Cooper Robinson

Welcome to Carnalval! The year is 2035, and severe financial decline and cost of living crises have brought about the mass closure of independently-owned queer bars and clubs. With no space of their own to gather, the queer folx of London took matters into their own hands.

Cue the foundation of RetroQueer: a community-based collective of queers formed in 2029 to carve out spaces within the abundance of abandoned real estate using the time-honored historical practice of "cruising:" soliciting sex anonymously in public spaces through a system of coded verbal and physical signals or objects.

In the hyper-digitalized world of 2035, face-to-face socialization has become such a rarity that without bars and nightclubs as spatial social aides to encourage it, most queers feel comfortable socializing only through the interface of an app. This loss of in-person socialization practices, combined with the absence of queer spaces to encourage gathering, has led to a profound sense of isolation for LGBTQIA+ people.

RetroQueer's use of the historical practice of cruising to reclaim spaces within London serves the dual purpose of reactivating these vacant spaces and re-introducing ways of practicing intimacy in-person, without any digital barrier. It asks: is it possible to use analysis of previous examples of “cruising spaces” to produce a new iteration of queer space(s) created outside a capitalistic framework?

The crown jewel in RetroQueer's network of reclaimed spaces is undisputedly Carnalval, a fun-fair style cruising festival housed within the old Billingsgate Fish Market. RetroQueer selected this location both for it's spatial parallels to the west-side piers in Manhattan, a once-popular cruising locale, and for it's adjacency to the entirely abandoned neighborhood of Canary Wharf.

Free for prying eyes of neighbors or law enforcement, RetroQueer's volunteer-based team of builders were able to reuse market materials (steel box channels, plastic crates, walk-in freezers, corrugated steel, plastic crates, etc.) to create an exuberant, celebratory space which both memorializes and celebrates the practice of cruising while simultaneously creating a space for the queers of London to safely gather, create, and cruise.

The community of RetroQueer officially claims the abandoned site of the Billingsgate Fish Market as its own, with the clear directive to create a space for all queers to gather in light of the city's failing to do so through conventional means.

In the wake of the Great Crash of 2025, we understand that independent queer businesses can no longer afford to operate within London. To address this issue, we as a collective will take the initiative to form our own space, made by queers for queers.

We will use the historic, cultural practice of cruising as a means of both staking claim over the marketplace and helping reintroduce time-tested techniques for in-person intimacy within a queer community that today finds itself completely isolated from it's past and itself by complete dependency on technology for socialization.

What follows is a documentation of the formation of RetroQueer, and the construction and operation of the market through a series of commemorative postcards, news artifacts, and film photos.