Waltpaper’s Club Kids

Written by Mads Stewart, MA Design for Art Direction at London College of Communication

Walt Cassidy, also known as Waltpaper, was a central figure of the New York Club Kids, who transformed nightlife and contemporary culture in the 80s and 90s. Creative misfits and mavericks, they turned New York City into their personal playground and shaped its nocturnal landscape into a chaotic artistic melting pot .

The club scene was a creative melting pot for people from all walks of life, and club style a force for experimentation, notoriety and fame. Within these nightlife spaces, the rules of fashion and society disappeared, and in their place was a gateway for escaping and reimagining society’s rigid notions of identity, gender, and expression. Being a club kid was a reclamation of queer identity and an act of riotous, joyous subversion. Beyond transforming nightlife, the Club Kids influenced art and fashion in a way that is still felt today, from Drag Race and catwalks to social media MUAs and street fashion.

Many considered the heyday of the club kids to come to a close with the arrest of key figure Michael Alig, but Walt Cassidy’s book, “New York Club Kids” reveals a more nuanced story of evolution, loss, and above all, transformation. Documenting the Club Kid movement with over 500 images and Cassidy’s narration, the book reflects the importance of connecting with our recent queer history, seeing it not as a stationary moment in time, but as an active contributor to the cultural landscape of today.

In my conversation with Cassidy we discuss nostalgia, the personal becoming history, queer lineage, and what young people can take away from his book:

Nowadays there is this reverence and fantasy surrounding the 80s and 90s as a golden age of club culture - what is it like to balance that nostalgia and sense of fantasy with your own experiences?

Nostalgia can be a slippery slope. People get trapped and never evolve. I, myself, am most engaged by the present day and experiences that I haven’t had yet. In the 90’s, everything was intuitive, which now, feels like a great luxury. There wasn’t a script, and no time spent sitting around over analyzing things, or pecking each other to death. We didn’t police each other the way people do today. Life was simple, it was ‘us’ and ‘them’. It was about action and creation. It was an analog time period, so we were always on our feet, on the go, making things happen. It was an amazing time to be in NYC and be involved with nightlife, which was a thriving industry. The issue that I have with the ‘fantasy’ of the 90’s, is that people imagine that the decade’s greatness was served on a platter, without effort. The reality was that we worked really hard at building extraordinary experiences. We had to participate, utilizing our creativity and ambition. Nothing was handed to us. No one gave us permission to be ourselves and live authentic lives. We chased it, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That can be done in any time period.

It is refreshing to see information in your book not just about the nightlife personalities, but the art directors, photographers and designers that were driving the style and documentation of the period. You talk about the role of pre-analog in the design process and elevating nightlife imagery to the level of art - what other elements of photography and art direction made the posters and club ads so 'iconic' from that time?

Analog work has more of a pulse, in my opinion. It feels less sterilized than digital, simply because the hands were more involved, and it required layers of development. You had to collaborate with a lot of different people and mediums to get the final result. With analog design, there was the element of surprise; betting on the beautiful mistake. Life felt like an exciting gamble. Everything was a test to some extent. Shooting film for example, you were never really sure what you got, until you processed the film. Gregory Homs and Dolphina Jones created most of the great nightclub graphic art from that time. In doing the book, I spent a lot of time talking with Gregory about the beautiful accidents that factored into analog printing and creating the visuals of that time period.

In the book you write, “In order to make clear and informed decisions, it is necessary to look at the past and unpack the experiences that have created pain and fear in our lives”. What might you hope for young queer people to take away from your book, and from looking at this period of queer history?

That it is important to show up and participate in life, never hiding and never waiting for anyone to give you permission to live the life you want to live. My story is one of independence, uniqueness and authenticity, and I hope that the book, and my reflections on that time period, will reinforce those principles. I hope that it gives people courage to be themselves, without reservation.

In writing this book and connecting with your past in this meticulous way through writing, what did you learn about the process of archival and the personal becoming history?

As creatives, our archives can be our most valuable asset. The archive built from life experience and creativity, becomes its own currency, as time moves on. Since early childhood, I said to myself that I was going to live my life as if it was a great movie or book. I’ve been mindful of how my archive traces my movements throughout 4+ decades of creativity. The flip side of that is that I remain dedicated to having interesting experiences, in the present tense. I don’t dwell in the past. Perhaps because I know it’s well preserved in my archive, and now in my book. Investing in change is important. Being too covetous of any particular moment or expression of the past, can spell death for a creative. I must be willing to destroy the things that I have created, in service of staying in motion and creating new energy.

How do you see the lineage of the Club Kids in queer culture today? Do you think dialogue and creative work between generations plays a role in continuing this lineage?

Mentorship has been a very important part of my journey as a creative and a queer person. Armistead Maupin coined the phrase, “logical family vs. biological family”. As queer people, our chosen family is essential to our survival and presence in the world. Intergenerational dialogue and the notion of us telling our own stories are invaluable. Doing my book, I came to fully understand and respect these concepts. I realized that the person telling the story holds the power, and the responsibility. I was able to dissect the Club Kid narrative in a way that only an insider could do, and map out our scene’s influence on contemporary culture, particularly around the ideas of self branding and identity expression. At the root of the Club Kid experience is independence and transformation, two tools that are absolutely vital to the queer journey.

Do you think archiving and documenting queer history plays a role in this evolution and push of the contemporary?

Absolutely. Our archives, and the ways and means in which we document our identity and experience, feed the queer oracle, the fountain from which we, and future queer generations, sustain ourselves. As queer kids, we arrive into the world as outsiders. We are quickly jarred into learning that the world, structurally, was not built for us. It is not structured for our advancement. In that, we are given a challenge of hiding away or finding a way to carve out our own unique spaces in the dominantly heteronormative world. Creativity has been the queer community’s most valuable assent in defining our existence and place in history. Since most of the queer experience, prior to the 21st Century, has been meticulously coded and hidden beneath the surface, we have had to rely on a folklore approach, where information is handed down from generation to generation. Being able to gaze into this fountain of LGBTQ+ history and experience, this queer oracle, is often our only solace, our only road map in navigating our journey.

The Club Kids are a testament to the power of queer youth to change culture and exist on their own terms, and for LGBTQ+ youth connecting to this history is vitally important. The heritage of queer nightlife and subcultures destigmatizes our art, our nocturnal lives and creations that feel so at odds with the world, that sense of freak and otherness. Connecting with the history of the New York Club Kids, and the club history of our own cities, removes feelings of isolation and replaces them with roots, entwined through chosen family and the practices of art, which connect a rich queer community going back generations. We are the weirdos. We have always been here, and always will be.

Post-Grad Stories

A thriving online magazine of our postgraduate student voices sharing thought-provoking experiences, practices, thoughts and articles about what matters to them.

Download the PDF Guide to writing articles for Post-Grad Stories

Want to write an article? Get in touch with the Post-Grad Community team PGCommunity@arts.ac.uk