“I’m Coming Out”

The expression of queer identity through Irish nightclub flyers, 1980s—2000s

Emer Brennan 2018 Visual Communication Design IADT Dun Laoghaire

i This dissertation is submitted by the undersigned to the Institute of Art Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire in partial fulfilment for the BA (Hons) in Visual Communication. It is entirely the author’s own work, except where noted, and has not been submitted for an award from this or any other educational institution.

Signed:______

Title image: GAG nightclub flyer, Niall Sweeney, 1996 Courtesy of the Irish Queer Archive Abstract

This dissertation examines the expression of queer identity through Irish nightclub posters and flyers from the Irish Queer Archive in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. It gives a cultural and historical context of Ireland and it’s relation to the LGBT community and maps out political and cultural shifs that create social change and set the basis for a more accepting society and community. Further investigation is made into queer culture and how international queer culture affects and influences Ireland at the end of the 20th century. With the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland in June 1993, the boom in club culture and the opening of super clubs in the mid 1990s, a new social scene was created in Dublin for people of all genders, sexualities and interests. The graphic design and production of the flyers and posters for gay nightclubs and events not only created the beginning of a new social scene in Ireland, but also of a new distinct graphic style that is very specific to Dublin and very specific to the time. This research is drawn from various Irish scholars writing on the socio-political history of Ireland, from academics and archivers writing on club culture, identity and flyer design, from various cultural theories and interviews I conducted with Tonie Walsh, former DJ and club promoter, and graphic designer Niall Sweeney. This provides an in-depth analysis of the first generation of queer designers in Ireland and how political shifs changed society’s perception of the gay and lesbian community, by ultimately accepting and welcoming them as consumers. Through greater acceptance of the community, people openly began expressing and exploring their sexuality for the first time and a new space for expressing queer identity was formed.

iii Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Linda King for her guidance and encouragement throughout the duration of completing this dissertation. I would also like to sincerely thank Tonie Walsh and Niall Sweeney for their invaluable advice and for sharing their experiences with me.

iv Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………iii

Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………iv

List of Illustrations ……………………………………………………………………….vi

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………1

Chapter 1: The Social, Political and Cultural Context in Ireland……………………7 1.1 Irish Society and Sexuality 1.2 The Gay Rights Movement 1.3 Law Reform

Chapter 2: Meaning and Expression of Sexuality……………………………………18 2.1 Queer Culture 2.2 Creation of Space 2.3 Evolution of Queer Expression

Chapter 3: Graphic Design and Club Promotion…………………………………….32 3.1 LGBT Graphic Design 3.2 Audience and Distribution 3.3 Production Values

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………..43

Sources……………………………………………………………………………………47

Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………..50

v List of Illustrations

NB: All Hirschfeld Centre, Phoenix Club, Flikkers, Sides, GAG, Powderbubble and H.A.M. flyers are sourced from the Irish Queer Archive.

Figure 1 - Front of flyer for H.A.M. nightclub, c 1999. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 2 - Flikkers nightclub flyer, 1979. Designed by Tonie Walsh. Figure 3 - Climax, Sides Dance Club flyer, 1991. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 4 - GAG nightclub flyer, 1996. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 5 - Flikkers Halloween disco flyer, 1986. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 6 - Advertisement for Rice’s bar, 1965. Designer unknown. Figure 7 - Fairview march re killing of Declan Flynn, 1983. Source: Out For Ourselves. Figure 8 - Yes Equality social media banner, 2015. Designed by Language. Figure 9 - Hirschfeld Centre disco flyer, 1979. Designed by National Gay Federation. Figure 10 - Phoenix Club disco flyer, 1979. Designed by National Gay Federation. Figure 11 - Tel-a-Friend advert, 1980. Designed by National Gay Federation. Figure 12 - Flikkers Green and Pink party flyer, 1986, Designed by James Desmarais. Figure 13 - Flikkers Leather and Denim party flyer, 1985. Designer unknown. Figure 14 - The Grotto, Sides Dance Club flyer, 1989. Designed by Francis Scappaticci Figure 15 - The Banana Party, Sides Dance Club, 1991. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 16 - Alternative Miss Ireland poster, 1987. Designed by Niall Sweeney Figure 17 - Alternative Miss Ireland poster, 2012. Designed by Niall Sweeney Figure 18 - GAG nightclub flyer, 1996. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 19 - GAG nightclub flyer, 1996. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 20 - Powderbubble nightclub flyer, 1996. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 21 - H.A.M. nightclub flyer, 1998. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 22 - ‘Cake Hole and Candle Wax’ GAG nightclub poster, 1996. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 23 - Powderbubble nightclub flyer, 1996. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 24 - H.A.M. nightclub flyer, 1997. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 25 - Cowgirl H.A.M. nightclub flyer, 1997. Designed by Niall Sweeney. Figure 26 - Cowboy H.A.M. nightclub flyer, 1997. Designed by Niall Sweeney.

vi Fig. 1 - H.A.M. nightclub flyer, 1999.

Introduction

The late 1980s and 1990s saw the beginning of the crossover between Irish design and the LGBT community. Graphic designer Niall Sweeney was the prominent figure behind this crossover, as he designed almost all of the visual identities for queer nightclubs at this time. He describes himself as “a big old gay, and a big old designer”1, and his work is not simply about designing for the LGBT social scene, but it is about doing the best work possible for the people and places that it is about. During the 1980s through to the 2000s, club flyers were an integral part of bringing visibility to the LGBT community in Ireland, and were the most popular form of visual communication and promotion for nightclubs. This dissertation will examine how queer identity was expressed through nightclub flyers and posters in Ireland from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Queer in this context is being used as an umbrella term to describe a member of the LGBT community. This refers to people that sexually identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, or identify as transgender, and it also

1 Interview with Niall Sweeney, Emer Brennan, 9 January 2018. 1 includes people who fall between sexual and gender binaries, such as pansexuals2 and people who are gender non-conforming (essentially all non-heterosexual people). The word ‘queer’ has experienced many changes over the last few decades, and it was initially used to describe something odd or eccentric. The word received homosexual connotations during the middle of the 20th century, and has been used by heterosexuals as an offensive or slang word since then, and can be used synonymously with dyke or faggot. However, in recent years the word queer has been reclaimed by the LGBT community and re-appropriated to be used as a positive word that many find very empowering to describe their sexual or gender orientation. Today, the word queer is embraced in Ireland, as the annual art festival Queer Notions has been running for the last decade and is the best platform for showcasing new queer art, film, drama and literature. The word was first embraced publicly in Ireland on posters and flyers for queer nightclubs, the first being Flikkers disco (fig. 2), which ran from 1979 to 1987 in the Hirschfeld Centre in Temple Bar. Flikkers was the first gay venue in Dublin, and also the first venue to play disco and house music. Dublin writer Ian Maleney states in The Irish Times in 2017 “Flikkers was where it all started… Disco blurred into house over the speakers, and the foundation for nightclubbing in Dublin was set in glittering, multi-coloured stone.”3

Fig. 2 - Flikkers nightclub flyer, 1979.

2 Pansexuality is the sexual attraction to a person of any biological sex, gender, or gender identity. 3 Maleney, Ian, Rave on: When underground dance parties ruled Dublin, The Irish Times, 24 February 2017. 2 The Hirschfeld Centre was badly damaged in a fire in 1987 and the home of Flikkers closed its doors for good. Club promoter John Nolan opened Sides Dance Club on Dame Lane in 1986, which was a nightclub for both gay and straight people and hosted the best DJs in Dublin at the time. The flyers for Sides at the end of the 1980s start to become more expressive, and the text and visuals contain cheeky sexual references (fig. 3). A lot of flyers from the 1990s have a raunchy hilarity about them, particularly the ones made afer 1993. On the 23 June 1993, the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill was passed in the Dáil and homosexual relations between men were decriminalised. Gay rights activist Kieran Rose describes how, for many lesbians and gay men, “the law reform had a powerful liberating effect on our sense of ourselves. It was like a great burden being lifed from our shoulders, a burden we had grown up with and had hardly realised existed”4 in his book The Evolution of Lesbian and Gay Politics in Ireland (1994). Afer decriminalisation, gay people could finally openly express and explore their sexuality without the fear of prosecution. One way that this was possible was through dance clubs. In 1994, a group of young talented promoters formed Ham Productions to organise new and diverse queer club nights in Dublin. Ham Productions was made up of Niall Sweeney, Miss Panti Bliss creator Rory O’Neill, DJ Tonie Walsh and Karim Rehmani-White. They were responsible for organising the fetish club GAG (fig. 4), which ran for a year in 1996, and popular dance clubs such as Powderbubble and H.A.M. (fig. 1), which will be discussed more in Chapter 3.

Fig. 3 - Sides nightclub flyer, 1991. Fig. 4 - GAG nightclub flyer, 1996.

4 Rose, Kieran, Diverse Communities: The Evolution of Lesbian and Gay Politics in Ireland, Cork, Cork University Press, 1994, p. 59. 3 This dissertation seeks to provide a context for the evolution of queer identity, expression and acceptance in Ireland in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. It examines and analyses queer nightclub flyers and posters from these three decades and compares and contrasts the differences in tone, message and audience. This will show how the flyers are a visual representation of the culture and time in which they are from, and as Ireland became a more accepting society towards the end of the 20th century, the nature of the flyers changed too, and became more focused on individuality, self expression and sex. This can be done by mapping out the cultural shifs that took place in Ireland during this time, therefore exploring how queer identity and expression developed in relation to the social, cultural and political changes that took place. It seeks to establish how sexual and queer identity was expressed more openly and freely through nightclub flyers and posters especially afer decriminalisation of homosexual acts in 1993. Talented designers, such as Sweeney, who graduated from college at the start of the 1990s were full of ambition and ideas at this time and they made the most of the positive changes in Irish society. They brought their ideas to life by organising queer clubs and events in Dublin, and they created the visual history of Ireland’s queer identity.

Chapter One; ‘The Social, Political and Cultural Context in Ireland’ begins with an outline of the social changes that Ireland experienced from the 1960s onwards. These changes, including urbanisation and industrialisation, contribute to the secularisation that Ireland experienced in the late 20th century. Due to this secularisation, people could begin to let go of their conservative Catholic views which dominated areas of education, healthcare, marriage, social events and sexuality. Here the idea of “repressive hypothesis” is relevant, an idea that social theorist Michel Foucault discusses in his three-volume study The History of Sexuality (1976). This is the idea that western society has suppressed sexuality since the 17th century, and it can be applied to Irish society and sexuality during the 20th century. The formation of the Gay Rights Movement in Ireland by university lecturer and activist David Norris (now senator David Norris) in 1974 is a milestone in Irish gay rights and also in the social history of Ireland. Yet there were backlashes against social change and the Catholic Church still held great power throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps one of the most progressive moves Ireland made at this time was its entrance into the European Community in 1973. Due to Ireland’s new place in the European Community, Norris was able to bring Ireland’s anti-gay laws to the European Court of Human Rights, “which found Ireland’s legal prohibition of male

4 homosexual acts to be in breach of Article 8 of the Convention of Human Rights”.5 This chapter will delineate the events leading up to gay law reform to contextualise the long political journey that the Gay Rights Movement underwent before decriminalisation. Understanding the political and social issues of the time is important because it lays out what was acceptable at the time and what social norms gay activists strove to break in the 1980s and 1990s.

Chapter Two; ‘Meaning and Expression of Sexuality’ begins with explaining what queer culture is and what it means to be queer. Being ‘queer’ is different for everybody and there is no one definition of the word queer. This is one of the main ideas behind queer theory.6 Similarly, queer culture and how people express being queer is different in different countries. The Harlem drag ball scene became a huge part of New York queer culture in the 1980s, and although Ireland didn’t have any comparison, the gay clubbing scene was inspired by what was happening in America, albeit it was criminal to openly express homosexuality and to go out to gay clubs. In the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act and the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, the last piece of legislation was a law that outlawed any form of intimacy in a public or private place between two men. This could mean three years imprisonment for simply kissing or even just for holding hands in public. The flyers for the first gay clubs in Dublin were inherently political, as all the discos in the Hirschfeld Centre were run by the National Gay Federation (NGF), which was an organisation working for the human rights of gay people in Ireland. Afer decriminalisation in 1993, there was a greater willingness to accept LGBT people and venues were more willing to host queer nights. Gay venues and clubs that were previously underground during the 1980s and the early 1990s began to turn (relatively) mainstream in the mid 1990s. The new creation of queer space in the 1990s had a huge effect on the content of the club flyers and their tone and style became much more ‘out there’. This chapter will examine how queer expression becomes much more apparent in the mid 1990s and is also concerned with the different ways in which queer people begin to openly explore their sexuality.

Chapter three; ‘Graphic Design and Club Promotion’ examines how the flyers became a new platform for design in a new social scene in Dublin. This chapter

5 Dunphy Richard, Sexual Identities, National Identities: The Politics of Gay Law Reform in the Republic of Ireland, Contemporary Politics, 3:3, 1997, p 247. 6 Queer theory is an area of critical theory that emerged in the 1990s and is centred around the idea that identities are not fixed and do not define who we are. 5 discusses the influence that the Irish queer clubbing scene took from other queer scenes and how the promoters at Ham Productions pushed the boundaries of what was expected in Irish clubbing, in terms of ideas, design and production. Sweeney was the designer behind most of the flyers afer 1986, when he designed his first poster for Flikkers (fig. 5). He created other work for Flikkers and the complete visual identities for GAG, Powderbubble and H.A.M., and has an aesthetic and imagination unparalleled by any other Irish designer. His distinct, bold visual style in the flyers reflects the boldness of the clubs he was producing for, and it represents a very distinct Dublin graphic style. This chapter will examine the productive values, the imagery and the language of the flyers to show how unique and full of energy the nightclubs were. Theorist Roland Barthes’ ideas of semiotics can be used here to analyse the flyers and the signifiers within them. This chapter will also discuss the distribution of the flyers — where they went and who received them — and how they acted as an invitation, or a passport, to new and exciting places in Dublin. All of the flyers discussed are part of the Tonie Walsh Collection in the Irish Queer Archive, which is held in the National Library of Ireland.

