvy that could not meet their level of impact.

Sholette’s statement that ‘dark matter is getting brighter’ reflects on how many arts institutions have a growing understanding of the importance of analysing, exhibiting and archiving previously excluded work. While a positive step in many ways, this presents a risk of work being institutionalised through assimilation. Those within arts institutions can avoid this by approaching work without expecting it to fit neatly (or at all) into their understanding of art and art history and by including work they may not fully understand or relate to. Marginalised people have responded to the risk of institutionalisation by creating community archives, either affiliated with institutions or independently. This allows them to present and preserve their art and histories on their own terms and demand acknowledgement from institutions while refusing co-option. An example is the Queer Zine Archive Project, a freely accessible and open submission online archive of international queer zines established in 2003. Community archives are a valuable resource for those working within arts institutions and academia who wish to further Sholette’s goal of reducing the cultural power of those institutions, as long as they are approached with respect and not viewed as inferior due to their community-driven nature.

We can look to Philosopher Édouard Glissant’s theory of the right to opacity, laid out in his 1997 book Poetics of Relation, for further insight into how institutions can approach marginalised work without subjecting it to assimilation. Glissant questions the need to ‘understand’ those different from oneself, describing it as a western perspective. He discusses how marginalised people are required to simplify themselves and their identity to allow it to be digestible to an other if they are to gain acceptance through visibility. Due to its complexity, personal identity is obscure even to oneself, and so if being ‘understood’ is a requirement for marginalised people to be accepted acceptance will never happen. While Glissant was talking about people, the right to opacity can also be applied to artwork and its right to be included and valued without being reduced by a desire to make it easily understandable within an institutional context. Homocult’s work can be seen as a statement of the right to opacity by asserting its right to exist in public space without being understood. Their members’ anonymity and lack of interviews demonstrate a refusal to explain themselves and their art or clarify their message beyond the work.

Visibility alone is not the solution to the marginalisation of queerness as it is often not enough to undo violence and oppression and can increase them instead. Sholette tells us that the institutions that define our art and culture should be made to reckon with work they have previously excluded, approaching it on its own terms without assimilating it through categorisation. In addition, Glisant reminds us that this work should not need to be seen or understood by these institutions for its value to be acknowledged. Rather than trying to make Homocult’s work fit institutionally defined artistic categories, we can approach it by looking at the ideas and communities they reference and the cultural context in which it was made. We can look at more well documented artists producing similar work in similar contexts for further insight, such as lesbian art collective fierce pussy (intentionally spelt lower case) who were pasting artwork that was similar to that of Homocult in both aesthetic and subject on the streets of New York during the same period. We must however be careful not to make assumptions about their work based on the words of another.