Glenn Walls – SUPER CREATIVE GRID

Published November 2024. Taylor & Francis. International Journal of Cartography.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23729333.2024.2419692

ABSTRACT

Between the 1970s and early 2000s, before queer visibility came to the fore in Sydney, many people living under heteropatriarchy developed ways to interact at queer sites. Unintelligible to the mainstream cultural imagination, the connections enabled by these sites allowed queer life to flourish. However, when they became known to other social groups the sites became epicentres of catastrophic violence, linked to 88 murders. Drawing on Vinicius Almeida’s (2022) concept of queer cartography, this article discusses an ongoing series of artworks titled Massacre – Bodies That Matter that challenges the heteronormativity embedded in urban space and highlights the violence inflicted on a marginalised group who during this period were fighting for their human right of recognition. Aided by religious organisations and institutions that denounced queer life as unacceptable to mainstream society, a collective of individuals and gangs took it upon themselves to rid society of this supposed abhorrent scrouge. In identifying forgotten queer spaces, mapping can explore the intersection of queer identity and violence. The article and artworks argue for the legitimacy of queer life, addressing the extent of violence perpetrated against the LGBTQI+ community in Sydney in the period discussed. This contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the historical and spatial dimensions of violence against the LGBTQI+ community, which extends to a consideration of the reductive aesthetic language of modernist maps obscure a problematic relationship to identity and sexuality.

“Our blood runs in the streets and in the parks and in casualty and in the morgue 

Our own blood, the blood of our brothers and sisters, has been spilt too often … 

Our blood runs because in this country our political, educational, legal and religious systems actively encourage violence against us …” 

• One in Seven Manifesto, Sydney Star Observer, April 5, 1991 (Sydney Star Observer, 1991). 

Keywords  

LGBTQI+ visibility, queer violence,  queer cartography,  Sydney queer hate crimes. 

Link to the full research paper below.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23729333.2024.2419692

Glenn Walls. Massacre (after Felix). Digital Print on 4 × A3 paper stacks. 2018/2024.

Cite this paper.

Walls, G. (2024). Massacre – Bodies the Matter: the mapping of queer violence in Sydney, Australia between 1970 and 2010. International Journal of Cartography, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/23729333.2024.2419692