Stories about: arts
Famili: The electronic music project from Pasifika and First Nations communities
Midsumma Festival is Australia’s premier queer arts and cultural festival, bringing together a diverse mix of LGBTQIA+ artists, performers, communities and audiences from 19 Jan to 9 Feb 2020. Midsumma Festival is a proud supporter of Archer Magazine. FAMILI is a collaborative electronic music project highlighting contemporary artists from Pasifika and First Nation communities. Arising from …
Something shifted two years ago, when the first #MeToo found itself pinned to an alluding tweet. Unwittingly, we had stumbled into a new uprising: one laced with belated anger and hot breath. One that was necessary and tingling. One itching to be found in the pages of future history books. Art, business, hospitality, sport: every …
Gender Euphoria: Two trans artists chat about gender, performance and celebration
Australia’s biggest line-up of trans and gender-diverse performers is coming together to flip gender dysphoria on its head and explore the distinctive joys that can come with being trans: this is GENDER EUPHORIA! We recorded a conversation between two cast members, Harvey Zielinski and Mx Munro, discussing performance, celebration and empowerment of Trans communities and …
Where are the butch button-ups? The dungarees? Where are the rainbow buses? My exchange semester in Paris was a culture shock but not the type I was expecting. I had uprooted myself from Canberra, home to a visible queer community and the largest percentage of ‘YES’ votes for the same-sex marriage postal survey, to find …
Dashaun Wesley, the King of Vogue, sat down with Archer Magazine recently to chat all things ball culture and voguing. Dashaun was in town to host Sissy Ball, presented by Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras and Red Bull Music. What does ball culture mean to you? I say this a lot, but it’s the …
Queer Screen’s Mardi Gras Film Festival is always a highlight of our Mardi Gras calendar, because who doesn’t love the chance to sit back with some popcorn and (finally) see our communities and stories projected on the big screen?! We’ve trawled through the program of 120 films (54 feature length and 66 short films across …
James Welsby is a VCA-trained performer, choreographer and producer with a decade of professional experience. His group Phantom Limbs won “Best Dance” and “Melbourne Festival Discovery Award” at Melbourne Fringe 2013. He is the founder and artistic director of the hit internationally touring cult cabaret YUMMY. His drag alter ego is “Valerie Hex.” In Midsumma …
Internationally recognised UK drag queen Velma Celli chats with Belinda Quinn about vulnerability in drag, learning to like your creative self, and her cabaret, A Brief History of Drag.
Archer Asks: video director Triana Hernandez and electronic producer Geryon discuss their collaboration, Nerves
Director Triana Hernandez and electronic producer Geryon had been friends for a year before they decided to collaborate as artists together. Their debut collaboration, a music video made by Triana for Geryon’s new single Nerves, is intimate, visceral and considered in its creation. The track Nerves was prompted by Geryon’s experience going through gender-affirming surgery …
How do you make a picture of something you can’t see? I’ve been commissioned to create an artwork about hidden queer histories, using the collections of local archives. At the State Library of Victoria, the search term transgender brings up zero results in the multimedia, images and scripts collections. The article and book results are …
Clarence Chai is a gay Singapore-born Australian fashion designer and vintage clothing dealer. Clarence spoke to Angela Serrano about his work.
Every Wednesday night, inner-west Sydney came to life as lesbians bowed down to the drag kings. But what happens when a social scene fades?
Indulging in queer film, music, events and all entertainment is just part of celebrating Mardi Gras. So, when Queer Screen’s 2018 Mardi Gras Film Festival rolls around, we get pretty excited. With a long list of diverse films, it can be tricky to choose what to catch. We’ve compiled a list of our Archer Magazine …
Angela Serrano speaks to Candy Bowers about her latest production, One The Bear.
This is the third instalment of a four-part series on the state of queer young adult fiction in Australia. Read part one, and part two. The We Need Diverse Books movement has done a lot to highlight the need for greater representation of marginalised people and communities in young adult (YA) books. But with the …
Three years into my six-year relationship, I realised I was (and am) asexual. I’d been grappling with my sexual identity for a long time before that, without really knowing what I was. I knew I wasn’t gay, but that’s about the only option outside of the suburban heteronormativity that I was aware of. I didn’t …
Archer Asks: Cash Savage chats to her wife, Amy Middleton, editor of Archer Magazine
Cash Savage is a country-blues musician and a Melbourne institution. Her new album, One of Us, is currently at #1 on the Australian community radio charts. Here, she is interviewed by her wife Amy Middleton, founding editor of Archer Magazine, about her national tour, being a woman in music, politics and married life. Q: Hi …
Lady Sings It Better is a comedic cabaret made up of four women who perform misogynistic songs by the likes of Robin Thicke, Usher, and Nine Inch Nails. This tongue-in-cheek cabaret quartet is bringing their show to the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and Charlotte Long caught up with one of their members, Maeve Marsden, for a …
Esther Godoy is the editor of a new zine, Butch is not a dirty word, which had its launch in Melbourne in March. Lottie Turner caught up with Esther to find out more about the project. A: Tell us about BINADW? EG: Butch is not a dirty word is a publication that celebrates butch identity and culture.Whilst we …
“When are you going to stop writing about [Insert issue]?” An author’s guide to writing about your own oppression, part two
This is the second in a two-part series from author Charles O’Grady, whose play Kaleidoscope is currently showing in Sydney as part of the Official Mardi Gras program. Part one can be read here. 5. Everyone will assume everything you write is about you One of my best friends from high school came to see Kaleidoscope. …
“When are you going to stop writing about [insert issue]?” – an author’s guide to writing about your own oppression
This is the first in a two-part series from author Charles O’Grady, whose play Kaleidoscope is currently showing in Sydney as part of the Official Mardi Gras program. Part two can be read here. It’s hard to forget the very first time you share work with others that concerns your own identity. For me, it …
Popular TV is now littered with lesbians: Orphan Black, The L Word, Sugar Rush, Lip Service, Lost Girl, Glee… need I go on? Cheesy or not, we’re out there in prime time. What draws me to these programs is their realism: lesbians exist in their everyday ordinariness (well, and with superpowers). I can’t say the …