Vincent Hanley Summer School Lecture and Performance: The Debt is Settled by Tonie Walsh

Information

A meditation on grief, loss, guilt and survival. Civil rights activist and DJ Tonie Walsh explores living through the AIDS pandemic in this immersive, mixed-media performance created specially for the Vincent Hanley Summer School. The Vincent Hanley Summer School celebrates one of Ireland’s significant celebrities and cultural figures, Vincent Hanley, a Clonmel native. The Vincent Hanley Lecture seeks to right imbalance, addressing subjects that have been overlooked or not given sufficient airtime - until now.

About Tonie Walsh
Tonie Walsh is a LGBTQ+ rights activist, journalist and DJ. Tonie was president of the National LGBT Federation (NXF) from 1984 to 1988. During this time, NXF was David Norris’ co-litigant in David’s constitutional action against the criminalisation of homosexuality in Ireland. Tonie was also a reporter for Out magazine at this time. Following his time at Out, Tonie founded Gay Community News (GCN) which is Ireland’s longest running gay publication.

In 1997, Tonie reorganised the NXF archive holdings into what would later become the Irish Queer Archive (IQA). Drawing on materials from IQA's collection, Walsh curated both "Pride and Protest" at Belfast's Central Library (2005) and "Revolting Homosexuals" (Outhouse and GUBU, Dublin 2004). "A Liberating Party", a site-specific exhibition on the history of LGBTQ Pride in Ireland commissioned by Thisispopbaby, was created for Dublin's Project Arts Centre in 2009. It has since gone on to tour art centres and libraries across Ireland. On 16 June 2008, the Irish Queer Archive officially transferred its materials to the National Library of Ireland, marking it as a significant and historical event.

Ages: 18+