Fig. 5 - Flikkers Halloween Ball poster, 1986.

6 Chapter 1: The Social, Political and Cultural Context in Ireland

7 1.1 Irish Society and Sexuality

The LGBT social scene in Ireland was virtually non-existent before the formation of the Gay Rights Movement in 1974. Politics lecturer and writer Richard Dunphy describes in his article, Sexual Identities, National Identities (1997) how “until the 1980s, the lesbian and gay community had been almost invisible, and lesbian and gay political activism had been confined to a small courageous handful of people.”7 In fact, all aspects of sexuality in Irish society throughout the 20th century were considered taboo and were pushed under the rug. Whether this apply to the unmarried mother or the homosexual, “the realms of desire, pleasure and being sexual were censored in public life and silenced in the family,”8 as Professor of Sociology Tom Inglis expressed in 1997. The dominance the Catholic Church held over educational, medical and social services in the 19th and for the most part of the 20th century in Ireland meant that discussions on sexuality and homosexuality were confined to a very small proportion of society, or just not made public. Foucault’s theory in The History of Sexuality that sexuality has been repressed in western society since the 17th century meant that sex was treated as a practical and private affair. It should only take place between a married man and woman, and any sex outside of this was not prohibited, but repressed. Inglis in his article Foucault, Bourdieu and the Field of Irish Sexuality (1997) describes how, during the middle of the 20th century, “the whole regime of the Catholic Church, as it had been since St. Augustine, was to make desire and the sexual act inherently dangerous.”9 Sexuality as a whole was considered an unlawful topic, homo or heterosexual. Any sexual acts had to be confined to marriage, and even within a heterosexual marriage, sexual acts had to be confined to certain times with certain intentions, i.e. producing children.10 The Catholic Church’s influence on education was so strong that teachers had to hide their sexual orientation in fear of being fired from their jobs. In the Dublin Lesbian and Gay Men’s Collective’s book Out For Ourselves (1986), it is stated that “teachers are nominally employees of the state, yet their jobs are controlled by the church… For lesbians and gay teachers the very fact of their

7 Dunphy, op. cit., p 247. 8 Inglis, Tom, Foucault, Bourdieu and the Field of Irish Sexuality, Irish Journal of Sociology, Vol 7, 1997, p. 5. 9 Ibid, p 14. 10 Ibid, p 14. 8 sexuality could be grounds for their dismissal.”11 Sex education programmes in schools gave no details on the lifestyle of lesbians or gay men, and never demonstrated homosexuality as a feasible option for living. The Dublin lesbian and gay social scene in the early 1980s was somewhat “limiting” and “mainly revolved around the pubs, clubs and a few discussion groups.”12 In the blog Come Here To Me!13, that focuses on life and culture in Dublin, one gay man states that in the 1970s “being gay was a very lonely experience. There weren’t many opportunities to meet gay people, unless you knew of the two bars Dublin at that time, Bartley Dunne’s and Rice’s.”14 Even at that, Rice’s did not explicitly advertise itself as a gay bar (fig. 6). In Out For Ourselves (1986), one anonymous gay explains how:

the [1970s] Dublin gay scene was tiny, one night ‘out’ a week, three flights upstairs to a fairly seedy pub… I was warned by those longer on the scene not to tell anyone my surname… I can remember the panic leaving by the side- door hoping you wouldn't bump into anyone you knew.15

Fig. 6 - Advertisement for Rice’s, 1965.

11 Boyd, Clodagh; Doyle, Declan; Foley, Bill; Harvey, Brenda; Hoctor, Annette; Molloy, Maura; Quinlan, Mick, Out For Ourselves: The Lives of Irish Lesbians and Gay Men, Dublin, Dublin Lesbian and Gay Men’s Collective and Women's Community Press, 1986. p. 88. 12 Ibid, p. 6. 13 Come Here To Me! is a group blog run by historian Donal Fallon and authors Sam McGrath and Ciarán Murray that covers music, football, politics and Dublin’s ‘other’ history. It is now a publication funded by the Arts Council of Ireland. 14 https://comeheretome.com/2013/10/06/rices-bartley-dunnes-dublins-first-gay-friendly-bars/. Accessed 5 December, 2017. 15 Boyd, et al, op. cit., p. 88. 9 The power that the Catholic Church possessed over Irish people’s religious, social and economic life began to decline in the later part of the 20th century. The mid-late 20th century, particularly the 1960s, saw a lot of social change in Ireland as the country began to move away from the heavy influence of the Catholic Church due to the growing power of the state and the media. In Inglis’s book Moral Monopoly (1998), he maps out the rise and eventual fall of the Catholic Church in Ireland and the different factors that contributed to this shifing period in Irish society. He states that, from the 1960s, “the state began to pursue economic growth through increased industrialisation, urbanisation, international trade, science and technology. The growth of the media brought enormous changes to family and community life.”16 People were positive about the economic growth in Ireland in the 1960s and felt more confident in accepting modernity. Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) launched in 1960 and ordinary people could afford exciting new goods such as televisions. They were exposed to new debates and topics discussed on the TV, such as contraception and homosexuality. Women were reading about the pill, contraception and open sexual relations for the first time in magazines such as Woman’s Way in the 1960s.17 Inglis states that in the years before the 1990s “the Catholic Church’s monopoly over the discourse of sexuality had been fragmented”, and “the initial resistance came from women.”18

Fig. 7 - Fairview march re killing of Declan Flynn, 1983.

16 Inglis, Tom, Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland. Dublin: University College Dublin, 1998, p 246. 17 Daly, Mary E.. History of Ireland and the Irish Diaspora : Slow Failure : Population Decline and Independent Ireland, 1920-1973. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2006, p. 222. 18 Op. cit., Inglis, 1998, p 6. 10 Many women’s groups supported the Gay Rights Movement and marched alongside Norris during his long political campaign for decriminalisation of homosexual activity, which will be analysed in this chapter. Women’s groups also marched with the Dublin Gay Collective in August of 1982 in protest of the brutal murder of Declan Flynn, a young gay man who was beaten to death by a gang walking through Fairview Park in North Dublin. The men were given suspended sentences and were set free immediately, despite being found guilty of the killing.19 The march was led by a banner that said ‘Stop Violence against Gays and Women’ (fig. 7), and it reflected the important connections that were built between women’s groups and the LGBT community, which was also evident in the abortion amendment campaign. The defeat of the abortion referendum in 1983 and the divorce referendum in 1986 were “successful backlashes against social change mounted by Catholic-inspired conservative forces,”20 yet it did not stop the continued resistance against conforming to the oppression of the Catholic Church. The resistance of the Catholic Church from women was supported by various groups, but Inglis describes how “it was the media that did the most to shatter the Church’s dominance of sexual discourse.”21

The dynamic of family life changed dramatically with the introduction of televisions into Irish homes. Irish people became exposed to the lavish, glossy lifestyles of British and American television programmes, and these lifestyles had little or no room for religion or celibacy. Inglis states “the media and the Catholic Church have changed positions… Instead of going out to the church or kneeling down to say the rosary, Irish families now sit down and watch the television.”22 Newspapers, radio and television were quick to see any changes in society and to exploit these changes within the media. The media began to challenge the Church’s teachings, particularly from the late 1980s when many Catholic institutions and clergy members were identified in practices of sexual child abuse. When this shocking news was exposed, there was a loss of faith in the Catholic Church. Words associated with the Church such as innocence and piety were now tainted with words such as paedophilia and rape. TV presenters such as Gay Byrne began to have more of an influence on people than that of a priest. Rose (1994) argues that “one of the decisive events in recent years in terms of society’s perception of the lesbian and gay community was the

19 Rose, op. cit., p. 20. 20 Dunphy, op. cit., p. 247. 21 Inglis, op. cit, 1997, p. 20. 22 Ibid, p. 6. 11 broadcasting of Gay Byrne’s Late Late Show debate on homosexuality in 1989.”23 The Late Late Show was aired on RTÉ and would have been seen by hundreds of thousands of people all over Ireland, as well as in the United Kingdom. During the debate, representatives from the LGBT community were invited to discuss the issue of homosexuality within the Irish Republic with members of lay right groups. Much of the public found the right-wing’s prejudices fearful, and could see that lesbians and gay men were just ordinary people living ordinary lives. The attitude of the Irish public towards the lesbian and gay community at this time would have been quite ambivalent or fearful, but the Late Late Show debate showed an alternative public attitude; one which was progressive and optimistic about sexual diversity.

23 Rose, op. cit., p. 30. 12 1.2 The Gay Rights Movement

The Late Late Show debate in 1989 marked 15 years since the beginning of the Gay Rights Movement. In 1979 the National Gay Federation was founded and it established itself in the Hirschfeld Centre. Norris began the political campaign for the decriminalisation of homosexuality activity at the end of the 1970s. Rose describes how “one of the immediate tasks of the gay movement was to repeal or neutralise those sections of the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act and the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act which criminalised sexual relationship and any physical intimacy between men.”24 In 1983, Norris appealed this law reform to the High Court and the Supreme Court. Albeit the Republic of Ireland experienced more sweeping social changes in the 1980s, such as greater urbanisation and industrialisation, and most notably the entrance into the European Community in 1973, Norris’s two appeals were still rejected. They were rejected on the grounds of the “Christian nature of the State, the immorality of homosexuality, the damages that such practises cause to the health of citizens and the potential harm to the institution of marriage.”25 The final decision was not surprising, however the reasons given were quite shocking and demonstrated how much of an influence the Catholic Church still had on the country, despite the decline of that influence over the years. Although the appeals were rejected, Norris received a great amount of support from his peers and the Irish public. Due to Ireland’s new place in the European Community, Norris was also able to bring Ireland’s anti-gay laws to the European Court of Human Rights, and on 26 October 1988, it “found Ireland’s legal prohibition of male homosexual acts to be in breach of Article 8 of the Convention of Human Rights.”26

The Irish Gay Rights Movement began to win the support of many members of the public throughout the 1980s. Irish historian Diarmaid Ferriter, in Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society In Modern Ireland (2010), describes how, in the 1980s, “the Irish Gay Rights Movement became an impressive lobbying group and its attention to detail was exceptional, as was its resilience.”27 Ireland seemed to be on a new path to a more accepting society, despite how slow changes were being made. Dunphy (1997)

24 Ibid, p. 34. 25 Ibid, p. 36. 26 Dunphy, op. cit., p 247. 27 Ferriter, Diarmaid, Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland, London, Profile Books, 2010, p. 520. 13 states “the idea that these changes stem from positive traditional Irish values arising from the anti-colonial struggle reinvigorated and amplified by the new social, cultural and economic influences of the 1960s onwards.”28 This is an interesting observation, because ‘traditional Irish values’ to many brings to mind the values of a conservative, Catholic country. English professor and writer Kathryn Conrad in her article Queer Treasons: Homosexuality and Irish National Identity (2001), argues that the positive changes in gay rights in Ireland are less because of ‘traditional Irish values’ embodied by nationalism and more because “the Irish state has opened its doors to both European Community’s laws and its economic opportunities.”29 European countries such as Denmark, Netherlands and Sweden had same-sex civil partnerships since 1986, 1979 and 1988, respectively, and the European Community gave Irish businesses access to new markets of millions of people and created thousands of jobs.

In 1988 gay activists began a campaign for legal reform, which was led by GLEN (Gay and Lesbian Equality Network). The campaign pushed for an equal age of consent of 17 between heterosexuals and homosexuals. There was a fear that the Irish government would implement a law similar to Britain’s 1967 ‘reform’, which allowed sexual relations between men but only if they were both over 21 and if it occurred in a private place. This law backfired on gay men in Britain, as ‘in private’ was “so narrowly defined that a house in which a third person was present was excluded,”30 and it resulted in more men being convicted. The Irish gay movement made sure that it would not push an early law reform, but “to build up a consensus that an equality-based law reform was the only option.”31 The word equality is certainly not an unfamiliar one with regards to gay law reform in Ireland, and it brings to mind the 2015 Yes Equality campaign before the Marriage Act was written into law (fig. 8).32 Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, GLEN succeeded in getting discussions about gay and lesbian issues into newspapers, such as the Irish Times, and on the radio and television, such as the debate on the Late Late Show.

28 Rose, op. cit., p. 3. 29 Kathryn Conrad, Queer Treasons: Homosexuality and Irish National Identity, Cultural Studies, 15:1, 2001, p. 134. 30 Rose, op. cit., p. 40. 31 Ibid, p. 41. 32 The Marriage Act 2015 is an act of the Irish Oireachtas which allows same-sex marriage. The Yes Equality campaign before the referendum was held in May focused not on the idea of gay marriage — but on the idea of marriage equality. 14 GLEN stressed on four major themes, that were repeated continuously throughout their campaign: —that the Irish were a ‘naturally’ tolerant and fair people and that the acceptance of gay law reform was entirely compatible with a nationalist agenda; —that Ireland should look not to Britain, but beyond Britain to its new European partners; —that the Government and the political elite were committed to equality, social progress and justice; —that lesbians and gay men were members of families, that discrimination was an affront to their families as well as themselves.33

Fig. 8 - Yes Equality social media banner, 2015.

