Spaces - Jax Brown

Sam Drummond 00:03

What makes a great space? And how does a space influence the way we live, who we interact with, and ultimately, where we see ourselves in our communities? I'm Sam Drummond, and this is Spaces on Powered Media. Each episode, I'm taking our guests to their favourite place. We'll get an insight into why that space works for them, share some of the moments that have changed their lives, and hopefully learn something along the way.

This episode contains some sexual references, so probably not one for the kids, or for anyone who's not really into that stuff. Hi, I'm Sam Drummond, and you're listening to Spaces, and we're joined on this episode by Jax Brown, who's an activist of all sorts of hats. Thanks for coming on the show Jax.

Jax Brown 00:59

No worries, thanks for having me. Tell us where you've brought us. Well, I've brought you somewhere in our minds because my actual physical place no longer exists sadly and it's a form that I loved it and felt at home in, which was Hares and Hyenas, the bookshop in Fitzroy.

Sam Drummond 01:19

So, we're on Johnson Street.

Jax Brown 01:23

Yes.

Sam Drummond 01:24

Hares and Hyenas as a concept and as a bookstore didn't start in Fitzroy and it's no longer in Fitzroy it still... does exist at the Pride Centre and and maybe we can come to that, but when, what got you connected to Hasen Hyenas in Fitzroy which is a pretty noisy place... it's, you can see the the centre of the city of Melbourne - if you walk out the door of Hares and Hyenas there's bars and you know, colour and movement happening everywhere. What took you to Hares and Hyenas?

Jax Brown 02:09

Well, I was living in regional New South Wales, and I heard about this group called Quippings, which was a queer disabled performance troupe that was happening in Hazanhayanas in Melbourne. And I'd wanted to leave my small country town because I had a few ex-girlfriends and it was getting a bit awkward. And I thought, Let's move to a city with a friend of mine, and I want to go down there and check out this performance troupe and also this queer community space. And so yeah, I basically landed in Melbourne, did a terrible spoken word poetry gig at a really mainstream pub, and then thought, Stop this, I'm going straight to Hares. And yeah, ended up there.

Sam Drummond 02:58

You've moved states, you've moved from the country to city, you've left everyone but it seems one friend behind.

Jax Brown 03:07

Mm.

Sam Drummond 03:09

To find this community that you only ever heard of, really. Yeah. That's a big move for a bookstore. Was it when you first went in, was it, did you feel like that was worth it?

Jax Brown 03:25

Yeah, I mean I went in and did a really raunchy performance piece at Crippings, and then I think I only did that one gig and then I got harangled into becoming the producer of the performance troupe within like a couple of months, and I started producing it for seven or so years... and a lot of those shows were in the bookshop.

Sam Drummond 03:50

Now a lot of the stores and the bars around there were built probably 19th century. It's not known for its accessibility. And most of the cafes and bars have a step at the start. But a lot of them have stairs up to where you go to the actual bar or cafe or whatever you might be trying to get to. Could you get in the door?

Jax Brown 04:25

No, you had to get the doors open. So it was one of those ones with a really old, narrow kind of wooden doors. But there's two of them and they join in the middle. And so you had to kind of knock on the door and get one of the fabulous queers inside to open both doors so I could wheel my wheelchair through. Yeah, but it did have a tiny little stage with it, which they would ramp so you could wheel up up it. And then what I would describe as the best accessible toilet in Melbourne. Did you ever go in there, Sam?

Sam Drummond 04:56

Not into the accessible toilet, no I don't, but tell me why it was the best accessible toilet in Melbourne.

Jax Brown 05:04

Because there was this amazing mural in there, mm, artists of color had like painted this beautiful, beautiful mural all over the walls. And yeah, it was just like, it was always reasonably clean, although kind of grungy in a queer way. You know, you could always go there and, um, find a clean accessible bathroom in a queer space. Which, you know, accessible bathrooms are hard to find and queer spaces are hard to find. So.

Sam Drummond 05:34

Yeah, it's primarily a bookstore though.

Jax Brown 05:36

In the daytime it's a bookstore, in the nighttime it's a community hub and a performance space... and it was known for platforming and profiling artists that wanted to do their first gigs that were trying to find their voice and stage presence and build community around them. So it was often people's most political or out there or provocative works that happened in that space.

