It’s 3am on a Sunday and I’ve just had a coffee, which I’m chasing with a glass of bubbles for a burst of sugar and energy. I’m in the foyer of Carriageworks – a series of cavernous arts spaces housed at an old railway workshop in Redfern – sitting between two worlds.
The first is the Pleasure Arc, the ninth iteration of Day for Night: a 24-hour queer art party by Performance Space, with different promoters taking the lead at different hours. The performers rotate through the night – drag queens, burlesque performers, musicians, dancers – and slowly the crowd revolves too: revellers of all genders whose layers of clothing are peeled as the night progresses, particularly during the two-hour underwear party, Leak Your Own Nudes.
At 3am, the lights are green and white, shifting with the crowd. There are beds scattered through the venue, and in dark corners couples embrace. The house music demands engagement; it’s hard to be totally still. Even outside the bay, where people grab snacks, take breathers or talk without the obstacle of music, they still seem to be responding to the beat.
But the spell doesn’t end out there. This year, as part of WorldPride, there’s a second durational performance art event in the bay next door, which mostly takes the form of group exercise. Hosted by performance artist and self-proclaimed “sex clown” Betty Grumble, the 24 Hour Grumble Boogie has, past 3am, unfolded into a generous sense of chill. The lights are pink and sensuous.
Couples and friends have curled up on the floor and on the bench seats, some under blankets. Scattered cushions create intimate meeting spaces. Alone, a man dances. The stage is empty, the beats seeming to unfold of their own accord. We are waiting for the next performance.
Each party is its own planet; each planet has its own seasons. And earlier, before the sun went down, it all looked completely different. A chorus processional wove from outside Carriageworks, through the foyer, representing The Creation Project – artist Deborah Kelly’s “queer insurrectionary climate change religion”. This is a community-building, crowd-sourced, pleasure-based belief system expressed in ritual garments (James Lionel King), choreography (by Angela Goh) and the sharing of food (small cups of vegan, gluten-free mushroom broth offered to everyone in attendance).
The chorus performed SJ Norman’s eight-chapter Liturgy, which spins out into a soundscape by Stereogamous and towards the end becomes something almost infectious. “May we sustain each other,” the chorus proclaimed, and as they danced into the party and became a part of its moving constellation of bodies, earnestness gave way, finally, to irreverence. It was as though we had been blessed in our journey of pleasure-seeking.
After Creation, what else could be done but to honour it? Over in the 24-hour Grumble Boogie, I caught a video instructional guide to Ecosexercise by Dr Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stevens – a joyful, camp encouragement of self- and environmental love.
Each time I stepped into the Grumble Bookie – whether it was daylight or dark – it was always suffused with warmth. Whether it was meditative beats by HipHopHoe, performance art to honour ancestors, or Auslan-interpreted workouts led by Grumble, the sense was one of being held and uplifted; a celebration of self to celebrate and protect others. As we exercised together, led by Grumble, her refrain – “Thank you, body” – started to settle, morph and grow. Call it movement as communion.
Across the hours, we moved, and so did the parties. Performance art, drumming, dance. Meditation, video offerings, dance. As works designed to nurture community, as an expression of pride and solidarity, I found my highlights to be the personal and the recognisable. Talking in the middle of the night with friends I love; discovering another person I know across a room and rushing, delighted, towards them. Dancing under the lights, my body an expression of feeling. Eating hot chips on the floor, handed to me by event staff, as it reached 4am – the unexpected pleasures of food. Being offered a drink from a performer, and taking it.
As parties, they were fun, a little exciting. As vessels of curated live performance, they were a glimpse at creative minds trying to re-make the city into something more caring and more inclusive. I talked with lovely strangers turned comrades about what pride means to us, and how we find our people in Sydney, which is gorgeous and full of possibilities and terrifyingly tough to crack. As an opportunity for dialogue, it felt essential.
I lingered into the early hours, when you could almost taste the sunrise, to see Betty Grumble perform one more time. She danced with a diaphanous red fabric – waltzed with it like a lover, created new shapes out of nothing. She stood on her head and sprouted a sunflower. She made the inanimate alive. I was with my friends, blooming. She made us alive.