33 Dunphy, op. cit., p. 256. 15 1.3 Law Reform

The quality of GLEN’s discourses and tactics, which were reflected in the arguments put forward during the Dáil debates in June 1993, were praised by deputies and ministers.34 Despite Norris’s success with the European Court in 1988, the Irish Government did not prioritise a debate on gay law reform at the end of the 1980s and the then Taoiseach Charles Haughey took no action. However, faith was restored in the possibility of it happening when “the Government accepted amendments that homosexuals and Travellers should be given protection under the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Bill”35 in November 1989. Norris pressed for a debate on the European Court judgement in the Senate, which did not happen until December 1990. President Mary Robinson represented Norris as his lawyer during the 1988 European Court ruling, so this debate no doubt was only allowed afer the election of Robinson as President of Ireland in November of 1990. Afer close to 20 years of campaigning for gay law reform, Senator Norris finally got to address the Irish parliament with his proposals for decriminalising homosexuality and an equal age of consent between homo and heterosexuals. Rose makes the point that, around this time, “Ireland had been remarkable in its ability to continually talk around sexuality in relation to contraception, abortion, homosexuality, sex education and divorce, while at the same time rarely talking about sexuality directly.”36 The time had come for Ireland to stop treating sexuality as if it were something dangerous, and to face the reality of it.

The Minister for Justice in 1990, Mr Ray Burke, promised that a gay law reform Bill would be introduced within the next year. However, there were many delays over the next 2 years, most notably due to the referendum on abortion, which was defeated in 1992 and preparations for the divorce referendum in 1995. In November 1991 GLEN filed a complaint about the delays to the Council of Europe, but they fell on deaf ears. By the end of 1992 Taoiseach Albert Reynolds stated that he was not prioritising gay law reform. Reynolds however faced a serious setback when a new coalition government was formed between Fianna Fáil and Labour. Dick Spring and the Labour party were set on implementing law reform almost immediately, and they put pressure on Reynolds to start prioritising gay law reform. Máire

34 Rose, op. cit., p. 43 35 Ibid p. 42. 36 Ibid, p. 43. 16 Geoghegan-Quinn, the Minister for Justice in 1993, was enthusiastic make law reform a reality and the family message that GLEN adopted in their campaign tactics was “explicitly taken up”37 by her in her proposal to the Dáil. On 23 June 1993 the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Bill was proposed to the Dáil, which allowed homosexuals the same laws regarding sexual relations as heterosexuals. It would be a few years before all anti-discrimination laws were fully implemented, but decriminalisation showed that Ireland faced up to the fear of sexuality and was willing to see positive change happen. It was a burden lifed from the shoulders of gay people all around Ireland, who could now openly express their sexuality without the fear of criminality. In the annual Gay Pride Parade the next week, the queers of Ireland shouted ‘We’re here, we’re queer, we’re legal’!38

37 Dunphy, op. cit., p. 257. 38 Rose, op. cit., p. 50. 17 Chapter 2: Meaning and Expression of Sexuality

18 2.1 Queer Culture

The word queer is being used here has an umbrella term to describe a member of the LGBT community. Many members of the LGBT community are still reluctant to use the word, as it was used as an insult or slur word throughout the 20th century “to express hatred, anger and prejudice”39 towards homosexual people. Queer theorist and academic Richard Dyer, in his book The Culture of the Queers (2002), describes how “the notion of queer always had an awareness of negativity, had always to bear the weight of it.”40 Despite the many negative connotations the word queer has been given over the years, the word has been reclaimed in recent years by the LGBT community to use as a fitting term to describe somebody’s gender or sexual identity. It originated during the AIDS epidemic in the USA during the 1980s when it was used on protest signs. Dyer describes how the negativity of the word is always being “resisted, contested, evaded or flouted.”41 Academic writer on queer theory Lee Edelman states that queer is “a zone of possibilities.”42 Being queer is not a bad thing, it just means being different, and the elasticity of it’s definition is one of its essential features. By the 1990s the word queer had been radically reclaimed by the LGBT community, most notably in the incredibly powerful pamphlet entitled Queers Read This, that was distributed at the New York pride march in 1990.43 In it, queers state how the term ‘gay’ is not a strong enough word to describe their identity:

When a lot of lesbians and gay men wake up in the morning we feel angry and disgusted, not gay. So we’ve chosen to call ourselves queer… Using ‘queer’ is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world… Queer, unlike GAY, doesn’t mean MALE.44

Queer is now used positively in many parts of society and culture. For example, the British television series from 1999 entitled Queer as Folk, the annual LGBT film festival in Ireland called Queer Notions, and the LGBT society in our college is called

39 Hall, Jake, Tracing the history of the word ‘queer’, Dazed magazine, 28 July 2016. 40 Dyer, Richard, The Culture of Queers, London, Routledge, 2002, p. 8. 41 Ibid., p. 8. 42 Jagose, Annamarie, Queer Theory: An Introduction, New York, New York University Press, 1996, p 2. 43 Queers Read This was distributed anonymously by queers in New York, possibly by members of the activist group Queer Nation. It is an empowering piece of writing, that highlights discrimination and the lives lost to the AIDS virus, but also expresses anger and hatred towards straight people. 44 Anonymous, Queers Read This, Queer Nation, New York, 1990. 19 the QSA (Queer-Straight Alliance). Life coach and writer Fiona Buckland, in her book Impossible Dance: Club Culture and Queer World-Making (2002), describes how, at the end of the 20th century, the word queer was “reappropriated from a stigmatised interpellation to a badge of pride, and put to good use.”45 Many queers now find it a very empowering and fitting word to describe their identity. In some cases, this may not even be sexual identity, as being queer in many ways is just being something ‘other’ than normal. Emma Haugh, an artist and activist from Dublin, describes how she views the word queer in her zine entitled People I’ve fucking danced with in gay bars (2013). She suggests:

I know people who don’t sleep with people of the same sex but I still think they’re queer because of their outlook on life, how they live, they’re trying to find their own way to live, and it ofen ends up outside the norms of what’s expected. And I think for me that’s queer, people who are authentic in how they live and how they love.46

Personally, as a member of the queer community, being queer has always meant sleeping with people of the same sex. By doing that you are already living outside of the standardised expectations of society. Dyer describes how “being queer meant being homosexual, but also being different.”47 Being queer means loving whoever you want, living your own fullest version of life, being sensitive and aware of the arts, of culture and of self expression. A strong link is made here between the creative arts and queer identity. It is through the creative arts that queers can express their identity and it is within culture where you are allowed to be queer. Culture, whether it be music, drama, television or fashion “shapes our identity, tells us about the world, gives us a certain set of values and entertains us.”48 With queer culture, as with all culture, there is no exact starting point of its construction. And in saying that, queer culture within different countries can be very different. For example, queer culture in New York differs hugely from queer culture within Dublin. Mainly because of the population difference, Brooklyn alone has a population 5 times bigger than Dublin, but also issues such as race and ethnicity don’t play all a big part in queer culture in Dublin. Dyer states, in reference to Britain, that “the notion of queers has tended to be associated with elite and white men.”49 However,

45 Buckland, Fiona. Impossible Dance: Club Culture and Queer World-Making. New York, Wesleyan, 2002, p. 33. 46 Haugh, Emmah, People I’ve fucking danced with at gay bars, DBYHR’s Queer Liberation and Class Struggle program, Vilnius, 2013. 47 Dyer, op. cit., p. 19. 48 Ibid, p. 15. 49 Ibid, p. 6. 20 the ‘voguing’ scene was and still is one of the strongest expressions of queer and gay identity of our time, and is a huge part of queer culture in New York. Voguing is an expressive dance that originated in the 1980s in Harlem, New York, and combines house/ballroom subcultures with drag shows. It was mainly black and latino gay males that participated in this dance and it drew many influences from different visual movements in African and East Asian art. In the documentary Paris Is Burning (1991), it describes voguing: “like breakdancing, the dance takes from the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt. It also takes from some forms of gymnastics.”50 This drag ballroom scene became hugely popular in the 1980s and 1990s and “at the height of popular fascination with gay culture, literally thousands attended the city's drag balls to gawk at the drag queens,”51 asserts history professor George Chauncey in his book on gay male culture Gay New York (1994). This culture would have been a big part of the LGBT social scene in New York at the end of the 20th century, and therefore a big part of queer culture in general.

Ireland has no comparisons to the scale of this drag ballroom scene. However, Tonie Walsh, Irish gay activist, DJ and club producer, states that the gay clubbing scene in Ireland was inspired by the scene in New York. In an interview with him, he described that when gay clubs started emerging in the early 1990s in Ireland, “it was at a time when immigrants returned, people who were seasoned travellers and had been exposed to things like the drag scene and the swinger circle in New York.”52 Dyer, states that “queer cultural production — like queers — can only exist in the society and culture in which it finds itself. Queer culture had to occur in the institutional spaces available and certain spaces were more propitious than others for queer cultural production.”53 Spaces became available to queers in Ireland throughout the 1990s afer decriminalisation, but before the 1990s, and especially the 1980s, these institutional spaces would have been virtually non-existent. For most of the 1980s the only space available for queers to embrace and produce culture was the Hirschfeld Centre.

50 Paris Is Burning. Dir. Jennie Livingston. Perf. Pepper LaBeija, Paris Dupree, Willi Ninja, Dorian Corey. Miramax. 1990. DVD. 51 Chauncey, George. Gay New York. New York, Basic Books, 1994. p. 4. 52 Interview with Tonie Walsh, Emer Brennan, IFI, 3 October 2017. 53 Dyer, op. cit., p. 9. 21 2.2 Creation of Space

The Hirschfeld Centre was named afer the German Sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld54 and was leased for the formation of the National Gay Federation in 1979. It became the hub for all aspects of the LGBT community in the 1980s. It was “a place of resistance against anti-gay legislation”55 and it became the first place where gay discos were openly held and advertised for in Dublin (fig. 9). Flikkers (fig. 2) was one of the first queer clubs in Ireland and really made an impact and imprint on the social clubbing scene in general in Dublin. It was a place where queer people could socialise, meet, dance and let loose. Buckland, in reference to New York clubs, describes how “social improvised dancing — at least in queer clubs — is so vital to the cultural life of individuals, groups, and lifeworlds, and to how they make meaning and value.”56 This applies to the Irish social scene too. Opening a gay club in 1979 in Dublin, or indeed any time in Dublin, is not just about giving people a place to dance or to get drunk. It is about actually creating a community and socialising. Clubs socialise people, they bring people together and they build communities. They are the building blocks to a better society, both gay and hetero.

Fig. 9 - Hirschfeld Centre Disco flyer, 1979.

54 http://nxf.ie/our-history/, Accessed 12 November, 2017. 55 Tarpey, Paul, ed. Jim Carroll, Notes on an Irish disco landscape, The Irish Times, September 16, 2008. 56 Buckland, op. cit., p. 31. 22 Within queer culture another culture started to emerge in the 1980s, and that was disco or clubbing culture. This culture, above all things, brought people together and became a big part of queer expression. It is important to note the forbidden nature of gay club culture in the 1980s. The first gay clubs in Ireland were underground, both physically and metaphorically. It was a criminal offence for two men to display any form of intimacy in a public or private place. The existence of this law, although not directly effecting lesbian women, impacted on all gay people in Ireland. Many people were reluctant to come out and express their identity. However, it fuelled some people to encourage others to come out of the shadows. Buckland expresses how:

in gay, lesbian or queer clubs, I noticed that the energy I shared burned bright from the fuel of knowing that this play was worked for against a tough opposition and was achieved not only historically but night afer night in clubs up and down the country in spite of the lack of social consensus about homosexuality.57

Fig. 10 - Phoenix Club Disco flyer, 1979. Fig. 11 - Tel-a-Friend advert, 1980.

57 Ibid, p 30. 23 In an interview in the October 2017 issue of GCN (Gay Community News) magazine, Sweeney, the designer behind most of the LGBT club flyer production of the 1990s and 2000s in Dublin, expresses how, before 1993, “being gay was in itself a political act by default.”58 To express your sexuality and to be openly gay before decriminalisation was in itself an act of rebellion. Any public display of affection between two men came with a risk of prosecution, so the opening of the Hirschfeld Centre in 1979 was a hugely significant landmark for the LGBT community in Ireland, and Ferriter describes how it “provided a haven”59 for gay people at the time. The Hirschfeld Centre was the first openly gay and lesbian venue in Ireland, and it acted not only as a night-club but also as a community centre, where it housed youth group meetings and film clubs. It was the first gay social space that advertised itself as such, but it was not the first place that gay people went to meet one another. As referenced earlier, Bobby Rice’s in Stephen’s Green and Bartley’s Dunnes on Stephen Street were two gay-friendly pubs that emerged as early as the 1960s.60 Stephen’s Green was a well known gay cruising area at this time, and the pubs provided a space where, mostly gay men, could quietly have a drink and spot other gay people doing the same. However, one of the pub owners expressed in the Irish Independent in 1975, “we would prefer that they did not come in. But they are a minority. This is a public house and people have certain rights.”61 The Hirschfeld Centre made it its duty to provide an openly safe space where people could be comfortable in expressing their sexuality.

