The Turret Resurrection
The Khyber Centre for the Arts, Halifax, NS, 2013.
Created in collaboration with B. G. Osborne, Emily Davidson, & the NSCAD Queer Collective.
The Turret Resurrection project brought the legendary Turret Club, run by the Gay Alliance for Equality from 1976—1982, back to life for the Khyber building's 125 anniversary in 2013. A collaborative undertaking, the NSCAD Queer Collective recreated the bar based on photographs of the original space and programmed three events in the spirit of the Turret; a disco, a cabaret, and a community discussion.
Our reincarnation of the Turret was not exact—the space's architecture had shifted, and we worked from a limited collection of reference images—but we called the bar's spirit back into the gallery and paid it tribute through our reincarnation. As young activists and artists, we were deeply inspired to learn that the bar was run by the Gay Alliance for Equality (GAE), later known as the Gay and Lesbian Association of Nova Scotia (GALA), which used the profits from the bar to fund their activities, including a helpline. The project intended to connect to the living queer history of Halifax through the activation of intergenerational communities. The events—the Sweet Release Disco and the Turret Resurrection Cabaret—were modelled on popular Turret events and brought out different generations of queer and trans communities who formed new intergenerational connections. A handful of the Turret's original organizers and patrons appeared, summoning their memories of the original space from the past, pointing out details such as where the stage used to be and the corner where the lesbians gathered to claim their space in the male-dominated scene. Our recreation included the infamous "Tits and Lipstick" mural, which lesbian feminist activists defaced, as a gesture to the complex and contested histories of 2SLGBTQ+ community spaces. The Turret made the GAE one of the highest-funded gay organizations in Canada, and the activism and community services they funded made the possibility of queer life beyond the gay bar tenable to many.
