A Participatory Action Research approach to exploring experiences of 'queer belonging' in alternative nightlife spaces
Queer Belonging at Riposte
Queer art raves are a nightlife phenomenon, characterised by their fusion of rave, performance art, visual art, and eccentric outfits. Riposte is an example of a London based queer art rave, running bi-monthly events which centre community and connection. Having experienced the transformative potential of these raves first hand, Freya was compelled to delve into the qualities that make these events so powerful in fostering belonging.
Structured as an exploratory, open-ended inquiry into the experiences of attendees at Riposte, the research was driven by a simple underlying question: "
What makes Riposte, Riposte?"
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Posed with the challenge of collecting data from attendees at a rave, traditional social science research methods of data collection such as surveys and interviews felt overly formal and distant from the context of Riposte. With performance art an integral part of the fabric of Riposte, Freya designed a data-collection outfit as a roaming performance piece to be worn at Riposte. Through blending into the absurd aesthetics of existing performances at Riposte, the data-collection outfit helped to transcend the barriers between researcher and participants, encouraging spontaneous interactions and questions.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Collage of visual inspiration for designing the data-collection outfit
Scan of response cards from Riposte attendees
The suit was designed to carry all of the necessary resources and tools required in traditional data collection - participant information sheets, consent forms, pens and answer sheets. To ensure mobility and to creatively display these items, everything was attached to the suit in clear plastic sleeves. Small plastic bags covered the suit, containing the question/answer cards and consent forms.
Transforming this process into a participatory performance was achieved through using specific visual cues on the suit. Attaching a sign reading ‘Can I Probe You?’ to the front and back of the suit was a provocation designed to invite response, curiosity, and questions. This, paired with the visual absurdity of a person covered entirely in small plastic bags, prompted interaction, helping to overcome the barrier of initial approachability. In many ways, the visual absurdity of the outfit became the participant recruitment tool, attracting people who were naturally curious and keen to be involved in the project.
The procedure that participants followed, opening the bag, removing the paper, leaning on me to write answer, returning answer to the bag, sealing the bag, was a choreographed process echoing elements of ritual through repetition. It also necessitated the tactile involvement of participants, increasing their degree of participation in the process. This drew upon the overlap between rave and ritual and the potential for performance to heighten this experience.
- Auto-ethnographic immersive Film
Communicating Insights
​​​​​​​Alongside a final report sharing the mixed methods process and conclusions of the research, an auto-ethnographic film was also produced. This immersive video is inspired by the qualities that distinguish Riposte from other nightlife events, as revealed through the data collected. Drawing on these insights alongside an auto-ethnography Freya did on themself in the space, this video takes viewers on a journey though the many layers of Riposte. It aims to communicate how many different and contrasting experiences are held within the same event, facilitating transformation and multiple forms of belonging.
Video sharing an immersive journey through Riposte
Collage design for data-collection performance outfit
Data Collection through Performance Art
Images from the data collection on the night - Freya wearing the suit
Visual thematic analysis of responses - pulling out key words and themes
The analysis
Having gathered over thirty written responses from attendees at the rave, these were then analysed using a mixed methods approach - involving both qualitative and quantitative analysis. As shown in the visualisation above, the qualitative strand consisted of a thematic analysis to draw out core themes and recurring words.
Alongside this, the data was analysed quantitatively through Natural Language Processing and sentiment analysis, to evaluate responses in relation to Valance, Arousal and Dominance. In essence, this process converted qualitative, textual data, into numerical data through assigning 'scores' to each word. These scores related to how positive/negative it is (V), how intense an emotion it evokes (A) and the degree of control it exerts (D). To investigate whether a general sentiment of belonging existed at Riposte, a comparison between the mean VAD values of the Riposte corpus and the word ‘belong’ was done. ​​​
The
takeaways
Words such as ‘art’, ‘make’, ‘act’, ‘kinky’ and ‘open’ allude to the activities that people engage with at Riposte, emerging as similar to 'belonging' in ratings for both pleasantness (V) and agency (D). Through extrapolating these observations, these words could be understood as core qualities of the belonging experienced at Riposte. These could provide evidence for queer forms of belonging, reinforcing the importance of self-expression and exploration in ‘queer belonging’ at Riposte. However, further investigation into these links should be pursued using a larger sample size to articulate a more detailed understanding of what ‘queer belonging’ may be.
This research also revealed limitations in the use of the VAD dataset within queer communities in its current form. Despite being the most comprehensive and universally used compilation of VAD values, the ‘Norms of valence, arousal and dominance’ dataset (Warriner, Kuperman and Brysbaert, 2013) does not reflect the reappropriation of words within the queer community. Fundamentally, the word ‘queer’ has VAD values much lower than expected, suggesting that most people involved in developing these VAD averages, had negative associations with the word ‘queer’ in 2013 (when the dataset was developed). These are misaligned with the positive sentiment seen in the Riposte corpus, which can be best observed through the proximity of ‘queer’ to high valence words in sentences. For example, ‘queer joy’ and ‘lovely queer…’.