Underground Utopias: Nostalgia and Futurity in Shanghai clubbing, drag, and indie event flyers on WeChat

Description

Space Moulin Rouge drag shows, Y2K clubbing, and Sailor Moon costplay nights. Shanghai underground organisations advertise their events through modes of nostalgia and futurity. 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. However, digital flyers also reimagine alternative futures through queer futurity and sinofuturism. Through the lens of visual analysis, this paper analyses ‘digital flyers’ on WeChat of clubbing, drag, and indie events in Shanghai. The study furthermore draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai scenes and interviews with scene participants, including venue owners, event organisers, and performers. The paper argues that through modes of nostalgia and futurity, venues and event organisations create ‘visual worlds’ around their events that encapsulate a sense of utopia.

Number of attendees (for events)

20

Period	28 Aug 2025
Event title	Retrofuturism and Utopia in the 21st Century
Event type	Conference
Degree of Recognition	International