Event Promotion as Worldmaking: Gender Codes and Myths of Nostalgia in Shanghai Clubbing, Drag, and Indie Digital Flyers on WeChat

Description

Shanghai underground event organisations advertise their events through gender codes and modes of nostalgia. Within the context of Shanghai, nostalgia is often constructed through a ‘catching up’ logic, which poses China as lagging behind the west. This referent time and place is often unexperienced by participants, as a ‘nostalgia without memory’ which is bound up in a postcolonial dynamics and longing for other modernities. At the same time, digital event flyers often targeted specific audiences through gendered aesthetics. This paper asks how gender codes and nostalgic pasts of Shanghai and beyond are reworked in the creation of present clubbing, drag, and indie events. The study draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai clubbing, drag, and indie scenes and interviews with creative practitioners, including venue owners, event organisers, and performers. Through the lenses of Roland Barthes’ ‘myths’ and Stuart Hall’s ‘codes’, this paper visually analyses digital flyers on WeChat of clubbing, drag, and indie events in Shanghai. The paper argues that through myths of nostalgia and gender codes, venues and event organisations create present ‘visual worlds’ around their events and reimagine alternative futures of society.

Number of attendees (for events)

20

Period	9 Apr 2026
Event title	British Forum for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference: Ethnomusicology and The Present
Event type	Conference
Location	London, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International