The flyers from the discos held in the Hirschfeld Centre (fig. 9) and other gay discos nearby show the crossover of the social and the political aspects of being gay at the time. All of the flyers were created and funded by the National Gay Federation, an inherently political group that focused on LGBT rights. The disco held in the Phoenix Club in 1980 (fig. 10) was even run by the Irish Gay Rights Movement. The NGF provided a Tel-a-Friend service throughout the 1970s and 1980s, which was a telephone counselling service for LGBT people. The flyers advertising this service (fig. 11) are visually almost identical to the flyers for discos, and even the disco flyers in the Hirschfeld Centre advertised the Tel-a-Friend service on them to the public (fig. 9). The crossover of these two services (counselling and discos) wouldn’t be

58 Brian Finnegan talks to Rory O’Neill + Niall Sweeney, GCN magazine, Issue 334, October 2017. 59 Ferriter, op. cit., p. 524. 60 https://comeheretome.com/2013/10/06/rices-bartley-dunnes-dublins-first-gay-friendly-bars. Accessed 5 December, 2017. 61 Ibid. 24 seen on a nightclub flyer nowadays, but this is no doubt due to the advancements in technology and platforms we have to create printed material, and of course the positive changes in society. The design of flyers would have been very restricted in the 1970s and 1980s before digital technology was used, so the space on the page had to be used wisely and made the most out of. However, the main reason for the political tone of these flyers is simply due to the fact that they are a representation of the time. Once the NGF and Hirschfeld Centre were established in 1979, there became a focus on providing social events for LGBT people alongside the political events. The social and political functions of the centre were constantly “pulling against each other”,62 but ultimately more focus was put on the social side.

Although still produced by the NGF, which was a political group, and you had to buy membership to the NGF to get into the venue, Flikkers disco (fig. 2) became the first disco to put an emphasis specifically on queer clubbing in Dublin. Even the name Flikkers (which is a slang word for ‘faggot’ in Dutch) was a statement in itself. Flikkers was the start of the new identity of queer clubbing in Ireland and Walsh describes how there was a huge pink triangle behind the DJ decks, which is the international symbol for gay pride, and there was a version of the Flikkers logo on the dance floor.63 Flikkers also used the pink triangle motif in their posters (fig. 12). In a talk with the Science Gallery in Dublin, Sweeney describes how the pink triangle is queer people's “weapon of choice.”64 Due to licensing laws in the 1980s, alcohol was very limited in Flikkers and it was only possible to get warm bottles of Ritz cider or overpriced bottles of wine, which had to be purchased with a meal. It was the good music and the nature of a gay venue that brought people back, and there would be an attendance of a few hundred people on the busy Saturday nights.65 Nolan realised that there was a market in Dublin for a new club; for a place where people could go to dance and to express themselves without the fear of being judged. Sides Dance Club was set up in 1986 and the DJs from Flikkers, including Tonie Walsh and Paul Webb, brought their music from Temple Bar across to the new experimental venue on Dame Street. It was an alternative dance club, for both gay and straight people, but housed specifically gay nights a few times a week. Sides, just like Flikkers, was to change to the Dublin nightclubbing scene, and was making huge contributions to normalising society’s views of LGBT people.

62 Ferriter, op. cit., p. 492-493. 63 Interview with Tonie Walsh, Emer Brennan, IFI, 3 October, 2017. 64 Niall Sweeney, Rory O’Neill, First Up talk, Science Gallery Dublin, 15 April 2015. 65 Ibid. 25 2.3 Evolution of Queer Expression

Afer the opening of Sides, there was an obvious queer imprint made on the Dublin clubbing scene. As popularity grew for Flikkers and for the events on in Sides, the flyers became much more ‘out there’. With the height of GLEN’s campaigning for law reform at the end of the 1980s, more gay people were coming out of the shadows and were making themselves known to the public. Nightclubs started doing themed nights to give more diversity to their clientele, such as the Leather & Denim Night in Flikkers in 1986. The flyer for this event (fig. 13) differs hugely to the flyers for Flikkers just 5 years previous.

Fig. 12 - Flikkers Disco flyer, 1986. Fig. 13 - Flikkers Disco flyer, 1985.

There is no mention of politics in the flyer, and it is one of the first times that we see the promotion for a very specific part of queer culture or expression: the leather subculture. In Larry Townsend’s publication A Leatherman’s Handbook (1972), the codes of conduct for the leather subculture were illustrated for the first time in print. The book would have been quite shocking to the public when it was published, similarly to the Flikkers flyer (fig. 13), but it is importantly publicising an aspect of gay life that many members of the public choose to ignore. Similarly, the 26 flyer for The Grotto (fig. 14) would have been quite shocking for somebody to see in 1989. Even by today’s standards, the image is a defiant statement. Instead of hiding the notion of homosexuality, like many had done in the past, the flyers are embracing sex and homosexuality. The Grotto was a specifically gay night held once a week in Sides Dance Club. The flyer is risqué and fearless and it was produced at a time when sexual relations were illegal between men. So it is an incredibly bold move to use a visual of two men engaging in sexuality activity. Producing and running a night like The Grotto was a huge risk, as it could have been shut down by the Gardaí at any time, and distributing or even owning the flyer was in itself a risk, because you were associating yourself with the criminality of homosexuality. It is evident that the expression of queer identity had evolved since the 1970s; flyers were becoming less political in the 1980s and were more focused on the actual social aspect of clubbing as the reality of law reform was getting closer. Walsh describes how Sides “hit new heights in terms of its visual identity, the art installations that went into the place and the live music.”66 Sweeney did most of the visual identity for the club afer 1987, when he would have still been in college in Dun Laoghaire College of Art. There were a string of talented people, such as Rory O’Neill and Eamonn Doyle (who would be the founder of D1 Records in 1994) in this college at the end of the 1980s, and they were enthusiastic about using their talent and creativity towards building up the social scene for LGBT people in Dublin.

Fig. 14 - The Grotto flyer, 1989. Fig. 15 - Sides Dance Club flyer, 1991.

66 Interview with Tonie Walsh, Emer Brennan, IFI, 3 October 2017. 27 Sides was to host the first Alternative Miss Ireland (AMI) competition in 1987 (fig. 16), which was run by Sweeney and creative director Frank Stanley, amongst others, and impacted hugely on the visibility of gay clubs in Ireland. AMI was a beauty pageant for people of all tastes, genders and sexualities and the winner held the title of the Queen of Ireland. The event was inspired by British performance artist Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World, which started in 1972. AMI ran until 2012 (fig. 17) and during its lifespan raised over €350,000 for Irish HIV/AIDS programmes. In an interview with Sweeney, he describes how:

The breadth and depth of its warm embrace, and its utter nuts-ness, was a triumph. We always say that we are firm believers in the social, political, cultural and transformational power of dressing up and having fun. AMI for me transgressed all scenes, all desires. It may have been called Gay Christmas, but it was, and still is, one of the only things that ever happened that was truly for anyone.67

AMI’s last show was in the sold out Olympia Theatre, a venue that plays host to well known international events and artists. What once started as a small event with big ideas in an underground nightclub in Dublin in 1987, became a huge nationally recognised and praised event by the 2000s. Sides was the place where lifelong friendships were made and it opened up a huge number of possibilities for queer culture and gay visibility, as well as for dance and club culture in general.

Fig. 16 - First AMI poster, 1987. Fig. 17 - Last AMI poster, 2012.

67 Interview with Niall Sweeney, Emer Brennan, 9 January 2018. 28 Another impact on the visibility of gay clubs in Dublin were influences coming from British popular culture, particularly music. This included popular bands from the 1980s, such as Sof Cell and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, who had, what the Guardian called, “two self-styled ferocious homosexuals”68 up front. These bands had chart- topping songs and were fore-fronted by gay men. Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s song ‘Relax’ was banned by the BBC due to its homoerotic and suggestive content and lyrics, but the ban was later lifed due to the success of the song. Sides was just as unapologetically gay as these controversial bands were, which is evident in the flyer for The Grotto (fig. 14). In other flyers for Sides from 1991, the visuals aren’t as explicit but there are definitely still underlying sexual references there. The name Climax (fig. 3) is no doubt made with sexual connotations, and the Banana Party flyer (Fig. 15) features a hilarious banana or phallic shaped visual. In a very general, stereotypical sense, gay people (nowadays) are known to be fun and sassy, and they love to party. There is something very specifically ‘gay’ about the flyers; the tone is full of humour and the references are funny, smart and daring. Sweeney plays on the humour between words and visuals in his work, something that is particularly evident in his designs for GAG (fig. 4, 18, 19) and Powderbubble (fig. 20) in 1996. In an interview on Irish design archive website the 100 Archive, Sweeney describes the importance of humour in design: “Humour conflates facts and fictions; compacts histories; triggers numinous objects in the mind's eye. There is humour in everything. I am a firm believer in the social and political power of dressing up and having fun — which is what much of design is, really.” Sides was a place where people could dress up and have fun from as early as 1986, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that people could really begin to express themselves and their sexuality openly in nightclubs.

Before decriminalisation, gay events were still fun and raunchy, as were their flyers. It wasn’t until afer decriminalisation in 1993 that there was, what Walsh calls, “an explosion in services and facilities”69 for LGBT people in Ireland. Once you removed the aura of criminality around homosexuality, people were much more willing to, for example, advertise gay events in media, or to provide services aimed at the gay community. Once decriminalisation happened, it was like Irish society had been given a licence to start engaging with its sexual minorities, and to actually address the fears and anxieties of the lesbian and gay community. For the first time, LGBT

68 Lester, Paul, Frankie Goes To Hollywood: ‘No one could touch us – people were scared’, The Guardian, 28 August 2014. Accessed online 1 February 2018. 69 Interview with Tonie Walsh, Emer Brennan, IFI, 3 October 2017. 29 people were recognised as consumers. Gilbert Bakely, who designed the Pride flag, made a point that it’s better to be valued as a consumer then to not be valued at all, or to be invisible to the corporate sector.70 Even if you are just one consumer amongst millions, it is the beginning of a relationship that can be developed or manipulated, depending on who’s in charge. Afer decriminalisation, cafes began to tout their businesses at the LGBT community and there was an explosion in social services. In conjunction with this, the 1990s saw the boom in rave and club culture, and more nightclubs began to open. Walsh founded the Horny Organ Tribe in the summer of 1993, which was a collective of performers, DJs and producers. The nightclub ran in the Ormond Multimedia Centre on Sundays and was home to nights including Elevator and Strictly Fish, which played dance and house music and attracted a crowd of sexually diverse individuals. Licensing laws had been liberated a little bit, so from 1991 there was beer available in clubs. In 1993 the ‘super clubs’ began to open, which were clubs that were built as clubs — such as the Kitchen in the Clarence Hotel and PoD nightclub. Sweeney describes how in the week afer decriminalisation:

the 1990s was amazing… we’d be sitting on the couch with Panti being bored, and think “let’s open a club”, and two weeks later, we had. Venues were up for anything really, and we had the energy and the ideas, and the crowd. And we were about something greater than just “a gay night.” 71

The most influential group on the LGBT social scene at this time was Ham Productions, mentioned earlier. They were a talented group of artists, designer, performers and DJs that had the ideas and the drive to create new and exciting club nights in Dublin. Sweeney, in an interview with GCN magazine, expresses how “we realised that if we did something that was outrageous and beyond the boundary, that it freed everyone else.”72 These outrageous somethings came in the form of GAG (fig. 18, 19), Powderbubble (fig. 20) and H.A.M. (fig. 21), and they were so much more than just “a gay night.” They were places that invited, and actually encouraged, people to express themselves and their sexual identity in whichever way they wanted to. Sweeney’s visual identity and design for all of these clubs was bold and humorous and expressed sexuality and queerness in ways that had never been seen before, in regards to technicality, content and style.

70 Ibid. 71 Interview with Niall Sweeney, Emer Brennan, 9 January 2018. 72 Brian Finnegan talks to Rory O’Neill + Niall Sweeney, GCN magazine, Issue 334, October 2017. 30 Fig. 18 - GAG nightclub flyers, 1996. Fig. 19 - GAG nightclub flyer, 1996.

Fig. 20 - Powderbubble nightclub flyer, 1996.

Fig. 21 - H.A.M. nightclub flyer, 1998.

