Perverters of Culture — Homocult, Queercore and Public Space (Chapter 3: Public Space and Queer Perspectives)
This is part 5 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 3: Public Space and Queer Perspectives
‘Being queer is not about a right to privacy; it is about the freedom to be public” - Queer Nation manifesto
The above quote is from the Queer Nation manifesto, handed out at the New York pride parade in 1990. The idea that queerness must be relegated to the private sphere removes queer trauma from public dialogue. It also removes queer joy, framing it as dangerous in its ability to lure the unsuspecting and naive into a dangerous queer life. Homocult’s work, like that of other Queercore artists, breaks down the public/private divide and asserts that ‘the personal is political’ by openly discussing in public what is expected to remain private. They inserted themselves into public space and demanded visibility for queer people, queer desire and the violence of cis-het normativity by revealing an erased queer perspective to a usually assumed cis-het public. This chapter explores how Homocult disrupted the private/public divide by bringing queer perspectives into public space through the appropriation and recontextualisation of images and how their work challenges the assumption of a default cis-het public.
The criminality of street art is analogous to the criminality of queerness in public discussed in chapter one, both being attempts to control public space and what/who is seen within it. Despite being created and maintained by dominant powers, in a pre-internet era, the public space of cities was one of the few spaces marginalised communities could publicly express themselves. The unauthorised insertion of images into public space through street art alters how we consume those images and how we experience the space, questioning who controls it and what is allowed to be visible within it. The public appropriation of cultural material to critique dominant powers, known as culture jamming, is central to the work of much street artists. Members of the art and activist movement Situationist International coined the term Detournement to describe this technique of reworking material from capitalist culture to mock and undermine it. Homocult followed these traditions by appropriating the images and styles of the mainstream culture in order to present an erased perspective on it.
This can be illustrated by two pieces in Queer With Class, both of which claim to be ‘ISSUED BY DEPT OF SOCIAL ORDER | in conjunction with HETEROLIFE PLC’ in official-looking text at the bottom. The first piece (4) uses a photograph of a white, middle-aged straight couple, embracing and smiling whilst looking into the distance, which looks like an advertisement and displays the texture of the halftone printing technique common to newspapers. Text above and below the image reads ‘YOU MUST MARRY’ in a heavy sans-serif font. The second piece (5) features a similarly idyllic photograph of a smiling white family of a father, mother and two teenage children that could be a promotional image from a television show. Similarly bold sans-serif text above and below the image reads, ‘CUSTOMERS ARE REQUIRED TO REPRODUCE IN THE INTERESTS OF THE MARKET.’ This fake propaganda from an imaginary ‘dept. of social order’ draws attention to the role of marriage and reproduction in maintaining societal structures. It draws a connection between the cis-het institutions of marriage and capitalism and calls attention to invisible social expectations of cis-het normativity.
Homocult displace heterosexual monogamy and the nuclear family from their cultural position of ‘normal’ and ‘natural’ through their recontextualisation of these images, suggesting they depict an ideology rather than a natural state. These images of cis-het normativity, innocuous on their own, become reminiscent of Nazi propaganda posters depicting seemingly idyllic Aryan families and children to promote an oppressive and violently homo/transphobic power structure. It suggests that the ubiquity of images of cis-het relationships and family structures may feel like similarly insidious propaganda for the homo/transphobic and cis-het normative society to those who are excluded from it.
We can see another example of Homocult’s use of image appropriation to reveal hidden perspectives in a piece depicting a mock-tabloid article with the headline ‘Child abused by parents takes REVENGE’ (6). A photograph of a girl who appears to be around eight years old with long hair wearing a bridesmaid’s dress and flower crown takes up a large portion of the image. What looks like a television screen containing the graphics used to distinguish male and female toilets holding hands is placed where an advertisement would be. Text in columns around the images mimics and subverts the scaremongering, homophobic language that filled the tabloids of the time, describing a wedding as a ‘horrific Christian ritual’ and a ‘freak orgy.’ The text describes a ‘baby dyke’ killing her parents after being made to conform to feminine stereotypes and ‘[…] dress up in a perverted frilly pink frock to perform as a “bridesmaid.”’ She laments that no one believes she committed the crime because “how could a little girl do such a thing?’
