University of Montreal's Audiovisual Center; collection of Archives gaies du Québec

University of Montreal's Audiovisual Center; collection of Archives gaies du Québec

Post Audio

Jamie Ross

Club Gemini

EXHIBITION /
SEPTEMBER 6 TO OCTOBER 12, 2019

OPENING /
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 5PM

ARTIST TALK /
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 5H30 - 7H PM

This piece is presented in collaboration with ART POP. A companion piece to this sound piece will be installed at the Studio Rialto for the duration of the Pop Montreal festival (Sept 25-29).

For more than three centuries, people were imprisoned for having anal sex in the territories claimed by Quebec and Canada. In 1969, when the country was in the throes of the sexual revolution, the federal government granted an exception for sex between two people if practiced in strict privacy. If more than two people were present, a 14 year prison sentence was enforced.[1] By permitting gay sex in private, the government sought to stemnip the movement in the bud, whose growth was thought to pose a threat to national security.

Drawing from archival press clippings, correspondence, and spirit contact with queer ancestors, Jamie Ross’ sound installation Club Gemini grants a furtive glimpse into the eponymous first social club for lesbian, gay and trans people in Montreal, and its opening, one Saturday night in April 1969, before it was shut down a month later.

Gemini was opened by International Sex Equality Anonymous,[2] which was Quebec’s answer to the homophile civil rights movement, the international socialist precursor to the gay liberation movements of the ‘70s. Headed by spokesperson Paul Bédard, the group lobbied the Trudeau government for gay tolerance using proceeds from small publishing, nightlife, and organized sex work promoted internationally through Grecian Magazines from California.

These nights on the corner of de Maisonneuve and de la Montagne Streets stands a luxury pen boutique and chain dépanneur. The red velvet repaire of feeling has long been sloughed off by the deciduous falling of years to settle unnoticed in the downtown street. It remains as critical now as it was then to chronicle our ongoing suffering, but also to dance and flirt our still-resounding demands and collective declarations of ungovernability. Still, the corner is there, and the alley.

Although Paul was acquitted of charges of “gross indecency“ and “contributing to juvenile delinquency,“ he disappeared from the queer archive shortly thereafter, leaving an acephalous movement; a stillness. A final letter addressed to gay activists in Toronto was discovered, sent from a town 10 hours northeast of Montreal.

In the winter of 1969, a small wolf pack crossed the frozen St. Lawrence River, likely at Lac St. Louis, and established itself on Mount Royal. On one spring night, likely the same night Club Gemini opened at the base of the mountain, shots rang out. Montreal police officers had culled the wolves and removed their bodies from the gay cruising forest.

- Jamie Ross

 

[1] Anal sex was illegal in Canada until 1988, under criminal offences known as “gross indecency” and “buggery” in English, and ‘sodomie’ in French (Section 159 of the Criminal Code / Article 159 du Code criminel)

[2] (Note de traduction: Égalité sexuelle internationale anonyme)

 


BIO
Jamie Ross is a contemporary artist educated outside the university, a preschool teacher and witch. He works as a professional card diviner, a consulting spellworker and he was the first Pagan chaplain for federal prisons in Quebec, working inside until 2018. As a visual artist, he creates and documents queer communities grounded in the artistic traditions of his cultural and biological ancestors. Despite wide fagabondry, Jamie lives and works in Montreal.

 

Acknowledgements: 
Struts Gallery and Faucet Media Arts Centre Residency, the Archives gaies du Québec, the ArQuives (Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives).

Thank you to :
Hugo Dufour-Bouchard, Ross Higgins, Vincent Bonin, Evelyn Hart, Jay Thomas, Sébastien McLaughlin, Derrick Dixon, Ryan Josey, Evan Snavely, Gesig Isaac, Tolkein and Noah.