Cirrus@Austlit

'What is a queer black drag aesthetic? Who are the architects of this work? How do you go about producing or curating an event that celebrates queer black drag culture? These are questions that emerged when, quite by accident, independent producer Harley Stumm (Intimate Spectacle) approached me as a then Co-Artistic Director of Moogahlin Performing Arts, inviting the company to curate an event for the Near and Now Festival at 107 Projects in Redfern. The time slot offered was 24-25 February 2017, right in the middle of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival season. After extensive consultation with members of the Moogahlin artistic leadership, and with various black LGBTQI+ community members, it became clear that there was a need for and interest in initiating a queer black arts programme to be presented in Redfern on Gadigal land, an area that historically has been known as a gathering space for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from across the country. As the lead creative, I never intended to view the project as research. However, this special issue has provided the opportunity to reflect on the process of creating and producing a queer black event, and subsequent events, and to contribute to the discourse on Indigenous queer performance in Australia. This article is therefore assembled from my memories and experiences, though partial, of curating four annual events known as Koori Gras. In framing this discussion, I am informed by the writings of Gayatri Gopinath, specifically in relation to the idea of curation as a practice of 'care', and extend this notion to also include the concept of 'kin' when investigating Indigenous queer curation and a black drag aesthetic in Australia. I am similarly influenced by the critical writings of Indigenous scholars such as Sandy O'Sullivan and Nat Woodall in consideration of the social, cultural and political aspirations of black drag performers in Australia. In addition, I include a timeline of Koori Gras and list the key creative personnel and performers who contributed to the overall success of the many programmes that Koori Gras platformed. This documentation is constructed from materials sourced from project production schedules and contact lists from Moogahlin company archives.' (Publication abstract)