Black Triangle

The black triangle was used to mark "asocial" and "workshy" individuals, including lesbians, Romani and others in the camps. It has been adapted as a lesbian symbol.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_symbols

Triangles used for persecution during the Nazi regime[edit]

Main articles: Pink triangle and Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust

One of the oldest of these symbols is the pink triangle, which originated from the Nazi concentration camp badges that male homosexuals were required to wear on their clothing.^[1] Many of the estimated 5–15,000 gay men and lesbian women imprisoned in concentration camps died during the Holocaust.^[2] For this reason, the pink triangle is used as an identification symbol and as a memento to remind both its wearers and the general public of the atrocities that gays suffered under Nazi persecutors.^{[citation needed]} AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT-UP) adopted the inverted pink triangle to symbolize the "active fight back" against HIV/AIDS "rather than a passive resignation to fate."^{[this quote needs a citation]}

The pink triangle was used exclusively with male prisoners—lesbians were not included under Paragraph 175, a statute which made homosexual acts between males a crime. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum stipulates that this is because women were seen as subordinate to men, and that the Nazi state feared lesbians less than gay men. However, the USHMM also claims that many women were arrested and imprisoned for "asocial" behaviour, a label which was applied to women who did not conform to the ideal Nazi image of a woman: cooking, cleaning, kitchen work, child raising, and passivity. These women were labeled with a black triangle.^[3] Lesbians reclaimed this symbol for themselves as gay men reclaimed the pink triangle.^{[citation needed]}

Women in the tepee space

The Women's Art Environment, CSA Gallery, Christchurch : women in the tepee space.
[1977]

1 photograph : b&w ; 11 x 16 cm.

Notes:

Exhibition, 30 May-9 June 1977

1178

In 1977 the Women's Artists Group organized the Women's Art Environment at the Canterbury Society of Arts. The artists exhibiting included Joanna Paul and Allie Eagle. "The event was conceived as an opportunity for women to come together in one place to discover their particular identity as women, in a situation where their expression would be uninhibited by men. The exhibition was opened exclusively to women for the first five days ... The objects which remained on display after this were evidence of the deeply felt need of the participants to search for the sources of their identities as women"--The Press, 11 June 1977, p. 22

PhotoCD 7, IMG0037

Spiral, no. 3, 1978, p. 27   

[Copyright Christchurch Libraries]

Retrieved from http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Heritage/Photos/Disc7/IMG0037.asp 3 November 2015

Spiral and beyond: Art and feminism in New Zealand

14 June - 10 August 2002, Hocken Library, cnr Anzac Avenue & Parry Street, Dunedin

1975 was the United Nations International Women's Year. To mark the event, Allie Eagle, then Mitchell, curated a special show of ‘6 Women Artists'. It was held at the Robert McDougall Gallery in Christchurch. It was the first exhibition to be organized on feminist principles and focusing on ideas about identity. Eagle had belonged to a collective of women artists and writers based in Christchurch who then went on to found the influential journal Spiral, that published poems, essays and art. This network of women shared ideas, journals and books, including the writings of such theorists as Lucy Lippard and artists like the U.S artists Judy Chicago and Mary Beth Edelson, whose work is included in the exhibition.
Gradually these women made contact with others of like-mind around New Zealand and organized exhibitions and events such as the 1977 A Seasons Diaries, organized by Joanna Paul, which brought together both professional and non-professional artists, as well as those who had never been involved in art-making before. In 1977 the Women's Artists Group also organized the Women's Art Environment at the Canterbury Society of the Arts. In 1980 the Women's Gallery was founded in Wellington by a collective that included Marian Evans, Anna Keir, Bridie Lonie, Rosemary Johnson and others.
This exhibition is a sampler, providing but a taste of the variety of women artists who were inspired by feminism to shake up the attitudes of the New Zealand art world, who thought that the work of women was worth celebrating and who broadened the approved subject matter of art.

Curated by Dr Judith Collard (Otago University Art History and Theory Department)

Retrieved from http://www.otago.ac.nz/library/hocken/exhibitions/otago039145.html 9 November 2015

Collard, J. (2006). Spiral women: Locating lesbian activism in New Zealand feminist art, 1975-1992.Journal of the History of Sexuality, 15(2), 292-320. [note to self/ves - look this up]

Homophobia free zones: Kiss

Safe zone landing pad for LGBT aliens?

Posters, I'm thinking about posters. That's all.

Safe zone for the LGBT lactose and Fonterra tolerant among us

Queer Space?

Dipping a toe into queer urbanism... 

[Warning: contains high levels of US content!]