This piece calls attention to the existence and agency of queer children and mocks the cultural perception of the relationship between children and queer people through hyperbole and tongue-in-cheek humour. It provides a challenge to the idea that children need to be protected from queer people, which was notably present with the passing of Section 28 a few years earlier. On its own, the photograph could be viewed as an adorable image of innocence, but the accompanying text gives it a sinister tone. Together they suggest her appearance is part of a violent induction into cis-het normativity and reveal the violence of culture’s cis-het projections onto children. The text’s description of her being disbelieved due to her age, gender and appearance mirrors the disbelief often experienced by queer children. While we do not know the photograph’s origin, it lacks the halftone texture of newspaper printing present in other images Homocult use, suggesting it may be a personal photograph.
Lesbian art collective fierce pussy were pasting similar posters on the streets of New York in 1991, juxtaposing childhood photos of their members with reclaimed lesbian slurs. One such piece currently available to download from their website depicts a smiling baby wearing a dress and apron. The photograph appears formal as if from a professional photoshoot, which contrasts with the distressed courier-style font of the text taking up the bottom part of the image that reads ‘Dyke’ in large letters. As one member said, this allowed them to ‘[…] reconsider the space of family & personal history as queer space’ and ‘[…] question the tyranny of assumed heterosexual identity.’ This recontextualisation gives a queer perspective on these images of children that is absent from cis-het culture. It requires the beholder to reconsider the inner world of the child depicted and how it may differ from their expectations, revealing the gaze of the queer child. Through recontextualising these photographs, Homocult and fierce pussy give a voice to the queer child, who is so often spoken for.
Alongside revealing queer trauma, Homocult proudly reveal queer joy that is erased from public space. One piece that illustrates this (8) features a masked woman scantily clad in clothes inspired by BDSM fashion, posing with leather gloved hands on her bare behind and smiling for the camera. She appears confident, assertive and joyful, and the picture is taken from below, emphasising her power. The accompanying text appears to have been written on a typewriter and enlarged through xerography, as how the courier-style lettering is distressed varies such that it could not be part of the font’s design. Large text up the left side of the image reads ‘LADY KILLER,’ with smaller text cut and pasted across the image, arranged so as not to obscure her face, breast, or behind. It describes sexual acts associated with queer women such as ‘clit licking’ and ‘fist fucking’ alongside ‘home breaking’ and ‘wife stealing.’ The term ‘lady killer’ usually describes a man who frequently seduces women, but in this context it frames queerness as something that can easily seduce women away from their cis-het lives. The text and image combine to create a celebration of queer sexuality as a disruptor of cis-het normativity.
Homocult use the same format in another piece (9) with an image of a young man posing topless, leaning back with his hands in fists and his mouth open in an expression of triumph. Text along the side reads ‘BENT FUCKER,’ and the text across the image includes ‘child stealing,’ a reference to the fears around the relationship between queer people and children described above, as well as the unequal age of consent for gay men, which was 21 at the time. The message of these posters is clear — these are things to be publicly celebrated and proud of, and they bring queer people joy in a way that exists outside cis-het norms. As Warner describes in The Trouble With Normal, assimilationist lesbian and gay politics erase queer sex and desire in an attempt to ‘purify the group’ and create the respectability that will allow the acceptance of queer people in assumed cis-het public space. However desire is what defines queer people as a group and this erasure simply perpetuates queer oppression. Warner also notes that not only is there no similar call for the erasure of cis-het desire from public space, it is in the very foundations of the institutions and media that make up our culture; “Heterosexual desire and romance is thought to be the very core of humanity.” These pieces by Homocult are a forceful rejection of the erasure of queer desire, sex and joy from public space, and the idea that queerness is an inconvenient burden that is irrelevant to one’s place in society.
The issue of queer space was discussed widely in the early 1990s. In 1994, the Storefront for Art And Architecture in New York organised an exhibition titled ‘Queer Space.’ It included an installation by New York based architecture firm PATH Architecture titled There is no ‘queer space’ only different points of view, in which visitors were given an audio cassette and ‘navigational chart’ that acted as an alternative guide to the city. PATH member Brian McGrath described the work’s intentions to demonstrate that any public space has the potential to be queer space and reveal the possibilities of ‘appropriations of majority space’ as opposed to the creation of ‘exclusive ghettos or enclaves, queer or straight.’ McGrath challenges the idea that some space is (or should be) more acceptable to be visibly queer in and suggests there is also no cis-het space, just space that has erased (or attempted to erase) queer perspectives. 1994 also saw the founding of the Sexuality and Space Network by UK based geographer David Bell as a forum to discuss sexuality from a geographical perspective. A paper by members of the network applies Judith Butler’s theories to the question of queer/cis-het space and examines how the presence of queer people in space changes it. They found people would usually be assumed cis-het unless visually signalling queerness in a way cis-het people could read. This is because, like the institutions discussed previously, public space is generally designed, built and controlled by dominant powers to meet their own interests, so while different points of view may be present, they may not always be visible.