Sam Drummond 06:07

And this was started, Hares and Hyenas were started many decades ago, as we've already said, it didn't start in Fitzroy. But it was started when there seemed to be a very defined gay and lesbian movement and the rest of the rainbow hadn't really been brought in. But my understanding is that this is very deliberate for Hares and Hyenas and its founders that hyenas, you can't actually tell what gender they are just by looking at them. Was that something that spoke to you?

Jax Brown 06:51

Yeah, I guess so, and the performance space was always called The Hair Hole, to delineate it from Hazen Hayen as the bookshop, which obviously has lovely queer and sexual connotations to it. And it was started by Roland and Crusader, who are no longer together romantically, but they were together for like 25 years, a gay couple. And they're both really political and very kind of queer and always welcoming of trans folks and marginalised folks in that space too. So that was really important.

Sam Drummond 07:28

And how do you find that interaction between disability and queer issues? When you go to, you've come a long way to find your tribe here. Is there, I mean, disability organisations and spaces for disabled people, good at being welcoming for queer folks?

Jax Brown 08:02

No, they're generally run by non-disabled people, they're very kind of corporate and they're not, you know, they're not community led, they're not community driven, they're not political, they're not hot and saucy, they're not, there's no substance to them often. I get really bored in a lot of kind of corporate disability spaces, they're not activist spaces, they don't often hold a politic to them, yeah.

Sam Drummond 08:39

What you seem, what that says to me is that this is real... like this is real people, this is not just a company trying to do the right thing - and that sauciness is really coming through. Have there been times where you're like, That was as saucy as it gets?

Jax Brown 09:00

Oh, with my own performance, or with other people, either.

Sam Drummond 09:03

You said your initial performance was pretty edgy.

Jax Brown 09:13

Yeah. 

Sam Drumnmond

What did you do? 

Jax Brown

You can watch it online, Sam. 

Sam Drummond

Can I? Well, tell me about it before I go over. 

Jax Brown

I mean, it's cost me a few government kind of roles. Yeah. It was called WANK. Yeah. 

Sam Drummond

Was there anything else to it in the top?

Jax Brown 09:31

Well, there was a giant dildo and a little lube. And it was a spoken word piece about an international day of people with disability, and how it's often this kind of corporate slogans that are exactly what I was talking about, that don't actually speak to the human rights of people with disabilities or the politics or the intersectional experience or our passions or any of that stuff. So yeah, it made an impression. I will say it was really hard to wheel off the stage and down quite a steep ramp with my hands covered in lube. I did learn from that experience.

Sam Drummond 10:12

What does it take to create that sort of space, where you're able to do that? How have the people who have run Hares with Hyenas managed to be authentic enough that you feel comfortable doing that?

Jax Brown 10:28

Well I mean, Kath Duncan and Greg Atkins were the kind of two founding members of Quippings that had it up and happening before I got there, and they're both really out there political queer disabled people, that really pushed their own boundaries and the boundaries of, you know, people around them often. So I knew that I could get up there and do Wank and the crowd would cheer and love it and get where I was coming from, but also that other queer and trans disabled people and you know just LGBTIQA+ people were the people that made up the audience.

So you were no longer speaking to, you know, a room full of non-disabled people, you were speaking to your community, and your intersectional community and so that was what made me push my own boundaries and have a lot of fun.

Sam Drummond 11:24

So they've created that safe space, but five years ago it became not safe and Victoria Police came in and they arrested... a wrongful arrest of a man called Nick Demopoulos.

Jax Brown 11:45

Mmm.

Sam Drummond 11:47

And that, to me, they, you know, tore his shoulder out of his socket. That, to me, screams something that shouldn't happen in Australia.

Jax Brown 12:02

Mmm.

Sam Drummond 12:03

But maybe it's just that I, as a straight person, haven't seen that happen.

Jax Brown 12:09

Well, I mean...

Sam Drummond 12:10

Make you feel like, when when your safe space suddenly was not safe.

Jax Brown 12:17

I mean, look, as a queer person, it makes me reflect on the history and the continued behaviour of the police to be violent towards queer and trans people at their whims. And so, you know, my feelings about the state and my feelings particularly about the police force and, you know, their marching in pride and all that, this kind of stuff, were once again, you know, solidified around, they've got no place in our spaces and in our pride parades because of their history of violence.

Sam Drummond 13:05

What does being an activist mean to you?

