Sex Clubs Dissent - A Book Talk

A book talk with Amelia Abraham in conversation with Fiona Anderson and Phyllis Christopher, with DJs on afterwards!

Sex, Clubs, Dissent collects over 200 photographs with essays to form a rich, one-of-a-kind visual history of queer nightlife and its relationship with image-making

Interrogates what efforts to document and interpret nightlife through photography and film reveal about our shifting relation- ships with these sites of community, pleasure, and dissent

With essays by Amelia Abraham, Sunil Gupta, McKenzie Wark, Rene Matić, Ajamu X, Jack Parlett, Tavia Nyong’o, Brontez Purnell, Adam Zmith,Sita Balani, Sweatmother, Ariel Goldberg, Asa Seres- in, Legacy Russell, and Tourmaline

Sex, Clubs, Dissent charts an expansive visual history of Queer nightlife through the lens of photographers, filmmakers, and artists. Edited by author Amelia Abra- ham, the book explores how image-making has fostered, and at times jeop- ardised, the formation of Queer practices, subcultures, and forms of resistance. It asks what our decades-long quest to catalogue and understand nightlife spaces through photography and film can tell us about our various relationships with them, and how photography intersects with pleasure, politics, and protest. As much as an assertion that ‘we were here’, images of queer nightlife – real or otherwise – can be erotic, amusing, alienating, violent, or exuberantly joyful, moving us to seek out our own dancefloor, strip club, or sauna. Rather than a comprehensive catalogue or chronology of queer nightlife, Sex, Clubs, Dissent is a love letter to those who went out and stayed out, felt the urge to document or reflect what was happening, or who have used their artmaking to dream new modes of being into existence.

With work by Lola Flash, Reynaldo Rivera, Del Lagrace Volcano, Wolfgang Tillmans, Roxy Lee, Lyle Ashton Harris, Elegance Bratton, Phyllis Christopher, Bruce LaBruce, Chloe Sherman, Amos Mac and many more.