Brave New World?

Feature, By Christian Taylor, 16th June, 2008

This year, the Bobby Goldsmith Bake Off turned 21. Same Same’s entry was a non-edible cake called ‘Brave New World’. It was crafted for us by Sydney ‘creative type’ Daniel Lutton, best known for his amazing party costumes, which many of you would have seen across crowded Mardi Gras dancefloors over the years.

We didn’t want to waste an opportunity to say something significant. We wanted the cake to ask important questions. Given how much the demise of Oxford Street has dominated our forums, we thought it was the perfect place to begin.

Daniel’s creation was a ‘model box’ of yet another ‘upgrade’ of Oxford Street, beneath perspex – a parade of brutality, carnage and chaos, littered with coins, spread legged Barbie dolls, cigarette butts, Give Way traffic signs and smashed, bleeding disco balls – all taking place beneath the watchful eyes of gun toting police officers and dogs. At Taylor Square was a sinking ship with a $46 million price tag attached, a reference to both the money that Mardi Gras annually brings into the NSW economy, and how often this figure is bandied about as a badge of our collective worth.

[Click on ‘Show All Photos’ to the right.]

The cake also came with its own guerilla poster campaign – in the days leading up to the long weekend and the Bake Off we plastered the strip with these messages.

The cake raised $450 for BGF and won first prize in the Best Non-Edible cake category. We asked Daniel to write a few words about the thoughts underpinning his creation.

I first walked up Oxford Street, “the golden mile” on a bright summer’s day in 1988. A timid, inquisitive 19 year old taking the first of many brave steps into himself. I didn’t set foot into one venue that day nor did I meet a single soul but it was life changing. I had found a place. A place I knew I would return to. That I did, and it was there for me in so many ways.

It is hard to imagine that Oxford Street in its current guise was once a place, a safe and inviting place, for visceral transformation but it was, until quite recently too. Not to mention tremendous fun, extraordinary creativity and downright sexiness.

So when Same-Same approached me to create “a cake as editorial” to enter into the 21st BGF Bake Off the obvious topic was the demise of Oxford Street and Brave New World as I see it.

What sort of community are we? And what do we want to be? Shouldn’t we be doing more with our freedom? Imagine what all the homosexuals past and present – those who have had no freedom – would think of us right now. I am ashamed at the thought, but I suppose that is the point of the cake. For despite the looming watch of a menacing police force, skanky and dangerous straights, the tedious pull and ultimate dissatisfaction of internet sex, the banality of gentrification, the straight-jacket of political correctness, the over commericalisation of our culture and intrusive bureaucracy into our every move, we are actually free.

Oxford Street is lost but until the tenants of liberal democracy are undone, we are free.

We are free to say no. We are free to stand our ground. We are free to create and demand our own places and spaces.

It is not as if it hasn’t been done before.

Check out our photos from the day by clicking here.

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