Communications volunteer, Mailey, interviewed Craig Jennex about the newest exhibit at The ArQuives: Liberation on the Dance Floor.
Mailey: Hi Craig, I am really excited for our digital exchange on Liberation on the Dance Floor: Reflective Nostalgia, and to learn more about your research. This exhibition showcases the work of Toronto’s Gay Community Dance Committee (GCDC), a prolific volunteer-run organization who organized over fifty dances between 1981-1992, raising over 250,000$ for many vital LGBTQ+ organizations in Toronto. Can you tell me a bit more about your project, Liberation on the Dance Floor and its current exhibition, Reflective Nostalgia?
Craig: Liberation on the Dance Floor (LotDF) is a research project that looks to the political force of collective queer dance in the 20th and 21st centuries. The broader argument I make in LotDF is that collective dance to popular music wasn’t insignificant or secondary to more conventional forms of political action but was the foundation on which such political actions were built. Perceived as more accessible than, say, a political organization meeting or a protest that would likely be met with police violence, dance parties were the primary way many activists entered into the broader collective project of lesbian and gay liberation. Collective dance allowed people to feel a sense of belonging, individual and communal agency, and collective queer power when such feelings were difficult to find elsewhere.
Reflective Nostalgia is the second public exhibition for this project. In this exhibition, I’m interested in thinking through the productive nature of what Svetlana Boym calls “reflective nostalgia” and how this approach might allow us, in the present, to linger in the dreams of the past.
M: Collective dance as a form of political action within the project of lesbian and gay liberation is really intriguing to me. Both community organization and dance—especially in the context of ‘nightlife’—share an incredibly ephemeral quality. In both forms of social organization, and in the act of “lingering”—on the dance floor or in a historical moment—we access an ephemeral state-of-being that cannot last, that is always already almost in the past. In your exhibition text, you compare Svetlana Boym’s “reflective nostalgia” to a beam of light hitting a disco ball and refracting into multiples. Reflections, glimmers of light, and fragments and traces are, in this exhibition, the material basis through which we not only access the past in the present, but also begin to understand collective power as a rhizomatic, fragmented force. This leads me to my next question.
In the documentation and archiving of queer histories, we often rely on alternative methods of historicization, such as preserving traces, objects, ephemeral materials, stories, and the complexities that might be overlooked in traditional bureaucratic or national archives. I am particularly interested in the materiality and archival objects produced throughout the lifespan of the GCDC and how these inform your research and are utilized in this exhibition. How do queer archiving methods influence your research and shape the way you present this history?
C: Because queerness has often had to exist underground, in secret networks, or in fleeting moments of possibility, the material evidence we can find for queer lives is often unconventional. Those of us interested in historical queer movements need to be open to other forms of evidence. We’re fortunate that the GCDC left material traces—meeting minutes, photographs, posters, handbills, and financial records—for us to explore and build this project on. We’re also lucky that many of the people who organized and participated in GCDC dances in the 1980s are still around and were willing to chat with us about this project. So far, we’ve gotten to chat with Rob Stout, Chris Lea, Ed Jackson, Alan Miller, Philip Share, and the incredible DJ Deb Parent who provided the music for many GCDC dances.
Archival traces of historical queer movements provide more than just evidence of past queer lives, they also offer potential for how we think about queerness in the present. In part, this exhibition asks: what seemed possible in this historical moment? What can this offer for our dreams and desires in the present? Archives of queer life hold many embers of unrealized revolutions; by orienting ourselves to these pasts and the individuals therein, we can nurture these embers and change what is possible in the present and for the future.
M: Thinking through embers of unrealized revolutions and your thoughts on collective dance as political action, your work seems to tease out the ways that collective movement on the dancefloor contributes to the collective mobilization of community. There seem to be an interesting linguistic connection between dancing and community action where both rely on the enaction of [corporeal and communal] “movements” to incite mobilization. Do you have any thoughts on what happens on the dancefloor that is reflective of a larger communal movement(s)?
