cLUB bENT (Liveworks)

We’re getting old, darling. My experience at cLUB bENT was tempered by attending a queer engagement at the Marayong Community Hall earlier in the evening. At this event, two beautiful young brides-to-be flitted between long tables of their extended families and friends. This joyful experience prompted me to ask what 1995 queer narratives have to offer us now? 

The answer was mostly nostalgia, as queer photographer Jamie James painted a verbal picture of 1996: the year we walked out of the Mardi Gras party into nasty despot John Howard being elected as Prime Minister. I remember the precise come-down moment I found out being tempered by the cold, creamy taste of a vanilla milkshake in a long-forgotten venue on Oxford Street. For Jamie, in long shorts and a gimp mask with a face painted over bare breasts and belly, the year was marked by an extraordinary backstage cLUB bENT photo of fellow documentarian, William Yang reflected in a mirror.

Brought back to celebrate forty years of the Performance Space, cLUB bENT ran from 1995 to 1998. Curators Victoria Spence, Groovii Biscuit and Daniel Mudie Cunningham reunited last night at Carriageworks. Part of Liveworks, they hosted a queer cabaret that employed a replica formula showcasing fifteen acts. The evening kicking off with Kinkabelle making the most of contemporary hand-held lasers (we didn’t have those in the Nineties) and the new venue’s added height. 

The anus was well-probed for its capabilities and role in transgressive queer sex. Paintpig showed off his brush technique in a light-up box reminiscent of the Inquisition freezers in The Dome. Dean Walsh used his arse as an anchor to shake a glittery tail feather, and Mathew Bergan explained in a poignant tale of 1990s HIV-related shame about sex, that he now likes “to be sodomised in multiple positions”. This anal awakening came courtesy of the god Big Pharma who made it possible to pop a pill—PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis)—and use his body as it was intended. I left wondering what a show like this has to say to that joyful young couple who started my night. I suspect its appeal is now just looking in languor at how cool and transgressive we were back then…