Jax Brown 13:09

I think primarily it's about community and it's also about hope that when I feel like life is difficult and hard and sometimes I feel alone in that, it really centers me and connects me to something bigger than myself.

Sam Drummond 13:38

Yeah. Do you think that the Melbourne queer community would be the same without Hares and Hyenas? Or would it just exist in a different form?

Jax Brown 13:52

It'd still exist, but it'd probably be up flight of stairs in a dark room, somewhere where disabled folk, many disabled folk, couldn't be part of that community. And a lot of those parties still happen in really inaccessible spaces, and they happen because that's where the cheap rent is, and that's where people feel safe away from the threat of violence from other people. But they're really inaccessible, and so many disabled queer and trans people just can't have a hot patch or find those community connections. So yeah, I think queer people and trans people will always find each other, but it's whether or not queer and trans disabled people will also be there to be part of that.

Sam Drummond 14:50

The Hares and Hyenas has moved now and has gone to the Pride Centre, which is a very flash premises, but probably very important for this conversation is that Hares and Hyenas is situated behind an enormous staircase. How has that changed your view of the institution of Hares and Hyenas?

Jax Brown 15:19

Yeah, look, I mean, I still love Roland, who is plugging away behind that staircase running Hares and Hyenas. And, you know, they've still got a lot of amazing books. But the bookshop is not a hub anymore. You know, it doesn't have that space of an up-and-coming queer artist or someone who just moved to the city like myself and was trying to find community and a hot patch could go and... meet other people and just hang out and feel connected and find that community. It's very much feels like a corporate queer space. It's very, you know, the Pride Centre is very big. It's very opened. 

And to, you know, book the book, the theatre, you've got to have money behind you to do it. It's not affordable for any little queer person to go in there and put on a on a show with, you know, a couple hundred bucks or whatever. So it doesn't, to me, feel like home in the same way. Yeah.

Sam Drummond 16:29

Are there any books that, there seems to be this difference here between a big bookstore that doesn't have a stage, that doesn't become the hare-hole at night, and that sense of community that was created in Johnston Street, Fitzroy? There seems to be a difference between that and a big bookstore with fluorescent lights where even the books might speak differently. But have there been any of the books that you've picked up off those shelves and it's changed your life?

Jax Brown 17:07

Oh gosh. Yeah, Eli Clare is a trans-disabled poet and writer who's US-based... and before I started transitioning I was reading his work years and years ago, before he was transitioning actually as well, and I have picked up some of his later work at Hares and Hyenas and yeah, found a sense of coming home to myself and coming home to my body through his words and also through finding his words in that space.

Sam Drummond 17:53

I saw you at a book launch recently of a mutual friend of ours who's written a book about, it's called Detachable Penis and it's a queer legal saga, and I think that book was dedicated to the little gay kid in Werribee, I think it was. How do you reach the queer kid from rural New South Wales without forcing them to come to Melbourne?

Jax Brown 18:36

Look, I think now, we've got online spaces where people can find community in a whole different way... than I had as a teenager. But that said, like I moved away 'cause of some awkward exes and a tiny queer scene... but I also moved away because of that thing of when you grow up in a country town, people have a sense of who you are and you have a sense of who you are that is contained and held sometimes in a beautiful way by who you've been five years ago, ten years ago, their expectations of you. And so I moved away because I wanted to be able to broaden my sense of who I was and what I could do. 

And I also... I wanted to start getting into performance, watching performance, and I also wanted to get into disability advocacy work and there just wasn't, you know, there wasn't those opportunities in a small country town, sadly. To do wag. No.

Sam Drummond 19:45

And probably, you talk about that expectation of what you were five or ten years ago, but possibly also who your parents were, or who your grandparents were in that country town. And coming to the Big Smoke gives that fresh start.

Jax Brown 20:02

Mmm.

Sam Drummond 20:03

Why Melbourne and not Sydney, though? Sydney's tableau.

Jax Brown 20:07

Hilly, like it's terrible as a manual wheelchair user, Sydney like you just get stuck at the bottom of hill all the time, yeah, no and Melbourne, I mean I had high hopes for Melbourne, I thought I'm definitely gonna get a hot patch - but I also thought I'm gonna be able to jump on an accessible tram and just ride the tram network - and that was one of my first memories of going to Fitzroy as well, was getting on my accessible tram in the city and trying to get off in Johnson Street and going far out there's no super stops, yeah and I had to jump in the arms of the nearest man.

