BGF

WORDS: CLIFF JOANNOU

PENNY ARCADE

LEGENDARY QUEER PERFORMANCE ARTIST PENNY ARCADE IS BACK IN THE UK WITH A NEW SHOW THAT DISSECTS THE ISSUE OF ‘GENTRIFICATION’, AND HOW ITS OMINOUS MARCH THROUGH OUR NEIGHBOURHOODS IS SLOWLY THREATENING OUR LGBT IDENTITY.

Born Susana Ventura, Penny Arcade is 65 this year. Where most people will be making plans to retire, Arcade continues her mission to challenge the increasingly constrictive grip of an unequal world. Having spent nearly fifty years in the company of some of the most influential queer minds – from Andy Warhol to Quentin Crisp – she views the world from the perspective of a rebellious outsider, eschewing the pressures of social conformity.

To criminally oversimplify her artistry, Arcade’s shtick is telling it like it is – with an added healthy dose of humour and maybe a song or two. But that description really doesn’t do her justice. Her compelling mind pulls apart the pervading issues that you don’t even realise permeate under the skin of our daily lives. Arcade’s observations offer an antidote, inviting us to liberate our thoughts from the weight of a system that thrives on keeping any sense of individuality contained, categorised and commodotised.

It all sounds rather dramatic, doesn’t it?

But after my long conversation with Arcade it becomes apparent that there really is all to lose when it comes to how we have become blindly accustomed to following a daily routine of living, working, shopping and (socially acceptable) fucking in order to maintain a status quo that makes the rich richer and keeps the hoi polloi firmly in its place.

This time Arcade has moved her lens over the urban buzzword of the moment: gentrification. From housing to high street homogenisation it is not just the gentrification of physical spaces that concerns her, but the encroaching gentrification of our minds. It’s probably too late to save the buildings that are currently being transformed into luxury flats for wealthy investors, she acknowledges. “We’ve actually been colonised. There’s not much we can do, that’s the problem. I’ve been talking about gentrification in my work since the 80s. Even though gentrification is in the media right now, they’re always twenty years late.”