31 Chapter 3: Graphic Design and Club Promotion

32 3.1 LGBT Graphic Design

As mentioned in the Introduction, Sweeney was the leading figure behind the crossover between Irish graphic design and the LGBT community in the 1980s through to the 2000s. It’s important to note here that his work is not categorised as “gay design work” on the one hand, and “normal design work” on the other. He states that “working with Panti for the past 30 years hasn’t been about a scene, it’s been about doing the best work together.”73 Ham Productions was set up in 1994, and a time when “everything seemed to happen”74, according to Sweeney. O’Neill recalls how, in the mid 1990s, “people had money for the first time and the city was changing. There were lots of empty spaces around and we’d all been away and been to clubs, and we wanted to do things.”75 The city was full of empty spaces and clubs that nobody was going to, so while the owners were waiting for developers to buy their property, they were more willing to let anything happen in their clubs. The club identity for Ham Productions was designed by Sweeney, who had also been designing for O’Neill’s drag queen/alter ego Panti Bliss while he spent the early 1990s in Tokyo. Sweeney was inspired by the constant visual material available in Japan and how the Japanese believed that “everything had a spirit.”76 Although a trip to Tokyo impacted Sweeney’s work, he was a firm believer in designing for the place that he was in, being present in that place and not wishing it were somewhere else. Dublin, unlike Tokyo, didn’t have a design or even visual history in the 1990s, and still to this day the resources are thin. So Ham Productions took it into their own hands to create new visual material; material that now rightfully makes its stamp on Ireland’s design history. In an interview Sweeney discusses designing for the queer clubbing scene afer 1993:

The designs, well, we just went for it. What’s the best we can do? What would be beautiful, exciting, erotic, like nothing seen before? It was all energetic experiment and just the sheer joy and fun of doing these things. We made great stuff for people to enjoy, for us to enjoy with them — shared pleasure is a transformational thing.77

73 Interview with Niall Sweeney, Emer Brennan, 9 January 2018. 74 Brian Finnegan talks to Rory O’Neill + Niall Sweeney, GCN magazine, Issue 334, October 2017. 75 Ibid. 76 Niall Sweeney, Rory O’Neill, First Up talk, Science Gallery Dublin, 15 April 2015. 77 Interview with Niall Sweeney, Emer Brennan, 9 January 2018. 33 Sweeney absolutely achieved something beautiful, exciting, erotic and never been seen before in the flyers for GAG, Powderbubble and H.A.M.. GAG was a fetish club for both gay and hetero people, and anybody else that fell between. Walsh describes how in Ireland in 1995 “the fetish scene was too earnest for its own good. We wanted to puncture some of the earnestness of the fetish scene, so it had to be something really playful and fun and silly.”78 The playfulness and silliness is definitely evident in the flyers for GAG (title image, fig. 4, 18, 19). As mentioned before, Sweeney plays on the humour between visuals and words in his work. In figure 18, GAG is described as a “fetish circus for dicks, clits and others”. Witty and sparky words such as “dicks” and “clits” are used instead of simply saying men and women, and the word “other” suggests that absolutely anybody and anything is welcome at GAG, no matter their gender or sexual orientation. Semiotician Roland Barthes describes in his essay Rhetoric of the Image that “in advertising the signification of the image is undoubtedly intentional,”79 meaning that there is always a thought-out and well considered message in the visuals or image. The visual of the high heel is simple and elegant and brings to mind something that a drag queen, or even a pole dancer, would wear. These two personalities — a drag queen and a pole dancer — are seen as sexy and ostentatious and are designed to impress people or induce desire. GAG was all about desire, whether it be sexual desire, the desire to express yourself or the transformative power of dressing up. Writer and film-maker Paul Mason describes in Fly: The Art of the Club Flyer (1996) how a flyer “does not just communicate information, but a style, a feeling of what the club is about and give an idea of the experience to follow.”80 The text in figure 19, “Lick slowly, absorb every flavour and swallow it. He’ll penetrate you red-hot”, is a short yet detailed account of a sexual experience either between two men or a man and a woman. This flyer gives an idea of the experience that is to follow at GAG — it is unapologetically a club about sex.

GAG was thrown out of its first two venues, Tivoli Theatre in Dublin 8 and the Ormond Multimedia Centre, for the inappropriate nature of the club. It finally settled in a place on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, and the Sunday People tabloid ran a profile on the club with the headline “Dublin Sex Orgy Sensation”. GAG closed on its first birthday and finished with a night called ‘Cake Hole and Candle Wax’ (fig. 21). By the end of 1996 Walsh describes how GAG “had gone as far as it could go…

78 Interview with Tonie Walsh, Emer Brennan, IFI, 3 October 2017. 79 Mirzoeff, Nicolas, The Visual Culture Reader, London, Routledge, 1998, p. 135. 80 Ackland-Snow, Nicola; Brett, Nathan; Williams, Steven, Fly: The Art of the Club Flyer, London, Thames and Hudson, 1996, p 11. 34 anything we could have done with GAG from then on would have just been more GAG.”81 The flyer for this event (fig. 22) was just as humorous and cheeky as all others for GAG and features a woman urinating on a man in fetish gear. If we look at the image further, just as Barthes would, it could be said that the colour pink is a signifier, and it signifies power in femininity and sexuality. In the book Girl Culture: An Encyclopaedia (2007), women’s studies professor Jacqueline Reid-Walsh describes how the colour pink has been “adopted to convey pride in the lesbian/gay/bisexual/ transgendered communities: the pink triangle signifies gay identification and terms such as the “pink economy” and “pink dollar” refer to economic activity in the gay community.”82 The colour pink is also used in the first Alternative Miss Ireland poster from 1987 (fig. 16) and the Leather & Denim Night at Flikkers in 1985 (fig. 13), which is the first use of colour in nightclub flyers, and is no doubt intentional.

Fig. 22 - GAG nightclub flyer, 1996.

Fig. 23 - Powderbubble nightclub flyer, 1997.

81 Interview with Tonie Walsh, Emer Brennan, IFI, 3 October 2017. 82 Mitchell, Claudia, Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline, Girl Culture: An Encyclopaedia, Greenwood Publishing Group, Connecticut, 2007, p. 473. 35 Ham Productions had certainly made their mark on the Dublin fetish, clubbing and queer scene by running GAG. They had an audience and they had ideas, so they moved onto producing Powderbubble (fig. 20, 23) in PoD (Place of Dance) at the end of 1996. Walsh describes how Powderbubble was “GAG without the sex, but just as much playfulness, infinitely more playfulness, and a little bit of seediness, and of course just amped up with a different budget and more players.”83 The flyer for Powderbubble (fig. 20) once again is full of humour, and has a visual of Panti straddling and holding onto a rocket, or phallic shaped object, that is protruding from the end of a heart shape. The hearts signify a collective feeling of love and acceptance, and the rocket symbolises the theme of future that is consistent throughout all the Powderbubble flyers. The Powderbubble flyer from 1997 (fig. 23) has the phrase “1000 Future Genders” at the top, again showing that Ham Productions are looking towards the future, and also focusing on the theme of gender, how gender is a spectrum and not something fixed (as there can be 1000s of them!). Ham Productions had brought queers out of the shadows and transformed queer clubbing from something underground to something unapologetically in- your-face by the mid 1990s. The flyers for H.A.M. (fig. 21, fig. 24), which ran from 1997 through to 2005 in PoD nightclub on Harcourt Street, are daring and ballsy. The term ‘Butcher Queers’ meant ‘stronger queers’, and is a play on the gay stereotype ‘butch’. Sweeney uses a strong black colour for the background in figure 21 and for the text in figure 24. The black colour contrasts well with other colours and makes the white text in figure 21 stand out. The bold, striking visuals are a representation of the vibe and mood of the club, and the flyers offers a feeling of what H.A.M. was going to be like.

Fig. 24 - H.A.M. nightclub flyer, 1997.

83 Interview with Tonie Walsh, Emer Brennan, IFI, 3 October 2017. 36 3.2 Audience and Distribution

Flyers were a quick form of dispersing information in the 1990s, before the internet became widely available to everyone in Ireland. They were the “the fastest print medium available, as they can ‘fly’ directly into the target group”84, according to Flyer Mania (1998), the book by German publishers and creative agency Die Gestalten. In an interview with Dazed magazine, the British publication that covers fashion, art, music and film, Walsh describes how the flyers were distributed in “hip cafés, clothes shops, music stores and the like.”85 Independent retailer Makullas on Suffolk Street, which Sweeney describes as “part club, part clothes store, part gallery, part design aesthetic and music scene”86, was a focal point for creatives and clubbers and had a whole table dedicated to club flyers in the mid 1990s. In an interview, Sweeney explains how distributing the flyers was fun and how it “used to be great swanning through a pub with flyers, people getting excited, even if the event was still two weeks away, because of the flyer they were already there!”87 When handing out flyers to passerby, promoters had to guess the sexuality of individuals and, particularly before 1993, they would have had to be careful as many people would have had very reserved views about gay clubbing. Although, there are certain ‘gay hanky codes’88 to look out for, which would help to signify if somebody would be interested in a night like H.A.M., Walsh explains how “concessions and teasers were usually given out by hand, on the street to interesting individuals, or in bars.”89 The flyers would have been lef in bars especially around the George’s Street area in Dublin, such as The Globe, Hogans and (of course) The George, which is one of Ireland’s oldest gay bars and is still incredibly popular today. GAG, Powderbubble and H.A.M. wouldn’t have been promoted in your everyday newspaper or magazine, but magazines like GCN and In Dublin featured the advertisements, and would have also featured ads for the Hirschfeld Centre during the 1980s. The posters for Alternative Miss Ireland, all designed by Sweeney, have been in design magazines and books and have been exhibited and published around the world.

84 Die Gestalten, Flyermania, Die Gestalten, Berlin, Ullstein Fun Factory, 1998, p 5. 85 Taylor, Trey, ‘The raunchy hilarity of Ireland’s queer club flyers’, Dazed, October 2016. Web. Accessed 10 July 2017. 86 https://nationaltreasures.ie/submissions/JE9QA4. Accessed 7 February 2018. 87 Interview with Niall Sweeney, Emer Brennan, 9 January 2018. 88 ‘Gay hanky code’ is the act of wearing a hanky a certain way to express one’s sexual preferences and interests to other gay men. 89 Taylor, Trey, ‘The raunchy hilarity of Ireland’s queer club flyers’, Dazed, October 2016. Web. Accessed 10 July 2017. 37 Musician Paul Cleary states in Fly: The Art of the Club Flyer (1996) that “a flyer should be an invitation.”90 The flyers for GAG, Powderbubble and H.A.M. gave people a taste of what the club would be like, and invited people of all sexual and gender identities to join in this night of fun and freedom. The flyers for H.A.M. are striking, bold and raunchy. At the end of the 1990s, the LGBT people in Ireland had been liberalised, and were free to express their sexuality without fear of prosecution. O’Neill states how, afer 1995, “for the first time you had this sense of liberated queers in Dublin and their straight mates for the first time were totally on board and involved with it.”91 H.A.M. was a place where people of any sexuality or gender could go to dance and to have fun in a crazy, open-minded environment. Sweeney recalls the first night of H.A.M. in an issue of Free! magazine:

Anybody who was there on the first night will remember that it was hot, packed, and an insane mix of staff in slaughterhouse aprons and white boots with blood smeared all over them, kick ass music and a dance floor.92

Fig. 25 - H.A.M. nightclub flyer, 1998.

90 Ackland-Snow, Brett, Williams, op. cit., p. 16. 91 Ibid. 92 Taylor, Trey, ‘The raunchy hilarity of Ireland’s queer club flyers’, Dazed, October 2016. Web. Accessed 10 July 2017. 38 As mentioned before, Mason describes how a flyer communicates “a style, a feeling of what the club is about and gives an idea of the experience to follow.”93 H.A.M. was all about the freedom to express your identity, your sexuality, and to do it in an environment where everybody is enthusiastic and welcoming. This was what Sweeney wanted to convey when designing the flyers. The figure on the front of the H.A.M. flyer in figure 25, although clearly female with breasts, is strong and androgynous. The short hair and wide brim hat suggest that she is a butch dyke.94 On the reverse side of the flyer, words such as ‘queer’, ‘homo’, ‘dyke’ and ‘fags’ are used. These words can also be used offensively, generally by the heterosexual population, but in this context they are being embraced. Just as the butch dyke is embracing her strong, naked body, the reader of the flyer can embrace their sexual identity and use the word ‘dyke’ without any stigma. Barthes discusses how there is always a linguistic message in an advertisement. Using the club flyer as an advertisement in this context, Barthes describes how “the text helps to identify purely and simply the elements of the scene and the scene itself.”95 The scene here is playful and witty, and is encouraging sexual diversity and inclusivity. The text uses words such ‘queer’, ‘homo’, ‘flicks’ and ‘jellyslut’ to express this. The flyers for H.A.M. from 1998 differ hugely from the Hirschfeld Centre disco flyers, just over a decade previous. The information on the disco flyers for the Hirschfeld Centre was always quite vague, it would state the name, date and time, but never a full description of what to expect when you are there. The H.A.M. flyer tells us there will be ‘new flicks’ and a ‘jellyslut on the door and the gag butchers inside’. The language is cheeky and explicit and makes lots of sexual references. This shows how far Ireland had come in regards to accepting homosexuality and allowing queers to openly express themselves and their sexual preferences. Sweeney, O’Neill and Rehmani-White stuck the H.A.M. flyers (fig. 21, fig. 24) to poles around Dublin City, unashamedly inviting queers to join them at their party in PoD. Sweeney mentions, however, that Absolut Vodka withdrew their sponsorship when they saw what was written on the flyers. In typical Sweeney fashion, he found this hilarious, and went around to each sticker individually and scribbled out the Absolut logo with a permanent marker.96

93 Ackland-Snow, Brett, Williams, op. cit., p. 11. 94 A ‘butch’ lesbian has generally male characteristics and is the dominant one in bed/the relationship. 95 Mirzoeff, op. cit., p.137. 96 Niall Sweeney, Rory O’Neill, First Up talk, Science Gallery Dublin, 15 April 2015. 39 3.3 Production Values

Sweeney’s distinct visual style travels over lots of very different work for various clients, but you can still see that the work he did in the 1990s is part of a very distinct Dublin graphic style. Dublin came of age during the Celtic Tiger, as there was more money in the economy, which grew a better educated community, in all levels, including visual communication. There were people like photographer Eamonn Doyle, designers Peter Maybury and Aiden Grennelle, and Sweeney and O’Neill all graduating at the same time at the beginning of the 1990s. This caused an amazing cross fertilisation between media and disciplines, and exciting and original work was being produced. Designers would go away, and be influenced by the design scene in other countries, such as O’Neill in Tokyo, and they would bring back new knowledge and ideas and would leave their stamp on the scene in Ireland. Sweeney describes how his mother taught him “to do good work — with as much emphasis on the ‘doing good’, as the ‘doing work’”.97 Despite no commercial funding, and a smaller design community compared to most European cities, the club flyers produced in Dublin in the 1990s are examples are really luscious design work with high production values. The flyers for H.A.M. in 1997 (fig. 1) and Powderbubble in 1996 (fig. 20) are the first examples of a graphic designer using fluorescent and metal inks in Ireland. The Powderbubble logo was in a font called Dot Matrix, and the original plan was to have all of the flyers perforated, but it was going to cost too much to perforate the Powderbubble logo, so instead they are heat sealed and are raised, almost like brail.98 The series of H.A.M. flyers with cowgirls (fig. 25) and cowboys (fig. 26) are actually the most expensive flyers ever produced in the country. They are gold foil, and the line drawing is etched and embossed into the postcard, so the character is raised. These impressive new and experimental design techniques are reflective of the clubs themselves. There was fun and joy felt in making them, and there was fun and joy felt in participating in these clubs. Although the attitude and aesthetic is very in-your-face, the flyers are also very welcoming. People of any sexual orientation are invited to join in this crazy party, and to embrace who they are.

