Let’s Talk About Gay Sex & Drugs is an open communication forum for anyone to come talk about how they perceive sex and drug use amongst the gay male community of London. No judgement and no villainising drugs for the sake of it, just an open and honest discussion. Everyone who wants to speak gets five minutes and all are welcome, whether to speak or listen. Free entry.   We’re honoured to join the Alien Sex Club for our August event, where we’ll be discussing the them of ‘aliens’. Most of us felt alienated growing up as gay, how come now some of us feel alienated by the modern gay scene? Is drug use part of that sense of alienation and how far is it intertwined with our sex? How far do we live in the alien’s shadow of HIV?    

Artist Tim Spooner and David Stuart (dispersed throughout Alien Sex Club)       A succession of encounters and exchanges between spongy puppet protagonists which consider ChemSex on emotional and molecular levels. In a series of substance transfers between absorbent and porous bodies, patterns of perforations, effervescences and surrenders repeat relentlessly.     Tim Spooner is an artist working in performance, painting and sculpture. His work uses materials and objects in ways that reveal unexpected properties, aiming to open up perspectives beyond the human scale. Fundamentally interested in unpredictability, his live work is an exercise in balancing control with a lack of it in the handling of the materials he is working with.   David Stuart is the Substance Use Lead at London’s 56 Dean Street (GUM/HIV services), addressing the sexualised drug use behaviours of MSM, commonly referred to as ChemSex. David has developed tailored interventions and care pathways for ChemSex trends, and has been instrumental in putting ChemSex on the Public Health agenda as well as pioneering the NHS and community responses. David also manages the Dean Street Wellbeing programme, which engages communities in sexual wellbeing dialogue by the means of creative, fun and educational public events.

Vera Chok and Dr Michael Brady (running time 20mins)   Photo by Lucy Pawlak   but I don’t know Frequent testing for HIV = Good Why We see things we see things where What                    Testing Are these                    testing moments? Yes                    Good Everything is surmountable, darling Everything a promise, and you                    Test how I feel about   A lyric composition of live and recorded text inspired by conversations between Dr Michael Brady and Vera Chok, grown from the frustration and ease surrounding HIV detection.   Vera Chok is a writer and performance maker. She makes work which draws on theatrical practices and anthropology. Real and imagined spaces are created and collage employed to test connection and miscommunication and the duration of each. Solo performances include work for Tempting Failure Festival, Live Art Speed Date, Nathan Evans’ I Love You But…, Fanny Peculiar’s Hellfire Club, Anti-Slam, and Mary Bijou Cabaret. Vera is part of the National Theatre company, and has appeared in the West End, and in TV, films and radio. Vera founded saltpeter, an experimental theatre company, and The Brautigan Book Club, an international creative society, and produced far-reaching projects to instigate long-term positive change in the areas of diversity, literacy, and artistic expression.   Michael Brady is a Consultant in Sexual Health and HIV at Kings College Hospital, where he is the Clinical Lead for Sexual Health Services. Working in South London, where rates of sexually transmitted infections and HIV are particularly high, has meant Michael has focused on developing new models of both sexual health and HIV services that aim to improve access and patient experience. These include the development of community based HIV services in partnership with primary care, delivering and evaluating nurse delivered HIV and sexual health services and the provision of on-line services.

Artist Jordan McKenzie and Dr Ford Hickson Image taken from How To Spot A Cocaine User – Step Three: Perspiring   Come to my party…Loads of Charlie is a collaboration between Dr Ford Hickson, course director in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and visual performance artist Jordan McKenzie. Based on interviews and articles about chemsex between gay and bisexual men including the fashion designer Alexander McQueen, whose party invite forms the title of the piece, this durational work will be performed by Yeast London Cabaret. Arriving as if rejects from a Warhol set, the unearthly Oozing Gloop, Finn Love, Rodent DeCay and Ellis D assemble for a first reading of a prose/poem composed by McKenzie and London based writer Andy White. Watch them stumble over their lines and through the maze, as they make mistakes, kill the script and maybe fuck it up completely. It could be boring, it may well be an anti-climax, it may even be the most cringe-worthy thing you have ever witnessed but rest assured, it’ll be a hook-up you’ll never forget.   Jordan McKenzie is a visual and performance artist and lecturer in Fine Art at the University for the Arts London. Working across the fields of performance, drawing, sculpture, installation and film, his work has been shown in many prestigious galleries, arts centres and festivals including Tate Britain, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Arnolfini Gallery, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Bluecoat Gallery, Museu Serralves Portugal, DOLL space Switzerland, International Festival of Performance Art Russia and Grace Space New York.   Dr Ford Hickson lecturer in health promotion and a Course Director for the MSc Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Ford worked at the Terrence Higgins Trust and at Frontliners in the late 1980s and joined Sigma Research in 1990. Sigma Research joined LSHTM in 2011. Ford has spent the last twenty five years researching and describing patterns of sex between men, particularly with reference to HIV transmission. He lead the design of England’s National Gay Men’s Sex Survey 1993-2014. In 1998 he co-authored the national HIV prevention strategy for gay and bisexual men (Making It Count) with a group of community health promoters, which was subsequently adopted by the Department of Health. His doctoral thesis was on Authority, HIV and Sex between Men. Ford has co-authored 38 peer reviewed journal articles and two books, as well as numerous monographs and book chapters.  

  Exhibition tour with artist John Walter and curator Ellen Mara De Wachter