GGI 끼 East and Southeast Asian queer club night returns to London's The Yard club next month

GGI 끼, the east London club night centering queer, trans and non-binary East and South East Asian (ESEA) folks, is coming back to Hackney Wick venue The Yard this April for its third party.

On Friday, 1st April, the party will start at 9 p.m. and run till late with Cosmic Caz, Nanzhen Yang, TWANG and Sayang on the DJ line-up and multidisciplinary artist Rieko Whitfield set to perform. There will also be a screening of River Cao’s film River is my Hometown. 

In just five months since launching, GGI 끼 has already solidified itself as a key part of London’s queer nightlife scene. Founder June Lam sought to establish “a queer club night and performance showcase by and for East and South East Asian heritage, particularly lesser represented ESEA queer folks such as those from Southeast Asian backgrounds, first-generation immigrants, and trans Asians,” he tells DJ Mag.

“As a queer trans man of ESEA heritage, I want to create a space where we can come together as a community and celebrate our culture, music and art and dance freely, without fear of being fetishised or erased,” Lam says. “I believe that GGI, as London’s first queer trans ESEA club night, is combating stereotypes of femme ESEA passivity through our focus on powerful and dynamic hard sound, via industrial techno, footwork, gabber DJs — amongst a number of other genres at our parties. I believe this platform is needed and incredibly timely given the one year anniversary of the Atlanta shootings, and recent hate crimes in the US, and how this has left a heavy emotional impact on ESEA folks as a whole but especially affected the most marginalised in our ESEA communities, namely ESEA sex workers, women and trans people.”

Looking ahead, GGI 끼 has ongoing collaborations with Eastern Margins and Howl Worldwide in the works, as well as a new partnership with Risen, a London day festival celebrating the “divine feminine” in dance music on 9th April.

“As part of the long term plan of developing GGI as a platform, I am planning a number of research trips to connect with DJs and collectives across the UK (Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds) as well as to visit queer DJ and nightlife communities in the global south, particularly Southeast Asia (Jogjakarta, Bangkok, Hanoi), to connect with the clubbing scene and queer activist communities there,” Lam says. “I also hope to expand the party to bigger venues and festivals, while maintaining the focus of the night, which is to platform the most underrepresented within the ESEA community, namely trans and nonbinary artists, and more Southeast Asian DJs and performers, who are often left out of platforms focusing on ESEA identity.”

Find more information about the upcoming party at The Yard here.

Photo credit: Ella-Justine