97 Interview with Niall Sweeney, Emer Brennan, 9 January 2018. 98 Interview with Tonie Walsh, Emer Brennan, IFI, 3 October 2017. 40 Fig. 26 - H.A.M. nightclub flyer, 1997.

Printed flyers “became the best source of information”99 in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Marc Wohlrabe, publisher of the German magazine FLYER. Flyers had been used within the LGBT community in Ireland first to promote social or political events for the National Gay Federation from 1979, and then for social events and discos in the Hirschfeld Centre during the early 1980s. Sweeney was designing flyers for Flikkers and Sides Dance Club in the 1980s, but he admits “in some ways I didn’t really hit my stride until about 1993.”100 The effects of decriminalisation in 1993 meant that businesses were willing to sponsor or host gay nights, and so much more time and money went into the production of club flyers. In an article in The Irish Times, Rehmani-White, one of the creators of Ham Productions, describes how:

Every promoter on the alternative gay scene in Dublin brings genuine energy and a personal touch to their clubs, and while the lack of commercial funding means that production qualities are not always good, it’s a great scene that caters to all shapes, sizes and sexual orientations.101

99 Riemel, Mike, Flyer Soziotope: Topographie of a Media Phenomenon, Berlin, Archiv der Jugendkulturen Verlag, 2005.p. 48. 100 Interview with Niall Sweeney, Emer Brennan, 9 January 2018. 101 Unknown author, Dublin’s in the pink, The Irish Times, December 29, 2000. 41 The nightclubs run by Ham Productions and the flyers that came with them can be seen as a literal celebration of decriminalisation. Even for the production of something that seems so simple, like club flyers and posters, the quality of work was incredible. Sweeney expresses how work for nightclubs “had to be good… A poster for a drag competition in a nightclub — there’s no reason it can’t be a brilliant poster that goes beyond the boundaries of what’s expected, especially in Ireland.”102 The H.A.M. flyers (fig. 21) are printed in simple black and white, and similarly the GAG flyers (fig. 4, 18, 19) are just one simple visual etched into coloured paper. There is nothing necessarily fancy about the production of design, but the style of the language and the boldness of the image gives the flyer an audacious and charming personality. Sweeney uses negative space wisely and has mastered the famous ‘less is more’ phrase that is associated with early 20th century modernist designers.

Mike Riemel, author of Flyer Soziotope (2005) describes how “besides straight information, the verbal text of flyers also has an emotional and social function.”103 The language of the H.A.M. flyers certainly evoke emotion and sexual notions. The text on the reverse side of the cowgirl flyer (fig. 25) is so cheeky that it is laughable. You don’t read ‘bringing you the bacon and slapping it on your table’ on every nightclub flyer, that’s for sure. The strong woman on the front of the flyer is enticing, and on the reverse side her male counterpart stands beside her. The erotic figures give the sense that this will be a night of sexual freedom, and everybody is welcome to explore their sexual desires. This feeling of freedom, and particularly sexual freedom, is something that is so important to queer identity. For so long LGBT people in Ireland were marginalised and were forced to live in secret. The Dublin Lesbian and Gay Men’s Collective describe how, in 1986, “we have never known truly spontaneous gestures of affections or unguarded conversations.”104 People constantly had to be cautious on what to say and how to act, and in a lot of cases it wasn’t possible to live truthfully. The H.A.M. flyers represent everything that LGBT people have had to hide up until decriminalisation in 1993. Club nights like Flikkers, The Grotto, Powderbubble, H.A.M. and GAG were places where people were empowered and encouraged to embrace their own sexual identity, and the flyers are indicators of this.

102 Brian Finnegan talks to Rory O’Neill + Niall Sweeney, GCN magazine, Issue 334, October 2017. 103 Riemel, op. cit., p. 48. 104 Boyd, et al, op. cit., p. 209. 42 Conclusion

Through the various strands of investigation followed in this dissertation, the expression of queer identity in Irish nightclubs flyers has been examined in a detailed and comprehensive way. It is important to note that this dissertation does not claim to have exhausted all possible meanings and interpretations of queer identity in Ireland from the 1980s through to the 2000s, and that all of the nightclub flyers from this time have not been analysed. It attempts to discuss certain emblematic flyers that best represent the nightclubs that they are for and the time in which they are from. The flyers for certain clubs can be loosely put into thematics, for example the continuous theme of the future and gender for Powderbubble, and the clever play on sexual words in GAG flyers. By analysing the flyers that best represent their time, the evolution of the expression of queer identity becomes evident. The early flyers from the 1980s were inherently political and contained little or no information regarding different queer or sexual identities. They are social signifiers, and “will always be a mirror of their time and offer a vivid image of the evolutionary changes”,105 according to Flyermania (1998). Towards the end of the 1980s, exciting social and cultural changes where happening in Ireland and this is reflective in the flyers. Most importantly, young talented designers where graduating from art college at this time and they were openly gay and proud. They wanted to put their creatively towards building a community in Dublin that could go out and have fun no matter what their sexual orientation. Decriminalisation in 1993 was a turning point for Ireland’s LGBT community, and afer this happened, queer people could openly express and explore their sexuality for the first time without the fear of prosecution. The shif from contempt to tolerance and acceptance of the LGBT community in the 1990s had a big effect on the social and clubbing scene in Ireland. People became more open about expressing their sexuality and could do so through going to the new nightclubs run by Ham Productions. Ferriter describes how “by the end of the 20th century an in-your-face gay aesthetic emerged, including literature with explicit scenes of sexuality.”106 This aesthetic is definitely reflected in the nightclub flyers from GAG and H.A.M.. The visuals in the flyers are raunchy and sexually explicit and the flyers themselves are portrayals of how queer identity and sexuality could be expresses openly in a new society.

105 Die Gestalten, op. cit., p 5. 106 Ferriter, Diarmaid, op. cit., p 520. 43 As this dissertation deals with a topic from a specific time and place, the intention of placing the social, political and cultural context in Ireland in the 1st chapter is to ensure that an unfamiliar reader fully understands the historical context of Ireland at this time and what was expected or relevant. Ireland has long had a reputation for being a friendly yet conservative country highly influenced by the Catholic Church, and only up until very recent years has that influence started to decline. In examining the social and political context of the time, it was clear what were the socially accepted norms, and how hard fought the battle for gay rights was in redefining those norms. Concepts of queer culture and sexual identity were explored in the 2nd chapter. Queer culture in each country varies slightly around the world, but ultimately the LGBT communities in many western countries take influences from one another. The effects of decriminalisation are explored in this chapter and the significance of the creation of the space within the queer community in Dublin. The creation of social spaces gave the LGBT people of Ireland a physical place to explore and express their sexuality openly and truthfully. The flyers for these spaces are examined in detail in the 3rd chapter in regards to the design elements in them, the distribution of them and their production. As mentioned, flyers are social signifiers of their times, but also everything about them, the iconography, the typeface, the illustration, the photography, the graphic quality, all help to locate that flyer or event to a very specific time and cultural moment, and that is what is so important about them. The flyers discussed in this chapter can be traced back to the short-lived period in the mid 1990s where there was a crossover between the liberalisation of LGBT people in Ireland and the boom in club culture.

One difficulty faced in the completion of this dissertation was the initial attempt to gather academic sources relating to this study. There is but a small handful of comprehensive studies on Irish design and visual culture from the 20th century, and even less on the sociology of gay Ireland. The gay history of Ireland is yet to be written, as is its full design history. With this came the difficultly of attempting to fully articulate the feelings and anxieties of the LGBT people in Ireland before decriminalisation. Most of the accounts of people’s experiences of the gay social scene before decriminalisation are anonymous or don’t delve into much detail, because the gay social scene at this time was so small. Dunphy and Rose are examples of people writing on lesbian and gay politics in Ireland, which was crucial to understanding the wider scope and political context of this topic, but most of the research gathered on queer clubbing for this dissertation was from primary sources; interviews that I conducted with the leading names from this area. I was very lucky 44 to be able to get in touch with them, and even meet them, as it broadened my knowledge and apprehension of this area in ways far beyond that in which any written source could give me.

My experience completing this dissertation, as a member of the LGBT community and as somebody who enjoys clubbing, has been one of increasing enthusiasm. Although acknowledgement must be made that I, of course, did not attend these clubs so it is only possible to look at this area in admiration as an outsider, and to try and interpret it through various primary, secondary and academic sources to the best of my ability. Something that could further the depth of this study would be to examine all aspects of the visual identities for the clubs — the stage design, the decoration in the interior of the clubs, the uniforms of the staff or even the entry stamps. All that is lef of these clubs now is their flyers, which are emblematic pieces of design, but to be able to fully articulate how people expressed their queer identity in these nightclubs “involves an act of translation from a physical, ephemeral medium to a discursive one.”107 The flyers are being used in this context as the physical representations of the clubs and as the medium that was used to express queer identity visually. It is therefore important to acknowledge that queer identity can exist as something physical and emotional as well as analytical, and that while certain interpretations and definitions of queer identity can be discussed, such as its expression through nightclub flyers, a full realisation of queer identity in Ireland can go beyond the limits of a written dissertation.

Another unexplored area that could further the depth of this dissertation is a comprehensive list of all of the gay or queer venues and bars in Ireland at this time. As mentioned, not all of this nightclub flyers from the 1980s through to the 2000s have been examined, but even some bars haven’t been mentioned, such as The Viking, The George and The Hilton Edwards. These are all names that came up but the information available was not in-depth enough to pursue them as key places in this study. Examining specifically lesbian bars in Ireland is also an area that went unexplored, and is something that has considerably little research on. Most of the clubs discussed in this dissertation were male-run, male-dominated venues, perhaps an example of the continued patriarchy in our society. Dyer makes a point that “the differences between lesbian and gay male culture reflect the different positions of women and men in society. Gay men have, for all their oppression,

107 Buckland, op. cit., p. 2. 45 gained practically all the advantages of men generally… Lesbian culture has suffered from the same invisibility as women’s culture generally.”108

It is important to acknowledge that this dissertation aims to achieve so much more than just simple saying “gays were oppressed before decriminalisation" and “gays were freed afer decriminalisation”. Anti-discrimination laws didn’t come in until 1998 and 2000 and Irish society, as with many, is rooted with traces of homophobia. Decriminalising sexual activity between men certainly liberalised gays legally, but even in the year 2018 people are still not able to come out and openly explore their sexuality due to whatever circumstances. But to make this study as comprehensive as possible, it can be seen that the positive changes in Irish society, decriminalisation and the ambition of recently gradated gay designers are the reasons for how Ireland’s queer identity did in general develop into something more acceptable and welcomed at the end of the 20th century, and this was done through organising club nights and producing and distributing the flyers for these club. The flyers represent the time in which they are from, yet they are timeless. They would be gladly received on the Irish queer clubbing scene nowadays, which has incidentally become smaller and more commercialised in recent years.

108 Dyer, op. cit., p. 17. 46 Sources

Primary 1. Interview with Tonie Walsh, Emer Brennan, IFI, 3 October 2017. 2. Interview with Niall Sweeney, Emer Brennan, 9 January 2018.

Books 3. Ackland-Snow, Nicola; Brett, Nathan; Williams, Steven, Fly: The Art of the Club Flyer, London, Thames and Hudson, 1996.

4. Boyd, Clodagh; Doyle, Declan; Foley, Bill; Harvey, Brenda; Hoctor, Annette; Molloy, Maura; Quinlan, Mick, Out For Ourselves: The Lives of Irish Lesbians and Gay Men, Dublin, Dublin Lesbian and Gay Men’s Collective and Women's Community Press, 1986.

5. Buckland, Fiona. Impossible Dance: Club Culture and Queer World-Making. New York, Wesleyan, 2002.

6. Chauncey, George. Gay New York. New York, Basic Books, 1994.

7. Daly, Mary E.. History of Ireland and the Irish Diaspora : Slow Failure : Population Decline and Independent Ireland, 1920-1973. Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

8. Die Gestalten, Flyermania, Die Gestalten, Berlin, Ullstein Fun Factory, 1998.

9. Dyer, Richard, The Culture of Queers, London, Routledge, 2002.

10.Ferriter, Diarmaid. Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland, London, Profile Books, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central.

11. Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume 1, New York, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1990.

12. Jagose, Annamarie, Queer Theory: An Introduction, New York, New York University Press, 1996.

13.Inglis, Tom, Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland. 1998, Dublin: University College Dublin.

