The Past Becomes Our Future

Image: artist activists Yul Scarf, Ray Delaney and Enoch Mailangi. Photo: Jade D'Amico

In 2019 the Australian Government provided a $6.7 million fund to the Australian National Maritime Museum so that its replica of the Endeavour could circumnavigate the country, marking the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s arrival. Last month, during the 2020 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade in Sydney, the Department of Homo Affairs (DOHA), comprising a group of artists and activists who focus their work around Australia’s border policies and manifestations of white nationalism, intercepted the Liberal Government’s float to draw focus to the implications of the Endeavour route. The action garnered national media attention. 

At NAVA’s The Past Becomes Our Future event held at I.C.E. in Parramatta earlier this month, we acknowledged that these current actions aren’t rooted in the now, but in fact join a long line of important histories and activations which informs what groups like DOHA do today. The Past Becomes Our Future was a conversation about the role of art in world-building and community mobilisation, with five artist activists who referenced Sydney Mardi Gras as a fluid case study that connected their cross-generational experiences. At the event Ray Delaney, an activist from the Noonukle Clan in North Stradbroke Island, shared stories of the first official First Nations float in 1988, which was created in resistance to Australia’s bicentennial celebrations of 200 years since the invasion of Warrane by the first fleet of British convict ships. “Dancer Malcolm Cole, he was dressed up there as Captain Cook. And all the white young men, they were dressed up as convicts. I think there were about 20 of them that pulled the boat up through the parade, up the street. They volunteered to do that because they got it. They got the message”, shared Ray Delaney with the young people from Twenty10’s Outwest program present.

“We just felt the need to do this at the time. That was because of the anti-bicentennial, the 200th anniversary of white Australian history in this Country.”  Ray Delaney connected this moment to their experiences resisting racial hierarchies and gender binaries in the 1980s and spoke to languages and intersectional politics happening at the time.

When genres of fantasy merge with authoritative realities, dominant models of moving through the world are recomposed. This is the strength of world-building practices and what ties together the experiences of each speaker. Other speakers included Alissar Chidiac, Dj Gemma, and Beau James, who also came together in a much-needed intergenerational exchange. Each speaker shared their experiences with the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade as a fluid case study, invoking the radical roots of the movement as a transformative site of protest. It became evident over the course of the night that Sydney’s Mardi Gras has been used to platform a radical politic for change since its inception by the activists themselves.

For example, Alissar Chidiac spoke to her experiences with the two marches on June 24 1978, as well as the subsequent involvement in protests at police stations and courthouses that came to represent Mardi Gras in the 1970s and 1980s. She shared insights into the relationships between LGBTQI+ activism and the ecology of wider political cultural networks which took place on Gadigal land. An archival image from the 1982 Women + Arts Festival which was held outside of the AGNSW moved us into a discussion where she amplifies a conversation we had via email a week prior – “in taking a bigger picture, i could also comment that other movements, like IWD, have also become established, corporatised and normalised – with social advantages and political disadvantages – as with any assimilation and commodification of radical ideas, language and reformist movements – not exactly disaster capitalism, but certainly not revolution!”

Beau James’ art performance practice is one of clowning and political satire. They shared examples of their different Mardi Gras and other performances. Notably, they discussed their experiences in the 40th anniversary of the Mardi Gras and the 30th anniversary of the First Nations Mardi Gras float that Ray had spoken about earlier in protest of the 1988 bicentennial celebrations. “We got the beautiful Malcolm Cole’s costume back out, which for everyone who was on that float, looking back at Ray and those who had marched before us, they were the reason why we had marched. So it was a very very beautiful moment, there was a lot of consultation that went on with the family around that - I can't speak with my mouth open, so I speak with my body and what I represent.” Beau went on to explain a splendidly re-visioned black Captain Cook portrayed by Chris Bonney, which took centre stage on the First Nations 2018 float. They examined their performance in this years’ alternative Mardi Gras recovery party Club Kooky, and spoke about how reclaiming space and language challenged gender binaries, whilst being a vehicle for resistance, collaboration and community mobilisation from the late 1990s until now.

Dj Gemma shared stories of her contribution to the work of activist group ‘Women For Survival’ in the mid 1980s. The group organised through cold calls from an office space in Chinatown. They organised against extractive forces such as the largest uranium mines in Woomera, where Gemma was involved in weekly protests and documentations of the quantities of uranium extracted from the site. One such story involved marching in silence with local Elders through infra-red surveilled fields late in the evening to protest the mines. The group of women walked for hours, holding a giant sculpture of a tampon they had made from papier-mâché earlier before plugging the mine. Gemma was also involved as an alternative Mardi Gras club organiser after 1992, when capitalist and corporate co-option of Mardi Gras began to emerge. You could say it has had a push of ‘No Politics at the Dinner Table’ becoming the norm of the Parade. These club nights became a fundamental space for community and resistant performance practices.

Yul Scarf from DOHA wrapped up the night by saying, “There are a lot of ways to do activism. But I think that it is essential to have community and connection and vitality and generative modes of being together.” This is particularly important in the instance of the parade considering that, as activist and lawyer Paul Kidd wrote, “We have now come full-circle, from a march against police violence that resulted in police violence, to a march that utilises police violence against those who challenge oppression, corporate greed or conservatism.”

There is a depth and sweetness in reflecting with learning and building intergenerationally. “We didn’t have language like community engaged art or art activism, we just did this work because we had to,” Alissar Chidiac recounts.  “The day after the event, my thoughts were about our shared experience of deep listening; it was simply compelling. The immediate rawness of each person's stories, the invoking of names and places, the organic archiving of past, present and future.” In a brief email exchange, Alissar and Yul discussed: “When we are critical of Mardi Gras, we are not being critical of anyone’s experience of Mardi Gras. We are critical of the power structures that have grown into the event and that replicate the violence of capitalism and the state. At the same time, we know Mardi Gras remains a significant event for many people in ways that can be life changing and affirming.”

The night came to an end, and a young person from Twenty10 shared: “We don't get taught any of this sort of stuff in school. We are so lucky to have people and communities like this where we can all talk.” Each of our speakers expressed an eagerness to continually come together and organise intergenerationally. This intergenerational, collective organising could look like more of these spaces where we all get to meet each other for the first time, and just talk.

- Enoch Mailangi and Justine Youssef