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Deep Listen: Recoding Utopias


27 Aug 2020

We revisit a podcast series produced by collective Feminist Internet for our Deep Listen feature this week, with an episode focusing on the importance of queer spaces in London.  
 
Feminist Internet is a group of artists and designers working to advance internet equalities for women and other marginalised groups through critical practice. Last year we worked with Feminist Internet to produce a four-part podcast series, which saw the group explore the theme of 'recoding spaces', both online and offline, with the aim of diversifying internet spaces metaphorically, physically and digitally, intercepting homogenous zones and breaking the filter bubble. The podcasts aimed to not only expose these spaces, but to regenerate them in new and inclusive ways. 
 
For this week’s Deep Listen, we share Feminist Internet’s Recoding Utopias, one of four episodes from their podcast series, in which they explore what it means to be queer and the act of queering itself. With contributions from Amy LaméLucas LaRochelleNadine Artois of Pxssy PalaceJim MacSweeneyIngo Cando, Feminist Internet members Clara Finnigan and Conor Rigby speak to creatives and activists who are finding new ways of transforming and performing in queer spaces, and why these spaces are so vital to London and its future; a city that since 2006 has lost more than half of its LGBTQIA+ spaces.  
 
The Feminist Internet podcast was commissioned and produced by Somerset House Studios with the support of the UAL Creative Computing Institute.

Contributors  

Amy Lamé  
Amy Lamé is the night Czar of London, appointed in 2016 by Sadiq Khan. She is co-founder of the Olivier Award-winning arts company and club night Duckie, and co-founded RVT Future, a voluntary LGBT+ community group campaigning to preserve the iconic Royal Vauxhall Tavern. She broadcasted for a decade on BBC Radio London, and now hosts Sunday afternoons on BBC6 Music.  

Lucas LaRochelle 
Lucas LaRochelle is a multidisciplinary designer and researcher examining queerness, technology, and architecture. They are the founder of Queering The Map, a community generated counter-mapping project that archives queer moments, memories, and histories in relation to physical space. Queering The Map received an Honorary Mention for the 2018 Prix Ars Electronica, was longlisted for the Lumen Prize for Digital Art and the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards, and is included in the Library of Congress LGBTQ+ Studies Web Archive. 

Nadine Artois of Pxssy Palace  
Nadine Artois is a queer, femme, Desi DJ, community leader and cultural consultant based in London who has been working at the intersection of nightlife and activism since 2015. They co-founded Pxssy Palace, a collective that creates spaces which prioritise QTIPOC as well as educating wider audiences so that queer, trans & intersex people of colour can live their lives with more authenticity and acceptance . 
 
Jim MacSweeney
Jim MacSweeney is the manager of London’s only LGBTQ+ bookshop, Gays the Word and has been for nearly 30 years. Located in Bloomsbury and founded in 1979, Gays the Word has been an iconic venue selling a wide range of books and serving as a meeting point for communities and organisations - including Lesbians and Gays Support the miners in the early 80s, and most recently TransLondon.  

Ingo Cando
Ingo Cando is the founder & creator of Wotever World, which includes Bar Wotever a Queer cabaret hosted every Tuesday by the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, the Queer Fayre, FMAS, Non Binary Cabaret and much more. Ingo is also a LGBTQIA+ Social Consult for venues and organisations. 

Hosts 
Clara Finnigan & Conor Rigby