C: Great question. Our emphasis on “movement(s)” in this work is an attempt to emphasize the corporeal pleasures attainable through both dance floor movements and collective political movements. Both offer us opportunities to come together, in affective and embodied ways, to be part of something larger than ourselves. When we convene on a dance floor, there is an opportunity for queer performativity, play, and innovation; the same can be said for broader political movements: when we understand ourselves as part of a collective body, our individual bodies take on different meanings and possibilities. A sense of belonging can radically reshape how we exist in the world. Thinking about bliss and pleasure helps make the potentiality of movement(s) more clear. When we feel safe and good on the dance floor, we access affective experience that can transform the world and our understanding of our place within it. And this can last long after the music stops. Collective movements, on the dance floor and in the street, are ways we can change the world.
M: To me, Reflective Nostalgia, the exhibition’s title, seems to indicate a dance between past and present. It muses that the act of looking fondly into the past holds a mirror up to the present. In what ways do the historical conditions of the 80’s—when many of the GCDC dance parties took place—mimic the conditions of our decade? What can we take from this exhibition that might help us navigate the challenges unique to our times?
C: We’re taking up Svetlana Boym’s notion of “reflective nostalgia” for our title. She argues that there are two types of nostalgia: restorative, which aims to reconstitute an absolute and singular version of the past, and reflective, which is more interested in lingering in the dreams and possibilities of past moments.
One thing that impresses me so much about the work of the GCDC is that their organizing took place in the 1980s, a decade of neoliberal reorganization that eroded notions of collective agency and communal care. Neoliberal ideologies of individual responsibility, privatization of public goods and services, and competition have only intensified, and our collective response to these oppressive systems should also intensify. I think reflecting on the work of the GCDC offers us glimpses of ways we might create communities of care in the present.
What would it look like, in the present, if we dedicated time and energy to creating and nurturing spaces and conditions for collective bliss? What sort of opportunities could exist today that would allow us to convene across differences of identity and political priorities in ways that are mutually beneficial and world-making?
M: The “in search of…” classified ads that were derived from the classifieds visible in GCDG dance archival photographs arouses what you call a “record of queer longing,” by inviting attendees to post their own classifieds. I am interested in the ways that dance, music, and art mobilize collective systems of care and hope, and pull us from isolation, and individualistic rhetoric, as this exhibition emphasises. Are there any other queer organizations, musicians, events, or other cultural fragments that you look towards today to return to a sense of shared belonging and collective power?
C: Your emphasis on dance, music, and art pulling us from isolation and individualistic rhetoric is spot-on; this is what first brought me to this research and is what buoys this project. My next research project is on another historical example of collective formation: LGBTQ2+ phonelines of the 1970s. These volunteer-run, inexpensive initiatives served as a primary method of information dissemination, peer-counselling, and community formation for queer collectives. I’m going to begin by looking at three phonelines of the 1970s: Halifax’s Gay Alliance for Equality’s “Gayline,” Toronto Area Gays’ “923-GAYS,” and Vancouver’s “Lesbian Information Line.” What binds this project with the Liberation on the Dance Floor project is the form of queer communal care and collective innovation that you identify. I’m really taken with historical examples of regular people coming together, working for a shared purpose, and building their own world-making initiatives that emphasize both our shared precarity and our shared potential. There are embers of unrealized revolutions in queer archives—I’m hopeful that nurturing them in the present can ignite better futures.
M: Thank you so much, Craig, for talking through your ideas and research behind Reflective Nostalgia with me. This exhibition will run until December 15th, and is available for viewing at The ArQuives, 34 Isabella Street. I look forward to seeing the exhibit myself, and for Liberation on the Dance Floor’s future endeavours!
Author bio: Mailey is a writer and artist based in Toronto, working across mediums. Her publications and art can be found at maileyhorner.com.