QUEER NATION
QUEER NATION is a work that saw Matto Lucas transcribe an anonymously written 1990’s Queer Manifesto from a San Fran Pride March onto an Australia Post Motorbike.
The work will be auctioned off at the Midsumma Midwinta ball to raise money in 2015.
Photographs by Jason Cavanagh.
A response to the work and more photos can be seen here.
THE QUEER NATION MANIFESTO
Text of a manifesto originally passed out by people marching in the San Fran Gay Pride Day parade, 1990’s. –
How can I tell you. How can I convince you, brother; sister that your life is in danger. That everyday you wake up alive, relatively happy, and a functioning human being, you are committing a rebellious act. You as an alive and functioning queer are a revolutionary. There is nothing on this planet that validates, protects or encourages your existence. It is a miracle you are standing here reading these words. You should by all rights be dead.
If You’re Queer, Shout It!
Be proud. Do whatever you need to do to tear yourself away from your customary state of acceptance. Be free. Shout.
An Army of Lovers Cannot Lose
Being queer is not about a right to privacy; it is about the freedom to be public, to just be who we are. It means everyday fighting oppression; homophobia, racism, misogyny, the bigotry of religious hypocrites and our own self-hatred. (We have been carefully taught to hate ourselves.) And now of course it means fighting a virus as well.
Being queer means leading a different sort of life. It’s not about the mainstream, profit-margins, patriotism, patriarchy or being assimilated. It’s not about executive directors, privilege and elitism. It’s about being on the margins, defining ourselves; it’s about gender-fuck and secrets, what’s beneath the belt and deep inside the heart; it’s about the night. Being queer is “grass roots” because we know that everyone of us, every body, every cunt, every heart and arse and dick is a world of pleasure waiting to be explored. Everyone of us is a world of infinite possibility.
We are an army because we have to be. We are an army because we are so powerful. (We have so much to fight for; we are the most precious of endangered species.) And we are an army of lovers because it is we who know what love is. Desire and lust, too. We invented them. We come out of the closet, face the rejection of society, face firing squads, just to love each other! Every time we fuck, we win.
