Queer Times Queer Walking 1940 to NOW – OPEN CALL for ARI Remix Stories, Images, Descriptions, Captions and due Thursday 30 April 2026
Youth culture is a defining characteristic of Queensland/Australian artist-run culture and heritage. Documenting youth culture is an essential aspect of the ARI Remix memory work we enact.
Hello!
Happy Lunar New Year 2026. A powerful year of the Fire Horse Ahoy!
It’s TRUE! We are growing ARI Remix this year with ‘EXTRA’ stories, images and captions. If you have a little story to contribute too please email us your web ready PDF or word document with around 600 words, 6 images, image descriptions, captions and web links to:
artsmedia[at]gmail[dot]com
by no later than the end of April 2026.
This year’s ‘creative archival assemblage’ theme is also artfully broad, accessible and inclusive in orientation as we grow this ‘living achives’ with independent stories to help strengthen and queer artist-run communities of practice in Queensland/Australia 1940 to Now.
All contributions are voluntary, welcomed and encouraged.
AND – If you need a wee bit of help to assemble your zine – into a modest anmd easy to share PDF form- let me know!
This delightful cinematic Metropolis-like image is from one of Brisbane Magandjin’s many radical and creative spaces in the 1940 to Now timeframe known as the Foco Club. The poster was made for its Opening Night celebrations, and event.
Located at Brisbane’s Town Hall this space opened on Sunday, 3 March 1968, it was located on the third floor of the Trades Hall building. It was deeply intertwined with a basement space in Petrie Bight known at The Scene. Much like the thriving, multidimensional, multimodal and ever artful youthculture expressed inside Brisbane Magandjin ARIs today, FOCO was a multifaceted extravaganza incorporating music, poetry, political discussion, film, literature, theatrical performance and art happenings, all vital parts of 1960s radical counterculture.
A theatrical performance troupe, THE TRIBE (originally named The Dire Tribe), was a collective of players from the University of Queensland who would stage experimental and avant garde ‘happenings’ for Brisbane audiences. The troupe included Doug Anders, Elizabeth (Libby) Nosworthy, Barbara Bacon, Barbara McCarthy, Di Fuller, Ross Gilbert, Robin Gurner, Brent McGregor, and Dianne Neale (who would become Di Zetlin after she and Larry married in late 1968). This experimental group gave performances of Samuel Beckett’s ‘dramaticule’, Come and Go, as well as Harold Pinter’s The Black and White, the controversial Motel by Jean-Claude van Itallie, and Wymark’s Coda. Audience participation was encouraged.s was conceived as a theatrical musical extravaganza featuring the music of The Wild Cherries, the band featured at FOCO’s opening night launch, together with an another band called The Rabbit Farm.
The Sydney-based theatrical group, The Human Body, made a visit to Brisbane in October 1968 to participate in an event called Vietnam Environment. Visiting from Sydney were John (Johnny) Allen, who coordinated the Vietnam Environment, Juno Gemes, Hugh Williams and Clem Gorman. The Human Body worked with TRIBE and other participants for one week to create an environmental event, using all the available spaces in the Trades Hall building.
In 1968, the Brisbane Trades Hall, was located at the intersection of Turbot and Edward Streets, became a key site for youth counter-culture with the opening of the FOCO Club on its third floor on March 3. Founded by student radicals, queers and bohemians FOCO hosted music, poetry, theatre, and radical films, quickly becoming a controversial,, vibrant hub before closing in 1969.
Read More Here! – A fabulous and wickedly radical Brisbane read titled:
“Australia’s most evil and repugnant nightspot”
Memories from those involved: The FOCO Club, Brisbane, 1968-69
Peter Gray with recollections by Frank Neilsen, can be accessed online and read in full here;
http://radicaltimes.info/PDF/FOCO.pdf
ARI Remix + EXTRA Zine is an arts-based, research and archival project focused on documenting and strengthening Australian Artist-Run Initiatives (ARIs) through a “living archives” as internet artwork approach. The community-based project includes an initiative titled “Strengthening Artist-Run Communities 2022-32” aimed at supporting the longer-term sustainability of ARIs through multidimensional stories, creative archival assemblages, exhibitions, installations and publications.
