A Moment of Recognition — and What Comes Next at the Collab
One project honoured. Another just beginning. A snapshot of recognition, momentum, and what’s next at the Collaboratory.
All posts filed under: Pussy Palace Project
Remembering the Sugar Shack: A Sneak Peek Q&A
Remembering the Sugar Shack offers a powerful look back at a radical, QTBIPOC-led bathhouse night that redefined Toronto’s queer pleasure politics in the early 2000s. Through intimate reflections from organizers and attendees, this Q&A unpacks how the Sugar Shack challenged white dominance in queer spaces and centered joy, consent, and erotic freedom. A teaser for the June 10 event, this post invites readers to remember—and imagine—what liberatory sex-positive space can look like today.
Back, Back, Back Again! A Snapshot of Sapphic Aquatica, the New (New) Pussy Palace
The Pussy Palace is back! Sort of. In November 2022, the club that hosted the Pussy Palace relaunched the pre-pandemic women and trans bathhouse night called, uh...Sapphic Aquatica? Held in the same historic bathhouse as the Pussy Palace, the pansexual swinger’s club, Oasis Aqualounge, ran another monthly women and trans bathhouse event from 2012-2019. Thought to be yet another permanent pandemic casualty, the party is back, back, back again in yet another form with the same fishy name.
NOW OPEN! The Pussy Palace: An Instagram Story
If you find yourself in Toronto’s East end this Pride season, drop by Gallery 1265 at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) to experience The Pussy Palace: An Instagram Story. Commissioned by UTSC’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Office and the Positive Space Committee, this interactive, self-led exhibit blends digital art, narrative text, and interview soundbites from the Collaboratory’s Pussy Palace Oral History Project, immersing patrons in an “average night” at the Palace. The Pussy Palace […]
Sensory Portraits of Public Sex
The Blackwood Gallery at the University of Toronto Mississauga recently released the latest issue of their serial broadsheet, SDUK. About the issue, The Blackwood writes: This milestone fifteenth issue, CONFIDING, addresses trust and collaboration: the tools, methods, and strategies collaborators use to build mutual confidence while working together. With an international slate of largely co-authored contributions, this issue models forms of experimental and collaborative authorship through letters, exercises, interviews, oral histories, and more. Among the […]
Pussy Palace Digital Exhibit: Coming Soon!
In 2021, the Collaboratory conducted the Pussy Palace Oral History Project (PPOHP), preserving 36 interviews with patrons, organizers, and allies of the Pussy Palace — an exclusive sex party and bathhouse event for queer women and trans people in Toronto. Interviews address not only the infamous, September 2000 police raid, but also radical sex/gender cultures in turn of the 21st century Toronto. A desire to connect broader publics with this rich archive of oral testimony […]