This Exhibition Feels Like A Love Letter To The Queer Dance Floor

This ability to thrive in the impermanence is something Reuben Brown’s €URODANC€ aims to explore. Presented by Pallas Projects/Studios, this exhibition is built from memory, music, and moments that often slip through the cracks of official histories, the show reimagines the nightclub as both archive and altar: a space where joy and heartbreak mingle under the lights, and where fleeting connections leave lasting emotional residues.

At the heart of the exhibition is a film-poem assembled entirely from fragmented Eurodance lyrics, wrapped in immersive sound, scent, and sculptural interventions. A genre born in the late ’80s, Eurodance fused house, Hi-NRG and Euro disco into something immediate, emotional and pan-European. In Brown’s hands, those phrases become something else entirely: reassembled into a multilingual love poem, echoing across the gallery in English, Spanish, Dutch, Romanian, Swedish and more. What were once pop hooks now speak as gestures of intimacy, loss and longing.

This exhibition feels like a love letter to Ireland’s queer dance floor: one written in sweat, glitter, bass, and longing. You can catch the exhibition between Friday 20th June – Saturday 5th July at Pallas Projects Studios. We sat down with Reuben Brown to chat about his work.

What first sparked your interest in queer club culture as a central theme in your work?

I’m originally from a small town called Banbridge in rural County Down. It’s not widely known for much, but interestingly it has been home to two quite infamous dancefloors in Irish (and even the wider European) club histories: The Coach and Circus Circus. Both have become central contextual case-studies and visual muses for club [construction]. Some of the film pieces in €URODANC€ directly reference and incorporate archival imagery from these spaces.

“That mix of intensity and impermanence really resonates with me, and it’s something I keep returning to in my work.”

I’ve always been drawn to the idea of fandom and subculture, and the way that communities can form in and around shared interests like music. One of my earliest vivid memories is hearing the distant thud from The Coach’s subwoofer on Halloween night in 2007 – I would’ve been about six years old. A Hi-Fi speaker-system from 2012 that my parents bought me for my 11th birthday actually appears in one of the works in the exhibition. I think what draws me to queer club-culture is how it creates spaces for people to come together and feel connected, not just through the music but also those more granular ephemeral moments of community that occur in the space. That mix of intensity and impermanence really resonates with me, and it’s something I keep returning to in my work.

What can visitors of the exhibition €URODANC€ expect to see?

€URODANC€ explores the shifting terrain of club-spaces of the past, present and imagined future, where the dancefloor becomes both sanctuary and spectacle, resistance and release. Through moments of belonging, betrayal, break-up, revenge, recovery and renewal, it delves into how the sensory experience of clubbing mirrors the emotional contours of queer love, longing and loss. At its core is a new film titled In the dusk we are shadows made of light, but we dance in the echoes of the summer, which is structured from a love poem made entirely from cut-up Eurodance lyrics. It’s immersive and emotional, pulling the multilingual, high-energy aesthetic of the genre to reflect on desire, heartbreak and the fleeting intensity of connection on the dancefloor.

“It delves into how the sensory experience of clubbing mirrors the emotional contours of queer love, longing and loss.”

Surrounding the film are a series of sculptural and sensory interjections that play with airflow, temperature, colour, scent and vibration. Subtle shifts that are intended to feel somewhere between devotional and disorientating, drawing attention to the body within the space in quiet but intimate ways. There’s also a strong archival thread throughout the show. Alongside the work, there is a table and sun lounger which present a collection of research materials and a set of DIY pamphlets I’ve made as part of my ongoing project club [construction]. These pamphlets act as alternative archives documenting often overlooked details like flyers, zines, stories, tickets, and offering a space to think about the things that often slip through formal histories.

Some are playful (one covers you in glitter if you mishandle it, one is scented with male pheromones), others are more speculative or intimate, but each of them try to offer an unorthodox method of preserving something.

How do you approach archiving queer spaces and cultures that are inherently temporary or transient?
I think that’s a really tricky question that takes centre stage in the research behind club [construction]. club [construction] is an ongoing research project which I have been conducting over the last three years, exploring the fragile histories of queer club-culture, club-communities and club-spaces of the past, present and speculative future. Through archival research, interview, participatory performance, response and a series of self-published pamphlets, the project aims to unearth at-risk queer ephemera, platform forgotten stories, and foster conversation around the politics of queer visibility, memory and the infrastructure of cultural spaces.

club [construction] aims to operate the visual arts as “tools” of activation and generation, through employing experimental, innovative, accessible and decentralised approaches to exhibition-making, such as club-residencies, experiential installation, film-screenings, participatory performances and encounters with space. To date, I’ve presented the findings of club [construction] in a series of solo-exhibitions and projectors across Belfast, Dublin, London and Berlin.

Queer spaces, particular club-spaces, often exist in a kind of in-between state where they’re vibrant and full of life, but they’re also constantly at risk of erasure, whether through redevelopment, policing or through the natural cycle of popular culture. So I try not to think about archiving in a traditional fixed sense, instead, I’m much more interested in utilising methods that reflect the same impermanence, ways of holding onto fleeting textures, stories and atmospheres rather than just black-and-white facts or timelines.

