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Naked Souls is a deck of oracle cards, fortunes/spells, and an accompanying booklet. It invokes obscure queer histories, found in the 56A Infoshop and Southwark Archives, to chart alternative maps for our futures. It is playful and sometimes frivolous, existing in a makeshift between poetry and instruction.
Peruse the booklet and cards...
Queer Clairvoyants
This small clairvoyant elephant statue casts spells that correspond to the card you draw. It is modeled after the Pink Elephant who used to preside over Elephant and Castle, in the heart of Southwark who was, like many queer spaces and stories, a casualty of gentrification. The mini replica stands in for those whose stories were lost to time.
Behind the project
While browsing through hyper-local queer histories in the 56A Infoshop and Southwark Archives, I kept coming across extraordinary characters and locations I had never heard of, who challenged cis and heteronormative urban existence.
In one of the zines, Holy Titclamps, a piece called readers to ‘dig your heroes out of the trash’. That really struck me.
I was also reading Sarah Schulman’s book Gentrification of the Mind at the time, which addresses this erasure of queer life, love and culture as a result of the AIDS crisis in New York City. She dissects the aftermath, which drastically shifted the material and emotional landscape of the place. A similar story emerges in the London archives. With a confluence of marginalisation, mortality rates and erasure, queer lineage, and with it our elders, can be difficult to trace.
So, Naked Souls takes the archive as a starting point, to connect the dots between our pasts, presents and futures. The cards and the spells are thought as starting points and invitations. You can use them as you choose – perhaps like a tarot deck, or as an alternative map of Southwark. The booklet contains more historical information and context.
I write this as the UK and US government have become openly transphobic, mainstreaming hate speech and passing discriminatory legislation. Under these circumstances, I believe that affirming and celebrating queer life, and learning from the struggles for liberation that came before us isn’t optional.
I was also reading Sarah Schulman’s book Gentrification of the Mind at the time, which addresses this erasure of queer life, love and culture as a result of the AIDS crisis in New York City. She dissects the aftermath, which drastically shifted the material and emotional landscape of the place. A similar story emerges in the London archives. With a confluence of marginalisation, mortality rates and erasure, queer lineage, and with it our elders, can be difficult to trace.
So, Naked Souls takes the archive as a starting point, to connect the dots between our pasts, presents and futures. The cards and the spells are thought as starting points and invitations. You can use them as you choose – perhaps like a tarot deck, or as an alternative map of Southwark. The booklet contains more historical information and context.
I write this as the UK and US government have become openly transphobic, mainstreaming hate speech and passing discriminatory legislation. Under these circumstances, I believe that affirming and celebrating queer life, and learning from the struggles for liberation that came before us isn’t optional.