Club Ate

Formed by Sydney-based multi-disciplinary artists Justin Shoulder and Bhenji Ra, Club Ate is a collaboration inspired by their shared Filipino heritage, immersion in Sydney’s underground nightlife and queer communities, as well as an interest in the body as a performative tool.

Ex Nilalang—which means both ‘to create’ and ‘creature’—is an ongoing series of video works conceived as an ‘archive of queer identities’. Each of the four episodes engages with a different mythological, ancestral or pop cultural being to reflect the lived experiences of the collaborators involved.  Here, stories previously used by colonial forces to ‘other’ LGBTQI communities are reconfigured to assert a more inclusive world view:

‘In encounters with eerie inhumans we witness yearnings, complexities and utopias that resist forces of surveillance and demolition. It is no coincidence that the creatures we have been taught to hate are racialised and gendered. Yet these same creatures teach us how to reformulate kinship in ethical, non-violent ways.’ —Club Ate

The first episode, Balud, transforms the Manananggal—portrayed in Filipino folklore as a monstrous woman who splits in two and feeds on human flesh—from a subject of fear into one of great empathy. In Dysebel the artists’ transgender identity is explored via the hybrid figure of the Sirena (mermaid), while Lolo Ex Machina speaks to Shoulder’s longing to connect with his deceased Lolo (grandfather). In the most recent episode, the origins of the Philippines as told in the creation myth of Maganda and Malakas are reimagined through a contemporary lens, transporting us into a brilliant virtual universe of sea and sky.