London Metropolitan Archives: Flights of Fancy

The London Metropolitan Archives will be holding another of their LGBT study days early next month. The arts are powerful. Sometimes they are disturbing, dangerous and real instruments of change. They provide people with ways of making their presence felt, their thoughts known and voices heard. Be inspired and challenged by FLIGHTS OF FANCY, past and present.

Programme:
The First Gay Kiss? Sex, Scholars and Ancient Egypt.
Dr Richard Parkinson, British Museum
Richard Parkinson will discuss controversial images of men kissing from Ancient Egypt and how they have been used in studies of ancient sexuality. He’ll consider how Ancient Egypt has featured in gay works of art and how ancient same sex desire can be presented in Museum displays, drawing on the British Museum’s recently launched webtrail.

The Coming Out of Comics
Paul Gravett, author, curator, lecturer and director of the Comica Festival, London
LGBT comics creators have traditionally been published episodically, producing newspaper strips in the LGBT press, short pieces in pornographic magazines and in sporadic fanzines and underground anthologies. Graphic novels offer an exciting platform through bookshops and libraries for extended, complete strip narratives in book form. This select survey will consider the distinct qualities, techniques and contents of six key contemporary international graphic novelists who have developed long-form "literary" comics: Howard Cruse (Stuck Rubber Baby, USA), Ralf König (Maybe, Maybe Not, Germany), Ariel Schrag (Potential/Likewise, USA), Kiriko Nananan (Blue, Japan), Fabrice Neaud (Journal, France), and Alison Bechdel (Fun Home, USA).

National Gay Icons
Professor Richard Dyer, King’s College, London
Recently the National Portrait Gallery held a well mounted exhibition entitled 'Gay Icons', the first of its kind anywhere in the world. What did they have in mind? What is a gay icon? This presentation will look at a wide range of images of people who were and were not chosen for the show.

Richard Dyer teaches Film Studies at King's College London.
The Creation and Reception of ‘Victim’.
Brian Robinson Senior Programmer, London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival
The BFI National Archive owns Dirk Bogarde's personal collection of scripts which includes a heavily annotated script of 'Victim'(1961)and the film is available at the BFI

Mediatheque alongside some key BBC documentaries of the period. This presentation explores the context of the campaign for law reform, other Basil Dearden social

issue films, the impact of 'Victim' and its marketing campaign.
Gay Sweatshop, Section 28 and Community
Dr Catherine Silverstone - Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies Queen Mary, University of London
From the mid-1970s to the late-1990s Gay Sweatshop produced a substantial body of work including plays, readings, workshops, pantomimes, cabarets, and performance clubs. In this paper Catherine will consider elements of Gay Sweatshop’s archive of their 1988 production This Island’s Mine, held at Royal Holloway, University of London, in relation to Section 28, homophobia and community.

sh[OUT] or should that be sh[OOSH]
Dianne Barry - documentary filmmaker, artist and curator
Before it was even launched, the Daily Mail released a ‘tirade of homophobic rhetoric’ against GoMA’s exhibition on contemporary art and LGBTi human rights, sh[OUT]. The paper’s concerted opposition to the exhibition and community arts projects intensified over the summer months. Rather than defend freedom of expression Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art chose to censor artists’ work. In this session filmmaker and artist, Dianne Barry, describes how GoMA’s response enraged and alienated the artists and communities it had aimed to represent, provoking a storm of creative protest.

Plus practical workshops and discussion groups.

This year we are joined by Poet and Musician Nick Field who will perform a selection from his repertoire
Nick is a produced playwright, harpist and spoken word artist. His poetry is soulful, bittersweet and lyrical, exploring themes as diverse as identity and the joys and heartaches of travel. Nick has performed his work widely, highlights this year included the vaults at Shunt the Green Man Festival and a commission from Apples and Snakes to write and perform a one-man show.

Flights of Fancy
Saturday 5 December 2009 9.30am - 4.30pm £10 / £7.50
London Metropolitan Archives, 40, Northampton Road, EC1R 0HB
Booking / Further Information: Call on 020 7332 3851 email ask.lma@cityoflondon.gov.uk