Bijou is Wakefield Poole's second venture into gay pornography, after releasing Boys In The Sand in 1971 with a huge success. Bijou is an oddity beyond description: a construction worker is shepherded into a sex club in an unrecognizable Meatpacking district, guided by what seems like an accident. This lucky misfortune grants him the entrance to a parallel dimension where the questioning of all certainty happens via liberated sex and with orgy as a rite-of-passage.

With its wings now spreading in multiple cities, from Sunny California (with the Eagle LA and SF - Eagle) to the streets of London, this legendary gay leather bar has been in business since 1970, when Jack Monica transformed the Eagle Open Kitchen pub in the Meatpacking District into an epicenter of gay male sociability. With some coats of black paint and a motorcycle as decoration the first Eagle was born (back then The Eagle's Nest), becoming a meeting point for the leather and BDS community in New York City. After the AIDS crisis and the gentrification of the neighbourhood forced the closing of the original Eagle in 2000, this new location reopened its door in 2001. The Eagle might have changed its nest, but as they say in their website "the mood is still dark and sleazy, the music is still pounding and the studs are still coming."

Curators: Clara López Menéndez + Bradford Nordeen