keywords: criminalization, mythology, bathhouses, public vs private, bawdy house, gross indecency, sodomy, homonationalism, pink washing, state multiculturalism, Canada
project description: DBtH! is a silent looping video projection intended for screening on public surfaces in gay neighbourhoods across Canada. It beckons viewers with sensuous displays of queer public affection paired with scrolling text that both provokes and informs. This site-specific work claims public space for queer intimacy and political imagining at a time when Canadians are being encouraged by both the federal government and LGBT civil society organizations to celebrate the so-called 50th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality. Critical of the state mythologies and top down benevolence, this piece demands a more critical interpretation of Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s 1969 Criminal Code reform that failed to stop the regular brutality, disregard, police violence, arrests, harassment, firings, and bar and bathhouse raids that continue in the wake of the supposed decriminalization of homosexuality. Whose legacy are we celebrating? Whose lives are disappeared by convenient origin myths? What’s the cost of misremembering? And why have so many gays and lesbians been so eager to embrace a demonstrably false anniversary?
collaborators: The bathhouse raid data utilized in this project was gleaned from Tom Hooper’s brilliant and thorough scholarship. You can learn more about the bathhouse raids in Canada here and follow Tom on twitter here.
documentation:
- Don’t Believe the ’69 Hype Panel with Ryan Conrad, Tom Hooper, Ummni Khan, and Darah Teitel @ SAW Video’s Knot Project Space – 20 August 2019.
- Don’t Believe the ’69 Hype Panel with Ryan Conrad, Tom Hooper, Emma McKenna, and Andil Gosine @ Toronto Queer Film Fest – 9 November 2019.
- “Pride: ‘This ain’t no Golden Jubilee!’ — 1969, the anger and the myths,” The Ottawa Citizen, 14 August 2019.
Ottawa street photography by Mathieu Rioux