Harold Offeh is the artist whose Let’s Talk About Chemsex launched Portraits of Recovery’s first Recoverist Month, a five-week festival that began on Manchester Pride weekend in 2023. This project continues from March 2024, leading up to the next Recoverist Month festival in September. leon clowes caught up with Harold about how this co-creative artistic initiative arose, and how it is shaped around, and in response to, the chemsex scene amongst LGBTQ+ communities.
leon clowes: What are the origins of the Let’s Talk About Chemsex project?
Harold Offeh: It began with an invitation from Mark Prest. I’d been aware of Portraits of Recovery and their work with some really interesting artists. Mark reached out with an email and said that he wanted to discuss a project that I might be interested in. We met in London, I was working on Mindfully Dizzy at the Science Gallery – this was pre-pandemic. He talked about wanting to do a project with an artist that investigated the contested discourse around chemsex.
leon clowes: How does Let’s Talk About Chemsex and working with Portraits of Recovery fit within your artistic practice?
Harold Offeh: I’ve often been interested in responding to histories, social situations, and social contexts. I’ve done quite a few projects in the past working with archives and collections. I was invited to develop a commission for Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, an outdoor festival programmed by the Mayor of Toronto’s cultural office, where they invite artists to develop projects in unusual spaces – not just galleries – so on the street, or in non-traditional art spaces.
Through Nuit Blanche, there was an opportunity to respond to the city. That’s always a tricky thing in terms of coming in as an outsider. Somebody told me that Toronto has one of the oldest queer archives in the world going back to the 60s. It’s housed in this big townhouse in the centre of town. On a research trip, I paid a visit and found a lot of rich materials and became interested in them.
The Nuit Blanche event was an explicitly 12-hour festival that started at 7 pm and ended at 7 am and was about animating the night-time. I felt there was a kind of synergy between queer experiences of the night. I was thinking about that and how I could create a platform for it. I then moved on to have many conversations with lots of different people and pulled out their various stories and experiences. These ranged from police bathhouse raids as late as 2000, to the disappearing gay village in Toronto because of gentrification. That’s a familiar story! Sex workers, cruising spots and so on. The archive has these amazing interviews by a researcher in the 70s that were with elderly gay men reminiscing about encounters in Toronto’s hidden cruising spots in the 40s.
I built Down at the Twilight Zone, as part of Nuit Blanche around that, and this particular conversational approach is what Mark at Portraits of Recovery was interested in, drawing on histories or conversations and building events around that.
leon clowes: Where are you at now with your thinking about Let’s Talk About Chemsex, and how do you involve people in the project?
Harold Offeh: I’ve been very conscious about creating a collaborative structure. That partly meant reaching out to several individuals and organisations, from academics, clinicians, charities and arts organisations to build a framework. One of the values informing the project is to destigmatize or not bring in shame – which is part of a queer experience. There is a lot of stigma and shame around chemsex practices and people’s experiences.
In terms of facilitating this project, for me, the most important thing is creating a structure that allows people to engage with the subject and bring their knowledge and expertise. My role is to shape a platform to articulate collective stories by talking to a lot of people, and central to that is Mark. I’ve been conscious of trying to find activities and forums that are led by care, and led by the idea of providing support, but also a platform for people who are interested in using the arts and creativity to connect.
These values underpin the project and we’ve had lots many discussions about how we create or set up events. Art with a capital ‘A’ can be quite intimidating and can get in the way. I’m often looking for things that will build connections, are playful and fun, and that will engender curiosity. I draw on popular culture and art a lot and that led me back to 90s rappers, Salt-N-Pepa. People know ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’, but there is also the B-side ‘Let’s Talk About Aids.’ It seems tame now, but it came out in 1991 and there was a backlash in the States particularly about ‘Let’s Talk About Aids. ‘
Both of those tracks were about destigmatizing and creating a public discourse. The idea of using a hip-hop pop song to get on the radio and to provoke in a playful and fun way. In the music video, that whole vibe is cheeky. That was a useful framework in terms of thinking about an approach, and Let’s Talk About Chemsex is partly informed by that. What we’ve drawn from this is the role that music plays particularly within queer culture, but more broadly within popular culture. People often express themselves through their choice of music. Back in my day, it was mixtapes. I’m interested in playlist culture and how practice speaks to people’s identification. How people have playlists for walking the dog, the morning playlist, and so on.
This identification with music and lyrics has been an anchor for the project, in terms of inviting people to speak of their experiences. I’m always conscious about being extractive. I had these nightmares of these sessions where everyone’s in a circle and it’s ‘So tell me about your … you know… what do you do on a Friday night?’ That’s awful [laughing]. I don’t want to be that person with a notepad asking, ‘So, how many people are involved?’ For me, creative activity should always be playful, building conversation and dialogue. The act of making art, the act of being creative, can facilitate conversations, allowing people – if they want – to share their experiences through the process of being creative.
Out of this has come the proposition that Let’s Talk About Chemsex is an invitation to people who want to participate in making an album. The outcome is tangible – we’re producing an album that is addressing experiences in the broadest sense around chemsex.
leon clowes: What are the activities between now and the album’s release in September for Portraits of Recovery’s next Recoverist Month?
Harold Offeh: We are holding an event on 16th March (see end) to get people involved. We’ll be talking about the project – specifically about this invitation to make and contribute to an album and talk more broadly about chemsex. We will have activities. It’s a way of garnering interest and commitment. Then in April, we will begin delivering a series of workshops.
The idea is to have several workshop sessions for writing. It could be poetry, lyrics or any text. We’ll also be looking at music production – people can generate beats for example. There’s the possibility of doing something avant-garde, like taking ambient recordings and sampling. You don’t have to have had previous experience of music or singing. It’s not X Factor where people have to come with an amazing voice. It’s about using the opportunity to be creative to address experiences, and to open up a discourse about what’s happening. I feel there’s a kind of silencing that becomes problematic. That is partly informed by shame or awkwardness.
This is not like the 80s or a Just Say No campaign. It’s really important to talk about things, underlying values that sit under ‘relational practices’, using an academic term for intimacy. What do we understand by pleasure, intimacy and desire? What do we need? What do we want? What fuels that? What stimulates that? We also have to talk about protocols and practices of consent.
We must talk about power, power dynamics and structures, and people being able to voice and affirm and rescind consent at any point. It’s critical to talk about the whole structure and architecture of sexual practice and intimacy. There’s a lot to discuss in terms of the drugs used as part of chemsex practices, people’s understanding of dosage, some of the inherent dangers involved, but also safe practices. The project is a platform for the gamut of experiences that people have had. Our aim is to be responsive.
It’s important to have a tangible outcome. So, it’s important for people to know that there’s an invitation to contribute to an album. Now we’re talking about it being launched in September for Recoverist Month 2024, which is a huge part of Portraits of Recovery’s programming. There’ll be some engagement again during Manchester Pride weekend this August. We’re closely working with Manchester Art Gallery, our primary partner, who have been amazing in their support of the project.
Photo by Emile Holba.
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NOTE: This interview was conducted for Issue 6 of Performing Recovery in March 2024, the official publication of The Recovery Arts Network. It is reproduced here with permission of Performing Recovery, for any further usage please contact editorial@recovery-arts.org
When reproducing please link to https://recovery-arts.org/performing-recovery-magazine/performing-recovery-issue-6