What is queer space? Aaron Betsky [author of the seemingly spurious text Queer Space: Architecture and Same-Sex Desire, 1997] has described queer space as “not built, only implied, and usually invisible,” and as “useless, amoral, and sensual space that lives only in and for experience.” 11 Can we envision a different kind of queer space — space that is more permanent, built and visible, even as we embrace the experiential and sensory?

Excerpted from “Queer Beacon,” an article by by Kian Goh about LBGT resistance to the gentrification of Greenwich Village, New York in Places Journal, June 2011. Accessed 02 Nov 2015. <https://placesjournal.org/article/queer-beacon/>

... and following the debate through to public monuments and the discourse of a gay modernity via abstracts of and excerpts from the chapter 'For Time Immemorial: Marking Time in the Built Environment':

This chapter looks at how Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire (places of memory) emphasized the need to revive queer identity, queer cultural collectivity, and marked environments during the post-AIDS onslaught. Queer spaces were initially identified as areas that are not built, only implied, and usually invisible. However, this issue somehow gained attention after the commissioning of two prominent lieux de mémoire: the Gay Liberation monument in New York and the Homomonument in Amsterdam. The chapter also examines Charles Jencks’“Gay Eclectic” style of house architecture, gay neighborhoods, and gay culture iconizing the character of Dorothy in the film The Wizard of Oz.

Between 1984 and 1992—that is, while fear and grief over AIDS, the previous chapter argued, played out in proscriptions against queer memory—the French historian Pierre Nora was supervising a massive (seven volume) study of what he influentially termed lieux de mémoire, places of memory. These memory sites, which include both physical places and rituals of commemoration, Nora contends, characterize modernity. Places of memory, Nora argued, enact self-conscious efforts “to block the work of forgetting” that is inherent to the “acceleration of history” in “our hopelessly forgetful modern societies, propelled by change” (“Between Memory and History,” 7, 19, 8). We...

In the book If Memory Serves: Gay Men, AIDS, and the Promise of the Queer Past by Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed (University of Minnesota Press, 2011). Retrieved from University Press Scholarship online available at: http://www.universitypressscholarship.com/search?f_0=keywords&q_0=Queer%20Space and somewhere else I can't locate anymore...

And returning to the contemporary context to get a sense of the significance of the field and it's consequence in the rebuilding of Christchurch for its LGBT citizens:

Of potential relevance are the examples of queer urbanism in Goh's 'From and Toward a Queer Urbanism' article in which she concludes:

Each of these [radical queer urbanist] initiatives asserts that the safety and welfare of LGBT people in cities cannot be divorced from the social, economic and spatial conditions of urban environments. From direct acts aimed at changing discriminatory bureaucratic policy to the more consuming work of changing prevailing public opinion, these campaigns literally broaden the possibilities of movement for queers in the city. They map, both literally and otherwise, paths forward for urban social movements that are critically inclusive. 

Progressive Planning Magazine April 14, 2015. Online journal. Accessed 02 November 2015. http://www.plannersnetwork.org/2011/04/from-and-toward-a-queer-urbanism/

Architecture Barbie

From the article: What I learned from Architecture Barbie 

by DESPINA STRATIGAKOS

 Places Journal 

Architect Barbie on display at the AIA convention in New Orleans, May 2011. 

[Photo courtesy of Mattel, Inc.]

Architect Barbie on display at the AIA convention in New Orleans, May 2011. 

[Photo courtesy of Mattel, Inc.]

Architect Barbie prototypes, created by Taubman College architecture students 

Enesh Easlick (doll on the left) and Mashawnta Armstrong (doll on the right) 

for a 2007 University of Michigan exhibition. 

[Photo by Paige Hammerschmidt and Caryn Schadegg, courtesy of Despina Stratigakos]

June 2011. ACCESSED 2 NOVEMBER 2015 

https://placesjournal.org/article/what-i-learned-from-architect-barbie/

Highway by Momu & No Es

What's on, North Projects - Physics Room

From North Project's exhibition 'Boring month, start to finish' by Ella Sutherland

http://northprojects.co.nz/

and strrraight ahead 22 mins (apparently)

That's Manchester Street!

(+ future plan version)

Hanga right and:

http://physicsroom.org.nz/exhibitions/the-blue-grey-wall

To the Physics Room's exhibition 'The Blue Grey Wall' with Madison Bycroft, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Eglė Kulbokaitė & Dorota Gawęda, Chloé Maillet & Louise Hervé, Zoë Paul curated by Barbara Sirieix

AND

Silicon-Dry Computer Systems and Wet, Living Biologies by Hana Aoake

Hana Aoake, My space, 2015

Aoake has a google doc!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RD3lzs9D2Lc8MvXLHm5pr3YvjWLti32nDBzGFGnw-8Y/edit?pli=1 

Time for a stunt skype???