14. Mitchell, Claudia, Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline, Girl Culture: An Encyclopaedia, Greenwood Publishing Group, Connecticut, 2007

15. Mirzoeff, Nicolas, The Visual Culture Reader, London, Routledge, 1998. 47 16. Murphy, Peter F, Feminism and Masculinities, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

17. Riemel, Mike, Flyer Soziotope: Topographie of a Media Phenomenon, Berlin, Archiv der Jugendkulturen Verlag, 2005.

18. Rose, Kieran, Diverse Communities: The Evolution of Lesbian and Gay Politics in Ireland, Cork, Cork University Press, 1994.

19.Woodward, Kathryn, Identity and Difference, London; Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications in association with the Open University, 1997.

Academic Articles

20. Bowyer, Susannah, Queer Patriots, Cultural Studies, 24:6, Taylor & Francis, 2010, p 801-820, DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2010.502734

21. Conrad, Kathryn, Queer Treasons: Homosexuality and Irish National Identity, Cultural Studies, 15:1, Taylor & Francis, 2001, p 124-137, DOI: 10.1080/09502380010012630

22.Dunphy, Richard, Sexual Identities, National Identities: The Politics of Gay Law Reform in The Republic of Ireland, Contemporary Politics, 3:3, Taylor & Francis, 1997, p 247-265, DOI: 10.1080/13569779708449929.

23.Inglis, Tom, Foucault, Bourdieu and the Field of Irish Sexuality, Irish Journal of Sociology, Vol 7, 1997.

Web 24. Come Here To Me! blog, https://comeheretome.com/2013/10/06/rices-bartley- dunnes-dublins-first-gay-friendly-bars/, Accessed 10 December 2017.

25. Hall, Jake, Tracing the history of the word ‘queer’, Dazed magazine, 28 July 2016. Web. Accessed 10 October 2017.

26. Lester, Paul, Frankie Goes To Hollywood: ‘No one could touch us – people were scared’, The Guardian, 28 August 2014. Web. Accessed 1 February 2018.

27. Maleney, Ian, Rave on: When underground dance parties ruled Dublin, The Irish Times, 24 February 2017. Web. Accessed 10 January 2018.

48 28. National LGBT Federation Website, http://nxf.ie/our-history/, Accessed November 12 2017.

29. National Treasures Website, https://nationaltreasures.ie/submissions/JE9QA4, Accessed 10 February 2018.

30. Tarpey, Paul, ed. Jim Carroll, Notes on an Irish disco landscape, The Irish Times, September 16, 2008. Web. Accessed 3 October 2017.

31. Taylor, Trey, ‘The raunchy hilarity of Ireland’s queer club flyers’, Dazed, October 2016. Web. Accessed 10 July 2017.

32. Unknown author, Dublin’s in the pink, The Irish Times, December 29, 2000. Web. Accessed 20 September 2017.

Film

33. Paris Is Burning. Dir. Jennie Livingston. Perf. Pepper LaBeija, Paris Dupree, Willi Ninja, Dorian Corey. Miramax. 1990. DVD.

Other

34.Haugh, Emma, People I’ve fucking danced with at gay bars, DBYHR’s Queer Liberation and Class Struggle program, Vilnius, 2013.

35. Niall Sweeney, Rory O’Neill, First Up talk, Science Gallery Dublin, 15 April 2015.

36. Unknown author, Queers Read This, Queer Nation, New York, 1990.

49 Appendix

This Appendix includes the transcripts for interviews I conducted with Tonie Walsh on the 3 October 2017 and with Niall Sweeney on the 9 January 2018.

Interview with Tonie Walsh, IFI, 3 October 2017

EB: My first question is to ask the designers and dates of these flyers. TW: GAG square flyer—They’re gorgeous. This is gold foil. And the cowgirl and cowboy (from H.A.M. flyers) were in golden and silver and then the line drawing was etched. This (H.A.M. flyer with torso) was white card with fluorescent pink outline. I love it. The cowgirl was completely nude. The Hirschfeld Centre and Flikkers — 1979 - 1981. And this is one of the earliest flyers because you know from the times, because the 1980s went on into late night discos. This is the first logo before it was changed. There’s a big version of this on the dance floor as well. This is 1979. The Sex Party is from Sides Dance Club. The Grotto was the name of the gay night at Sides. It’s very Americanised, Sides Dance Club. This is, I’d say, late 80s, early 90s. It’s hard to say.

EB: What are the dates from GAG? The flyers are so out there! TW: We only ran GAG for one year. We launched it in 1996, and what was amazing was that it was gay and hetero, mixed, and we decided that the fetish scene was just a bit too earnest for its own good. So, in some ways what we wanted to do was actually puncture some of the earnestness of the fetish scene. So there had to be something really playful. When we came to doing GAG we were doing something that was really playful and fun and silly when we were doing it. For example, we all had different names for each other. Niall Sweeney was Mr Sphincter, then there was of course Ms Panti, I was Jelly Slut. I mean one night I would sit in a bath of warm, green jelly wearing nothing but a pair of rubber shorts reading a book with sunglasses on, trying to be very studious and zen-like, and ignore everybody. And then I’d have guys coming over wanting to piss on me, wanting to pour their drinks on me, I mean it was ridiculous stuff. EB: And you’d be there for the whole night while the event was going on? TW: Yes! in the bath full of gin and jelly doing a performance. So both the set up of the club and the visual iconography was meant to sort of push people’s buttons but

50 in a very playful way. And at the time when I suppose really returned immigrants and people who were seasoned travellers had been exposed to things like the swinger circle and drag in New York and had been exposed to SM or dressing up, you know fetish clothes and everything else. But all the flyers are from one year because we only ran it in 1996. And we closed it on Halloween or December 1996. In fact we closed it on our first birthday, so we must have ran it from late 1995 through most of 1996. and we finished it with a night called ‘Cake Hole and Candle Wax’ and I can actually find you some of the flyers. So ‘Cake Hole and Candle Wax’ involved Niall wearing head to toe leather and rubber, lying flat on a table on the stage and Panti coming out and lip syncing to Edith Piaf’s ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’ as she covers him in all different trifle mixtures, like jelly and custard and whipped cream. And she’s there wacking him with cream and hundreds and thousands and then got a big birthday candle and pushed it up his bum and got Niall’s partner, Frank, to actually light the birthday candle and then we all sang ‘Happy Birthday’. And that was the final night, and in many ways GAG had gone as far as it could go. In fact I think Niall says something about it in the newest issue of GCN. There’s a really good quote in it. I mean yeah, it had definitely gone as far as it could go, and it was time for something else, so we moved onto the Red Box with Tripod and opened up Powderbubble. I mean Niall as he says quoted here in the October issue of GCN, he says “We were relieved in some ways when all of the hysteria of the press came out about GAG.” He means some of the red tops just got worried about and started being hysterical in their reportage. But, as he says here, “Anything we could have done with GAG from then on would have just been more GAG”, so you know it can only go so far, and in other ways it just becomes more extremist that you’re pandering to people who you know want to explore that scene, and we wanted to go in a different direction, so we just did Powderbubble. Powderbubble, I suppose if you want a short version of what Powderbubble was, it was GAG without the sex. But just as much playfulness, infinitely more playfulness, and a little bit of seediness and of course just amped up with a different budget and more players. I think Niall’s design work for Powderbubble is just really exquisite. I mean the material for GAG is absolutely wonderful. Niall did all of GAGs iconography/visual identity, all of it. And his earliest club flyers would have been for Flikkers in the mid/late 80s, he designed the poster for the Flikkers Halloween ball in 1985, 1986 and of course when we set up GCN in 1988 he was the obvious candidate. He would have still been in college. He was the obvious candidate for not only designing the masthead but also actually art directing the magazine, or newspaper, which he did for the first ten issues. And it’s really interesting, think if you go back to a lot the flyer work he did in tandem with 51 his boyfriend at the time, now in fact started for Sides. So Sides opened on St Patricks day in 1986, and in its first iteration which was owned by John Nolan, who would later die of AIDs complications, it hit new heights in terms of its visual identity, really quite beautiful stuff. And Frank, Niall’s partner, was responsible for increasingly encouraging Niall to take over all the visual ident of the club, which he effectively did, certainly for some of 86 and maybe all of 87/88/89. Niall did an amazing amount of work for Sides Dance Club. And it’s really interesting that when you look at some of that early stuff, and then everything in between, so you start with the Flikkers and Sides material, and you work through material due for other clubs over the years, then as the 90s wore on the specific clubs that he originated himself worked with people like Rory and myself or other people. Like the material he did for Elevator, which prefigures Powderbubble, and I just think it’s absolutely gorgeous, you know. And it’s been one of the first examples of a graphic designer using metal inks or fluorescent inks, you know, which were really hard and expensive to come by. I mean we’re talking about the early 90s, 1993. Just really really gorgeous, luscious work. And even though Niall has a very clearly distinct identity that travels over lots of very different but convergent work for various clients, you can also still see that that work he did in the 90s he’s also part of what I consider a very distinctive Dublin graphic style. EB: I saw his Offset talk with D1 records last year. The production quality in his work is just amazing. TW: When he was doing the early stuff for D1, you had people like Brian Nolan from Dynamo, Aiden Grinel from Image Now, you’ve got Peter Maybury, Eamonn Doyle himself was designing stuff for the club D1, taking photographs for the club as well, and working with Niall on design. Peter Maybury, who Niall has worked with on and off for a long time over the years, and people like Pete Reddy, also known as Redmanaka, and he still does stuff for BLonGTo, the youth group, he does a lot of their visual identity. Either he still does or he used to. But my point is, you have all of these, and other designers that I can’t remember off hand, but there were others, so you had all these various graphic designers in the 1990s and even though they’re all doing very specific highly individual work, you can still see their work as part of a body that represents a graphic style or a family graphic style that’s specific to Dublin, and I think it’s wonderful to look back and actually see that. In many ways you could argue that Dublin, and by extension other parts of Ireland, sort of came of age during the Celtic Tiger. As you know, there was money, so it grew out of a better education community. I mean better educated in all levels, visual communications, much better educated. 52 EB: Niall Sweeney would have been in Visual Communications at IADT and there was this very short lived time when all of these talented people had graduated so they were all doing stuff around the same time. TW: They were, there was amazing cross fertilisation as well, you had people like Eamonn Doyle, who was in the same year as Niall Sweeney, and Rory O’Neill who was in the year behind them. You had people like Wendy Hough, I mean there was a string of other people in Dun Laoghaire College of Art, in that period — 88, 89, 1991 — and they all did quite extraordinary stuff. Some of them would go abroad and then return, but they all definitely lef their stamp. And the timing was really interesting, I was thinking about this recently, something shifed in 1988 with Dublin’s 1000 year anniversary. The strapline was ‘Dublin is great in 1988’ and Dublin held it’s 1000 year birthday and now looking back, 30 years ago, we’ve got the benefit of distance, but we can look back and see that there was a shif in people’s perceptions and people’s ownership of the city and I think looking back we see people beginning to show a sense of pride in the city. There’s super human efforts being made to arrest the decay and dereliction that was widespread and you had the beginning of people returning to the country, I mean we still had high emigration, but you can see from late 1988, 1989 onwards, that there’s this slow trickle that would actually become a bit of a torrent by the mid 90s in the cusp of the Celtic Tiger. More and more people coming back, bringing new ideas and a different way of doing things, bringing back money. We’ve got a society that’s much better education in terms of what it was, in terms of its needs, and all of that plays out in places like the clubs. We’ve got whats called the super clubs in 1993, licensing had been liberated a little bit in the early 90s, so for the first time we had beer available from 1991/1992. It’s hard to imagine first going into a club, like when Sides opened or Flikkers, you could only get bottles on Ritz, which was a manky little peri or basically cider, or overpriced bottles of lukewarm wine, you know. EB: I read in a lot of places that there was no alcohol served at a lot of the discos. TW: Yeah! I mean you had to have a meal with the fucking thing as well. So there’s all of that shif, and then of course ecstasy is becoming normalised and mainstreamed, and thats sort of fuelling people’s desires to just go out and dance their tits off for that whole night or whatever. So you’ve got, up to the mid 90s, a situation in 1993 when super clubs were opening in quick session. you’ve got the Kitchen, owned by U2 in the Clarence Hotel, just next to where the Garage was, well its the Liquor Rooms basically now. You've got the PoD, followed by RedBox, which was then Tripod, filling the entirety of Harcourt Street train station. You’ve got Ri Ra underneath the Central Hotel which made a name for hip hop and street soul and 53 breaks, and the pleasure of other small little clubs and once off raves, you had Niall Sweeney and myself and Aoife Nic Canna, who’s one of Dublin’s first women DJs. EB: She’s brilliant, I listen to her stuff a lot. TW: She’s great. Her ‘folklore from the Dance floor’ eight part podcast on the history of club culture in Ireland, you have to listen to it. It’s fucking brilliant and she’s never got enough audit. So then along with all the new clubs and raves, you’ve got people like myself, Aoife Nic Canna and Niall Sweeney and our team doing Horny Organ Tribe and Elevator gigs in the Ormond Multimedia Centre which is this big space that later became the Morrison Hotel, and that’s 93/94, so there’s lots of really interesting stuff happening. And of course it’s really before, it’s the beginning of the end of 2-dimensional, tangible social signifiers like flyers and posters. It’s just before all that stuff starts to go digital, which is really interesting. So people are still actually investing in all of this medium which is quite lovely. And the funny thing is I ofen describe flyers as a pleasure passport. They're like a sort of, as I’ve described before, a lingering sniff, a metaphorical sniff of a period. It allows you to time travel to that moment as well. And it’s also a great historical artefact of wonderful events that were actually held in the city. EB: There’s a book called Art of the Club Flyer, and it describes a flyer, just as you said, as a “passport to another world”. TW: Yeah well it is totally! It’s also proof that you were actually at that gig. It’s something physical. My sister Louise and her husband, in their bathroom they’ve all the tickets and a couple of flyers from all the gigs that they went to in their dating years and also their early married life, it’s absolutely wonderful. It’s like ‘oh my god, Luther Vandross!’ or whoever. And not just in Dublin, in other places that they lived like Pittsburgh and it’s great.