“Queer spaces, particular club-spaces, often exist in a kind of in-between state where they’re vibrant and full of life, but they’re also constantly at risk of erasure.”

A lot of the stories I come across in my research are fragile and sensitive, told second-hand or years after the fact, I’m really interested in where those kinds of stories sit within an archive. What happens when we don’t have a clear record, or fixed method of documenting these ephemeral moments? What can we learn from the gaps, the contradictions and the distortions? I think there’s something really powerful and valuable in that uncertainty. Rather than trying to tie things down too neatly, I want the work to stay open to speculation and emotion, to honour the ephemerality of the spaces without trying to ‘solve’ or institutionalise them out of context.

“Rather than trying to tie things down too neatly, I want the work to stay open to speculation and emotion.”

The pamphlets I make are one way that I try to do that. They use low-fi, DIY publishing techniques and embrace things like glitter, scent and tactility, materials that are recycled, degrade over time or leave a trace. I also include snippets from interviews, speculative writing and personal notes which let the archive feel more emotional or porous. The aim isn’t to preserve things perfectly, but to reflect on why they mattered, and make space for those memories even if they’re fragmented, fleeting, or misremembered.

Ireland’s queer nightlife has changed dramatically in recent years – what shifts have you witnessed, and how do they influence your work?
It’s a very turbulent time for nightlife in Ireland, and around the world. I think what stands out most is how much queer nightlife here continues to be shaped by a strong DIY and community spirit, even amid all the turbulence. Historically, so many of these spaces and events have been artist-run or grassroots, created out of necessity and genuine passion rather than with big-budgets or commercial backing. That’s something I’ve always found really inspiring. Groups like Dublin Modular (Dublin), Ponyhawke (Belfast), Hardware (Limerick) and T4TB2B (Belfast) to name a few, keep that energy alive today, they’re not just parties but places where people build real connections and support networks. I’m really drawn to the idea of making something meaningful collaboratively from very little, a spirit that feels both defiant and hopeful.

“So many of these spaces and events have been artist-run or grassroots, created out of necessity and genuine passion rather than with big-budgets or commercial backing.”

At the same time, activists like Holly Lester and initiatives like Free The Night and Give Us The Night are doing an amazing job at highlighting the ongoing struggles that nightlife, as a whole, faces around licensing laws, safety and accessibility. I think all these shifts deeply influence my work.
I always try to approach any making through a DIY-spirit, using skills I’ve taught myself or learned from others in the community. I try to work with sustainable materials like wood that can be reused or repurposed after the project is done, and I often use rentable equipment, tech and scaffolding. It feels important to me to build in a way that’s flexible and doesn’t create unnecessary waste, especially when these spaces and moments are so temporary by nature. I also try to activate spaces that aren’t the typical ‘white cube’ gallery space, places that might not seem designed for this kind of work but have their own character and history. This approach reflects how queer nightlife itself often occupies unconventional or transient spaces, and it’s something I want to reflect and celebrate in my approach.

What are the main threats to queer nightlife spaces in Ireland?
One of the biggest threats is gentrification. Queer people, especially from working-class communities are being pushed out of the spaces they helped create. This is something you can see happening in Belfast and all over Ireland right now, where venues that once felt like authentic queer spaces are being priced-out or redeveloped into more sanitised, commercial versions of themselves.

“Queer people, especially from working-class communities are being pushed out of the spaces they helped create.”

Another big issue which I think goes hand-in-hand is the idea of “coolness currency” where innovative and radical cultures pioneered by queer people, people of colour and working-class communities are quickly co-opted and watered down to appeal to a broader, often more middle-class, often more heterosexual audience. This process strips away the political and emotional complexity of those spaces, making them less about community and more about profit.

There’s also a real class element to all of this with the cost of living going up and venue prices rising – a lot of working-class queer people, who’ve always been the heart of these events, simply cannot afford to go out.

Do you see this exhibition as a form of activism, preservation, catharsis, or something else?
I think it’s probably a bit of all those things, but not always in a straightforward way. There’s definitely a kind of quiet activism in paying attention to the things that slip through the cracks. Queer subcultures and club-cultures have a history of being sparsely documented – if at all, due to a combination of many societal factors, but primarily prejudice and queerphobia.

A lot of this work is about holding onto moments that are fleeting and asking what it means to archive something that was never really intended to last. There’s preservation, but it’s less about freezing things in time and more about building a kind of emotional or sensory archive. I’m interested in how memory works, how things get misremembered or passed on in fragments, and how that can still be meaningful. The work sits in that space between documentation and speculation.

“A lot of this work is about holding onto moments that are fleeting and asking what it means to archive something that was never really intended to last.”

And yes, there’s catharsis too – I think the dancefloor has always been a space of release but also of grief, solidarity and fantasy, that energy carries into the exhibition. But more than anything I think it’s about care, caring enough to look closely, to ask questions, to hold space for stories that haven’t always been given one. I think this act of care can be radical in itself.