How about next week? Please state your preferred time:

Monday am NZ - Monday pm EU
Tuesday am NZ - Tuesday pm EU
Wednesday an NZ - Wednesday pm EU

Ponses, pussyfoots and perverts...

Hi Stunts,

Love your way!

I went to this really fantastic LAGANZ-run event last month where amazing humans spoke with eloquence about the work they’re involved in with the lgbtqia community as well as the implications of archiving /queer /history /and /or /experience:

Queer History in the Making

Audio from Queer History in the Making, a community show-and-tell event organised by the Lesbian and Gay Archives of New Zealand. It was held at the National Library of New Zealand, Wellington on 12 September 2015.

Lots'a audio here:

http://www.pridenz.com/queer_history_in_the_making.html

News of the day - was reminded at the event that 2016 is the 30th anniversary of homosexual law reform bill!!

I met a LAGANZ board member and was talking to him about our work and our upcoming Christchurch show. He mentioned the queer activist, trade unionist and primary school teacher Robin Duff, born in Hawkes Bay in 1957 who lived in Christchurch and passed away early this year.

Here is a really interesting interview with him - be aware that it's a long interview and the media player doesn't allow you to skip ahead so be prepared to listen to it all in one sitting etc.:

http://www.media567.com/media/pridenz/2-1386444168-575.mp3

He mentions

Otto von Bismarck

who said ‘Politics is the art of the possible’ but Duff disagrees and says that ‘Politics is the art of the impossible’ - I really like his critique of the false positivism implied in the first statement.

He also speaks of

Local crimes against gay men that had an impact on him

Stonewall

Union movement

Homosexual law reform

Being an openly gay teacher in the 70s/80s

Queer activist groups

"Ponses pussyfoots and perverts"

"Moral turpitude" - (I was reminded of a letter to the editor of our local rag The Kapiti Observer a few years back in which a resident described his alarm at imagining queer people's "dirty little rituals"!) I never tire of laughing gleefully at the letter-writer's expense!

and personal columns - where one might encourage at a personal level things potentially illegal in NZ at the time

LGANZ had a lot of queer publications and ephemera on display at the event- such a wealth of full colour, spectacularly designed queer NZ magazines from the 80s and 90s in particular. The aesthetics are quite close to our’s along with the sense of humour expressed through visuals and texts. I'm keen to read some of these publications if I can get access to the LGANZ archived material again.

Other delights included a description of an empty web page as a ‘Plain vanilla page’

And a story from a gay couple about how they posted an offensive article on gay pets back to the salvation army in one the Sally’s own donation envelopes… protest at the mail delivery level.

It was such a great event, especially as it included groups from across the lgbtqia spectrum, and it involved opportunities for groups to describe what they do but also a panel discussion for more critical thinking, particularly with a focus on archiving queer history, past, present and future… not only going into the implications of archiving in the digital age… but also the quandaries of who can capture and tell queer history… authorship, cultural appropriation, social justice, post-colonialism, gender bias, intersection approaches... all the hard stuff that sometimes gets marginalised at purely celebratory outings... go LAGANZ!

From the subsurface

From the media

Postcard from the garden

Postcards continue...

Last quote (I promise?)

Just 'cause Eileen Myles is a BOSS:

The vernacular is the place where everything meets. It’s a gathering of people. Think of Sons and Lovers when Paul Morel goes to the pay window at the coal-mining office and talks in his local vernacular even though he’s an educated guy. I lived in Provincetown with a girlfriend, and we owned a house and workers would come over. And then I’d step into my Massachusetts accent to get the guys to not fuck us over. I think that’s avant-garde—the meeting of need and language. Take the Happenings in the 1960s, which were the beginning of postmodernism—what they were mainly interested in was the interface. How do we put film and bodies and poetry together? Now we’re in a world where everything’s sampled. Is there any place where the recording doesn’t meet the live event? What used to be new art is now life. We’re reeling around in this giant performance. When I wrote theater, I would think of each play as a Christmas tree, and the moments, the scenes in the play, were like ornaments. You can’t see it, but the tree’s there, and we’re putting on the ornaments, we’re putting the tinsel on, layers and layers, and moving with a confidence that there’s a place. And you compose fearlessly because there is a tree, there is a place. I feel like the vernacular is that.

From:
http://lithub.com/eileen-myles-in-conversation-with-ben-lerner/

What's in a name?

A postcard from my research in process.

Detail, library books (local history). Image retrieved from http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nzlscant/bibliography.htm (accessed 20 September 2015)

panning in for the (books as extras) close up...