EB: One of my big questions would be how the clubbing scene was before 1993, and then afer decriminalisation. TW: That’s a really good question. You actually see, afer 1993, you see this explosion in services and facilities. In the 1861 Offences against the person Act and the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, the last piece of legislation was a law that outlawed any form of intimacy in public or private between two men. Although lesbians weren't effected in the same way by the criminal law, the very existence of the law had the effect of criminalising all consideration of homosexuality. And if you wanted an example of how that played out, you had the culture of censorship in Ireland. So in the 1980s you’ve got gay business that are reluctant to advertise in gay media because of course everything was in tainted in criminality. As soon at 54 decriminalisation happens, it’s like Irish society started to engage with its sexual minorities. You actually see the evolution of the Pink Pound and the Pink Euro, and Gilbert Bakely who designed the pride flag, and who just died recently, he made a really good point when he was over on a visit to Ireland that it’s better to be valued as consumer then not to be valued at all, or to be invisible to the corporate sector. At least if you’re valued it’s the beginning of a relationship. So you see from 1993 that there’s a very definitive impact on decriminalisation. You see this explosion of services, there are more club nights, there are better club nights, there are nights happening on Saturday night, which would have been unusual when I was doing Horny Organ Club, with Purple, who’s now dead, and Aoife Nic Canna. We were doing a mixed gay/hetero/homo night on a Sunday night. There’d be no club nights happening on a Sunday night, and we started a night in the Rock Garden on a Sunday in May/June 1993. So actually the month of decriminalisation. You begin to see cafes touting their businesses at the LGBT community, you see an explosion in social services, you see cultural events actually becoming mainstream, in terms of GAZE, the theatre festival, loads. There’s a whole load of stuff that comes on board. And I don’t think that that would have happened beforehand, it was beginning to happen but much more slowly. I just think once decriminalisation happened, it’s little bit like the effect of repression in Spain with Franco, and afer he died in ’77 you’ve got La Movida, especially in Madrid. La Movida there’s just this outpouring of cultural expression, it’s like people tried to slough off the worst effects of their repression I suppose.

EB: I want to ask a general question about H.A.M. It seemed like H.A.M. was a lot of fun to produce. Is there anything like H.A.M. nowadays? TW: No, but do we even have any venues for Gods sake. The Twisted Pepper was one of the last club spaces in Dublin. The Lost Society is gone, the dragon is gone. It kills me. I love going out clubbing, I love dancing, still. It’s a great form of exercise, and you meet a much more interesting group of people on a dance floor than you do in a bar. But you know, there’s always going to be a push back or a reaction, against what goes from one generation to another. I’m sure there’s many people that are deeply frustrated and pissed off with the lack of resources for them. Or they look back wistfully or with a certain level of nostalgia and ask themselves why they can’t have it again. Niall came up with a really good quote, I think in one of his TED talks, you know “we built our own dance floor.” And I think if it doesn’t exist then go and build it. That’s what people need to do. And invest some time. John Reynolds mentioned this years ago when I asked him about his motivation for setting up PoD, and I 55 consider PoD, certainly architecturally one of the most beautiful dance clubs to have ever been designed or built in this city or country, it was absolutely stunning. I’m not sure why it closed down, maybe they weren’t making enough money, it’s an expensive process running a venue. And there was just change in taste. I mean I actually think the biggest obstacle to running clubs nowadays is the unfair playing field with bars. There’s bars that sort of masquerade as dance clubs, but of course they’re not the same thing. In some ways some DJs who genuinely just need work and they take whatever comes their way have been complicit in the demise of dance clubs. I have done it once or twice myself, going to work in a bar that’s pretending to be dance club but it’s not. It doesn't have a dedicated dance floor, it doesn’t have a decent sound system. First of all, clubs need to be recognised in their own right as a viable entity with their own specific demands. Ideally clubs should be able to open at 1 in the morning and close at 8 or 9 in the morning. Like the Berghain or somewhere. Or like in Amsterdam where clubs stay open until 5 o’clock. Amsterdam is a smaller city than Dublin and clubs stay open until 5 o’clock. EB: In general most clubs here close at around 3/3:30, which is too early. TW: Of course it’s too early! I mean with or without drugs it’s still to early. And the other thing too is if you give people the opportunity to go out and exhaust themselves, dancing and the likes, when the clubs close, most people aren’t in the mood for hanging around or having scraps or being uncivil or messed up or bollixed, most people just want to go home. Everybody’s looking for the same thing. A taxi home, probably a lay, or they want to score, and they want an aferparty. And you can see how the Brazilians and the Polish have been smart and they're sort of corning some of that market. If the government realised how much they were missing out in terms of taxes and employment, and also just how practical it is in terms of our tourist potential, you’ve got like people who charge 10 into an aferparty at 4 or 5 in the morning, and making a killing. EB: And a fiver for the bus there on top of that. TW: Yeah! And most of the time they're crap. I went to one in Parnell street, everybody smoking indoors, the music was OK, the sound system was shite, all their drinks were a fiver but their shorts and their beers, I won’t complain about that. You could get any drug you wanted there, which is kind of amazing as well. But you know people who’s business it is to legislate for this stuff and to regulate it, I’m talking about Dublin City Council, the police, the fire authorities, taxation, I mean we need to recognise and fess up to the reality of what’s happening under our noses. Be a bit dramatic and be like “yeah it happens, now let’s do something about it.” rather than just say it doesn’t happen, or ignore the fact that most people just want to go out. I 56 always come back to this thing that I feel like our government has infantilised us. Mother Ireland says we can’t be trusted to go out and enjoy ourselves and behave ourselves with access to alcohol in the place. Until we have a grown up conversation about our alcohol and drugs consumption and the reality of that consumption, then we’re not going to get any further to developing any sort of viable and meaningful club culture in this city or country. We all know history is littered with examples of prohibition. Especially in the United States in the 1920s and 30s, it doesn’t work. The war on drugs is finally coming to an end, because we finally realised you can throw money at this problem, and resources and police, but it’s still not going to stop people actually going out and actually getting a yoke or doing a line or smoking or doing what people want to do. We need to be grown up and say “well why do people do drugs?” We do them because we enjoy them. And then we develop a culture of harm reduction around drug consumption and then we legislate for their legibility and their sale, and hopefully the government then taxes it like the Dutch government taxes cannabis, and make some bloody money out of it. Clubs create an industry for people, if they’re run properly, if we value them and nurture club culture, we can actually give people jobs as front of house managers, bar staff, waiting staff, DJs, lighting engineers, sound engineers, promoters, stage managers, performers, the list is endless. It’s not only good for that but for tourism as well, I mean look at Berlin or Amsterdam or London, they have night managers, ‘night mayors’. They've appointed people who frame a societal response to the nighttime activities of the city. To monetise it, to legislate for it, to control it, to control it in a way that is for the best benefit of all the different stake holders involved.

57 Interview with Niall Sweeney, 9 January 2018

EB: The 1990s was the decade of the club flyer. Was there a distinct style that was specific to this time? NS: I would say the style might have been in the approach, but it was more divergent than it is now. Even in terms of what people wore, what they listened to. Reasons are aplenty, but the energy and DIY nature of it all was a convergence of plants. Youth explosion and visibility, new technologies, dance clubs, new music, so many different kinds of politically activated subcultures, the world was shifing, finally out of the grips of history (just about anyhow), with a sense of moving forward once again. Flyers are the foundation of everything I have done in some ways, what they mean and how they work, the freedom and yet the restriction of them, their magic, and what it’s like to find one in that pocket of a jacket you haven’t worn since.

EB: You’ve done stuff for Flikkers, Sides, Powderbubble, Elevator, GAG and H.A.M., and more. Do you have one (or more) very memorable moment? NS: Actually, you missed of Alternative Miss Ireland. I started that with two friends in 1987, when just out of school. And as you know it ran until 2012. AMI is one of the greatest achievements of my life, as it created, cemented and propelled such a huge body, family, of friends into action, out to play and on into their futures. The breadth and depth of its warm embrace, and it’s utter nuts-ness, was a triumph. We always say that we are firm believers in the social, political, cultural and transformational power of dressing up and having fun. AMI for me transgressed all scenes, all desires. It may have been called Gay Christmas (!), but it was, and still is, one of the only things that ever happened that was truly for anyone, if they were prepared to let go of all their hubris. And of course AMI did great good. Raising over €350,000 along the way, and being pivotal in many Irish HIV/AIDS programmes and work. My mother taught me to “do good work” — “with as much emphasis on the ‘doing good’, as the ‘doing work’”. I think with AMI, we did good work. And AMI lives on, in all of the people involved, as we all still work and play together. Sure look at Panti, or THISISPOPBABY, or so many others.

EB: Is there a big crossover between the Irish design scene and the LGBT scene? NS: Any design scene makes me shudder. My work has/is never been for designers, its been for and about the people and places it’s for and about! So, working with Panti for the past 30 years hasn’t been about a scene, it’s been about doing the best work together! If I was to somehow think “gay design work” on one hand, and “the

58 rest” on the other, that would be a terrible state of things. But to answer, as I’m a big old gay, and a big old designer, I guess I may be the crossover!

EB: Did you ever feel cautious or restricted in what you could/ couldn't say on flyers and posters before decriminalisation in 1993? NS: Youth offers incredible balls, looking back at some of the things we did! But of course, there was a difference. But the differences were also apparent in other broader ways, that I guess influenced and spurred on by return - popular culture, dancing, music, budget, people had jobs! Though I was doing design for Sides since 1986, in some ways I didn’t really hit my stride until about 1993. Around Elevator, and then really around when Makullas opened on Suffolk street (this became club/ flyer central), and then we started the clubs ourselves, so like I was saying above, we were really just having fun for and about ourselves. But “ourselves” meaning 1,500 people dressed up and dancing. We built our own stage, as it were.

EB: How did designing for the LGBT clubbing scene change afer 1993? NS: The 1990s was amazing in that one week, we’d be sitting on the couch with Panti being bored, and think “let’s open a club”, and two weeks later, we had. Venues were up for anything really, and we had the energy and the ideas, and the crowd. And we were about something greater than just “a gay night”. And the designs, well, we just went for it. What’s the best we can do? What would be beautiful, exciting, erotic, like nothing seen before? It was all energetic experiment and just the sheer joy and fun of doing these things. We made great stuff for people to enjoy, for us to enjoy with them — shared pleasure is a transformational thing, it’s a political act! What more could you ask!

EB: What were your design inspirations during the early years of clubbing? NS: The shrinking globe. Experiences elsewhere, travel, Japan, dressing up, friends, architecture, new media explosion, the way your mind works when you are 21! Sex and dressing up and doing good stuff!

EB: Did you face any challenges while designing or working for specifically queer clubs/events? NS: Not really, as most — or all — of the events were ones we created ourselves. Challenges were just managing budgets, or drag queens falling off stage, or sometimes my over ambition in some massive installation set up, the daily design 59 challenge of just doing better and doing something great! “Let’s not be shit” is also another motto.

EB: Was the use of new metal and fluorescent inks on flyers a conscious one, to show how new and different the club nights were? NS: No, they had been around for a while, but I think they just had never been used that way. I spent the last 2 years of college in print, mostly screen print, and I have a specific understanding of inks and putting them together, as a methodology of designing, that I still use today.

EB: How and where were the flyers distributed in the 1980s and 1990s? NS: We did love doing flyers so much. We put so much energy and love and time into them — flyers are little gif vouchers of time-travel. Before or afer the night. Before you project yourself into the night ahead, and imagine what you might do. And afer, weeks afer, when you find that folded up Powderbubble flyer in that one silver boot, it all comes back in a rush. It was amazing how people used to go round to all the shops and venues to seek out what was on. Some shops were amazing with flyers, dedicating huge areas of space. Distribution was fun too. And you had favourite spots and places, and people. Shops by day, bars by night. Lots of chat too. It used to be great swanning through a pub with flyers, people getting excited, even if the event was still two weeks away, because of the flyer they were already there. Sometimes we would do these really complicate flyers, like a real ham sandwich, except it wasn’t ham, it was a pink Jesus. Or tiny boxes with bells in them for Sides. Still, the Powderbubble flyers and that one Gold foil HAM naked cowboy flyer - they are still the best ever made!

EB: Were the flyers and posters ever in any mainstream magazines or public spaces? NS: Yes. But I can’t quite remember. They have been in design mags and books. AMI posters have been exhibited and published internationally, as have PantiBar posters.

EB: Do you have a favourite flyer or identity work you have done? NS: In this context, PantiBar. H.A.M. was a bit of a triumph, in the way we used words as well as visuals. I mean, it’s the best name! PowderBubble for the flyers and just the collective joy of it all - just one year, and what a year that was. If joy is an identity, then PowderBubble wins. Each year AMI changed it’s visual completely, this was part of the fun. I have a few big favourites there. So - H.A.M., PowderBubble, AMI, PantiBar — they are all winners to me. 60 61