Trojan Horse / Rainbow Flag is a zine by artist Ian Giles with an essay by Paul Clinton about the importance of gay bars, as spaces for unexpected queer love and intimacy.
Trojan Horse / Rainbow Flag is both a tribute to queer spaces of the past and present and an impetus for the birth of new queer spaces.
The publication includes a script about the campaign to save the Joiners Arms an iconic queer pub in East London. Working directly with members of ‘Friends of the Joiners Arms’, Giles employed participatory workshops and verbatim theatre as structures to produce a discursive social network, the resulting script and his 2019 film work of the same name.
The zine’s title is inspired by a phrase coined by campaigner Amy Roberts, when describing the cynical approach of property developers seeking to push through proposals that erase queer spaces by disingenuously claiming that their LGBTQ+ status would remain unchanged post-development.
The zine includes a script for a performance, which can be performed with a group of people in a space of their choosing.
This zine is printed in the UK by Hato Press and supported by Arts Council England.
