In this final instalment of From Here a Home Was Imagined, associate film programmer Donald Butler brings together Ian Giles 2018 film AfterBUTT, with a commissioned audio response, I’m No Longer Listening, written and performed by Conner Milliken with sound design by Cameron Howard.

BUTT Magazine was an iconic cult gay quarterly publication founded by editors Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom in 2001 that came to define a shift towards an ‘authentic’, frank, raunchy aesthetic and editorial feature style across its print run until 2011. Departing from the groomed photoshopped look that defined gay male media in the 90’s, BUTT drew inspiration from gay publications of the 70’s to refocus an unashamed sex-positive ethos after the AIDs crisis. Noticeably BUTT magazine never made reference to the AIDs/HIV pandemic, seeking to remove ideas of shame or guilt when discussing gay male desire. Famed for its strong visual identity, namely its use of pink paper and photoshoots featuring hairy guys, the magazine has left a continuing legacy in gay male aesthetics and attitudes.

Within his filmmaking process, Ian Giles employs first-hand research, participatory workshops and verbatim theatre as structures to produce social networks. In AfterBUTT, BUTT Magazine acts as a locative device to consider gay histories, the presentation of gay men within mainstream media and links between medical advances and sexual freedom. Working with a group of young gay men in a series of workshops, the film is a result of a collective vocal exercise to re-narrate the recollections of the men who originally founded the magazine from transcribed interviews with the artist.

The film is made from a final workshop where the young group re-voiced the original interviews as an act of storytelling between generations; we hear the group sharing sexually charged narratives and frank reflections. The work also interrogates BUTT’s imbalances, raising questions around the magazine’s handling of race and gender. There is a playful relationship with language in the film: words becoming transferable between originators and speakers, to construct an oral portrait of the magazine.

I’m no longer listening is a performative lecture, captured as an audio work, written and performed by Conner Milliken. This newly commissioned piece explores queer nostalgia and generational inheritance through notions of the self. The work combines critical theory, memoir, and autofiction, accompanied by a digital soundscape, and takes the listener through fragmented narratives: of queer theory, of falling in and out of love, of family. I’m no longer listening asks the listener what queerness means to us in the present, and how might we get to another present together.

Ian Giles Completed His MFA At The Slade School Of Fine Art, London, Upon Graduating He Was A LUX Associate Artist. Recent Exhibitions, Performances And Screenings Include: On Railton Road, Supported By The Jerwood New Work Fund 2021; ‘After BUTT’, Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo 2020; ‘Please Divide In Groups Of Two Or Three’, KV Leipzig 2019; ‘Outhouse’, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge & Firstsite, Colchester 2019; ‘Studio Four’, OUTPOST, Norwich 2019; ‘Trojan Horse / Rainbow Flag’ Presented By Gasworks At Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, London 2019; ‘After BUTT’, NY Art Book Fair, MoMA PS1, New York 2018; ‘Video Club: Sex Talks’, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 2018 & ‘After BUTT’, Chelsea Space, London 2018.
Ian Was Awarded An A-N Bursary [2021-2022], and He Was An Inaugural Winner Of The Shannon Michael Cane Award [2018] Presented By Printed Matter. He Was A New Geographies Commissioned Artist [2018-20]. His Research And Work Has Been Supported By Arts Council England.

Conner Milliken is an interdisciplinary artist and producer based in Glasgow who uses choreography and text to explore the writing and performing of the queer self. His work has been shown at Dance International Glasgow (Tramway), The Southbank Centre, Queer Theory, Love Botique, DICE Festival (Summerhall) and has been published in MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture and Mechanics Institute Review. He is currently creative producer on Annie Lowry Thomas’s After Party, Mark Bleakley’s Dance Makes the Floor, and Theo Seddon’s Hairy Beast.

Cameron Howard is an audiovisual and sound artist based in Glasgow. Their work looks at interpreting emotionally weighted material through a data-focused lens, with the goal of providing an objective form to view feelings, thoughts, language and emotions. Recently they have been involved in sound and interaction design for Mark Bleakley’s Dance Makes the Floor and Louise Harris’ Filigree Traces.

This programme is supported by Film Hub Scotland, part of the BFI’s Film Audience Network, and funded by Screen Scotland and Lottery funding from the BFI.

If you have time, we’d appreciate it if you could complete this short survey.