Militant Desire produced the first English language overview on the work of pivotal French gay liberation experimental filmmaker Lionel Soukaz, involved the English subtitling of several of his films. The project also contributed to historical research by drawing attention to the particular form of consciousness raising sessions developed in 1970s gay liberation in distinction from its better known feminist history. It also added to curatorial knowledge by using this meeting form as a means to use the artwork as a catalyst for political action, linking symbolic practice to the work of various invited activist groups.

Funding came from Fluxus Art Projects: British Council and Institut Francais. Reviews and coverage in Frieze magazine, Fluxus Art Guide, Berwick Film Festival Catalogue.

Militant Desire was a programme of film forums and consciousness-raising sessions around the experimental films of French gay liberation pioneer Lionel Soukaz. Rather than merely situating his films in historical context, against the backdrop of sexual liberation movements in 1970s France, this programme tested their current relevance for intersectional and anti-capitalist queer debates in the present. This was the first retrospective on his work in the UK. Militant Desire was the result of extensive archival research into Lionel Soukaz's back-catalogue of films, and the activist tactics of the Front for Revolutionary Action. The project uncovered a long-neglected gay history of consciousness-raising techniques, more commonly associated with feminist or Maoist politics. Soukaz is a pivotal but neglected figure in gay art cinema, who collaborated with Michel Foucault, Herve Guibert, Guy Hocquenghem. Each film touched upon a different key topic: assimilation and the commercial appropriation of queer culture; the imposition of queer notions of resistance on non-Euro-American cultural contexts; the invisibility of class politics in queer thought; the race and gender divide in gay activism. Militant Desire contributed to curatorial knowledge by exploring whether the consciousness raising session or film-forum might have undetonated political potential in the present, acting as an experiment in making art a catalyst for collective action and inviting institutions to learn from their audience, rather than imposing expert testimony through the artist or curator talk. The free flowing, personal and non-hierarchical format of the sessions offered a programme which was not just 'about' radical politics, but which took its form from radical politics. The project also invited artists and researchers to think about the often vexed relationship between queer theory and Marxism, grappled with in this neglected period. of sexual liberation. Published as part of this programme was the first guide to Soukaz's film work published in the UK, with new and republished essays from leading academics and critics. The series ended with a film programme a LUX Artists' Moving Image, situating the filmmaker’s output alongside works by his UK and US contemporaries.

The free flowing, personal and non-hierarchical format of the sessions offered a programme which was not just 'about' radical politics, but which took its form from radical politics. The project also invited artists and researchers to think about the often vexed relationship between queer theory and Marxism, grappled with in this neglected period. of sexual liberation. Published as part of this programme was the first guide to Soukaz's film work published in the UK, with new and republished essays from leading academics and critics. The series ended with a film programme a LUX Artists' Moving Image, situating the filmmaker’s output alongside works by his UK and US contemporaries.

The project led to further exhibitions including LIMP (see output 4) and an expanded version of the project under the name 'Sexuality of a Nation' will be part of Ireland's international EVA Biennial exhibition in 2021.

Militant Desire also led to invitations for Paul to talk more about anti-normativity in 1970s French liberation at the international HERA funded conference Cruising the Seventies: Queer Europe at Uni of Edinburgh, and to give a keynote talk titled 'The Trouble with Not Normal' on the same topic at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, during the institution's queer art book fair.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/28882