Padraig Robinson, Gaze Against Imperialism, 168 pages, Metaflux Publishing, 2019
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The artists’ book Gaze Against Imperialism (Metaflux Publishing 2019), is an index for an experimental film not intended to be made. The reader, far for filling a gap, thus becomes a potential producer, or over hearer. A non pschoanalytic ear, that is, overly aware of the violence of naming; the dual incarceration of speech; and gay history in the framework of a merely liberated patriarchy. This work came out of a four year research project in the Irish Queer Archive looking at left activism within the early 1980s Gay Rights Movement. A long form text, A Quare Invisibility opens the book, initially tracking a conflict that emerges in the archive between activism and the social economy of the emerging “scene”. This long form text ends with finding a photocopy of a photograph depicting the early lobby group Gays Against Imperialism, who were in operation both in the Republic and North of Ireland. A Quare Invisibility is followed by eight semi-fictional scripts of dialogue with UCC librarian Cathal Kerrigan, a founder of Gays Against Imperialism.