And that was a bit shocking, and he had to help me get down, and someone else grabbed my chair and pulled it off the tram, but like yeah, this sense of a city of possibility and then coming down to it and going, Actually no, we're still, you know, got a long way to go in terms of having a tram network that's actually accessible.

Sam Drummond 21:06

Hmm. Did you get the hot patch? 

Jax Brown

Yeah, a few. 

Sam Drummong

Have you got the one that, the lasting one?

Jax Brown 21:15

Yeah, my partner, we've almost been together 10 years this year, so yeah, a few hot bashes along the way, and a couple of kids.

Sam Drummond 21:23

What does, how's the kids changed your view? Would you share that video about your breakout performance at Hares and Hyenas with your kids?

Jax Brown 21:36

Not yet. I mean, yeah, I have boundaries. Yeah, I mean, they're little, but I'm not ashamed of it. I think, yeah, like at a certain point, they'll probably see it at some point in their life, and I hope they think my parents, not too super boring and daggy, they were cool once.

Sam Drummond 21:59

Is that the hope as a parent? That were cool once? 

Jax Brown 22:02

Yeah. I'm sorry.

Sam Drummond 22:04

What does that look like for you now as a parent? Are there spaces that just don't work for you as a parent?

Jax Brown 22:20

Yeah, a lot of the queer scene. Yeah, I mean, because a lot of our spaces are about, you know, hot patches and more. And there's very few spaces that you can take young kids into, you know, there's some rainbow story times and drag story times and that kind of stuff, which is super lovely. And I take my kids along to those. But in terms of like, connecting them into broader queer culture and politics, a lot of that stuff is usually only for adults. Yeah.

Sam Drummond 22:54

But there's an introduction there. Yeah. That, you know, if you're going along to drag queen story time.

Jax Brown 23:00

Yeah, and I mean we raise them in queer culture at home anyway, so yeah.

Sam Drummond 23:05

Have you incorporated any of the lessons that you've learned at Hares and Hyenas into how your own home works?

Jax Brown 23:15

I mean, it's accessible.

Sam Drummond 23:18

There's a mural, a mural in the ...

Jax Brown 23:25

Giant, a giant photo of me and my partner having a hot dash that's above our bed. Yeah. Which I'm sure my kids will find dying in a certain point. Yeah, so there's, you know, there's lots of evidence of queer sexuality and joy and disability pride and stuff around the home, which is important.

Sam Drummond 23:47

And what's the hope for, it might not be Hares and Hyenas, but that next space where we're doing Spaces season 10 and I come back and talk to you about your favourite place in 10 years time. Do you think that could be recreated, or is is it gone now that it's been corporatised and you know put behind a staircase at the Pride Centre?

Jax Brown 24:16

No, I think it's still being created and being recreated and reimagined, but I think that what I'm most excited by now that I've, you know, turned 40, is that other young, younger people are making those spaces and maybe I don't have to lead them anymore. Maybe I can just go there on a date night occasionally when we've booked in the queer babysitter and hang out and go, that was an amazing performance, that I don't have to be up on stage leading it or holding the space for other people. I can just be watching it.

Sam Drummond 24:56

How does it feel to be an elder in that community?

Jax Brown 24:59

I don't know if I'd claim it or not, but yeah, it's sad. Come on.

Sam Drummond 25:03

No but if you've got a lot of trust in the young people who are doing a great job, but they've googled Wank and they're going, I just want my Wank moment.

Jax Brown 25:16

I mean, there's other stuff that I've done out there on these days.

Sam Drummond 25:21

But that was your first album. Yeah. Yeah.

Jax Brown 25:26

Yeah, look, I hope they're doing whatever they want to do along in that same vein in a way that is meaningful and provocative and makes their body feel like home for them.

Sam Drummond 25:42

Yeah, that's beautiful. Jax Brown, activist. Thanks for taking us to the old Hares and Hyenas. Thank you.

Jax Brown 25:51

It's a pleasure.

Sam Drummond 25:51

Spaces was recorded on Wurundri, Jara and Bunurong land. Spaces was produced by Humdinger for Powerd media. The series was created by Sam Drummond with support from Emma Sharp and Lucy Griffin at Humdinger. Field audio recording by Matthew Hoffman. Editing by Simon McCulloch.