Research on Manchester’s own queer enclave known as the ‘gay village’ suggests McGrath was correct in his assertion that such spaces do not best serve queer people, particularly those most marginalised within the community. A 2002 study by researchers at The Welsh Centre for Tourism Research showed that while queer women felt Manchester’s gay village was an important space, they did not feel empowered by it due to the replication of mainstream patriarchal systems. In 2017, queer studies researcher Nina Held looked at the relationship between Manchester’s gay village and the city’s Chinatown district, situated next door, and came to similar conclusions. Held showed that space is assumed cis-het unless sexualised as queer and also assumed white unless racialised otherwise, resulting in Manchester’s gay village and other queer spaces being structured around whiteness and queer people of colour often feeling unwelcome. All spaces are inherently sexualised (and inherently racialised), though due to heterosexuality (and whiteness) being an assumed norm, the heterosexual sexualisation (and white racialisation) of spaces is invisible to most people. Homocult’s use of appropriation reveals a different perspective towards images that are ubiquitous in public space, making the cis-het sexualisation/gendering of space visible. This makes an experience of existing as a queer person in an assumed cis-het space visible within that space.
Like other queer artists and activists, Homocult took advantage of xerography’s ability to allow those with minimal money, resources, or influence to take up public space that would otherwise be assumed cis-het by default. A member of fierce pussy said, ‘We could own a whole wall in the Lower East Side […] They might have been 11 x 17 [inch] posters but put 50 on a wall and you have a whole different thing.’ Queercore author and performer Charlotte Cooper describes seeing Homocult’s posters ‘everywhere’ on the route from Brixton station to Brockwell Park when attending London Pride in 1993, showing a similar occupation of space. Xerographic prints could spread far beyond their original location and creator by being re-copied and distributed by people other than the original artist. Eichhorn speaks of her experience visiting an exhibition of work by New York based AIDS activist collective ACT UP with the assumption that she would be unfamiliar with the work as she did not visit the city at that time, but not only did she recognise many of the images from her own university campus, she also remembered copying and distributing them herself. These examples demonstrate the power of xerography to physically take up public space and how xerographic art can experience a life far beyond the knowledge or expectations of the artist. Homocult took advantage of this by contributing their posters to zines distributed nationwide. In a 1994 issue, the UK based zine listings zine Bypass features three zines with work by Homocult, including one titled Flyposting: Do It, described as containing ‘images for the unscrupulous flyposter’ for ‘[…] high street decoration.’ One blogger in an unknown location wrote that in 1994 they went out with a group of fellow queers at night to ‘appl[y] the Homocult techniques’ and ‘plastered everything in sight’ with Homocult’s work. From the evidence available, it seems people did copy and distribute Homocult’s posters in the same way Eichhorn and others did with the work of ACT UP, though we do not know how far they travelled. A 1997 issue of anarchist magazine Freedom includes a letter describing Homocult posters spotted on a public wall in Aberystwyth, Wales, and a review of Queer With Class was included in a 1993 edition of the influential USA based zine Maximum Rocknroll, suggesting their work may also have travelled further.
The metaphor of ‘the closet’ as a state a person exits on revealing themselves as queer emerged in the mid-1960s, referencing ‘a skeleton in the closet,’ a hidden secret to be ashamed of. As queer writer D. T. Scott puts it in his paper examining the metaphor, ‘The skeleton was visibly celebrated in public, rather than hidden away in a closet, because it was the hiding that gave the closet its power to define the skeleton as deviant.’ Homocult’s interventions into public streets are an example of taking the shameful skeleton of queer sexuality out of the closet and visibly celebrating it in public, transforming the queer shame and aggressively expressing queer trauma and flaunting queer joy. By pasting these expressions of queer perspectives in public space, Homocult disrupt the idea that queerness is (or should be) confined to specific spaces. They created new counterpublics by addressing a perspective that had previously been erased from public space, addressing people who had not been previously.
