Cruising is, by nature, ephemeral—that’s part of the joy: setting out to find a moment of fleeting pleasure or connection, letting your desire lead, and finding yourself completely in the moment for the experience. But what gets left behind in the dark corners or the secluded bushes once that moment has passed? That’s the question Jack Scollard, co-founder of SMUT Press, a queer independent publisher sought to answer as they began assembling objects they had found in popular cruising areas around London.
First, these objects were documented in an anonymous Instagram account titled Cruising Archaeology. Scollard recontextualized them as artifacts, casting himself as an archaeologist and anthropologist meticulously documenting the often unseen world of London cruising via its debris. By curating these items—lighters crusted and oxidized, ripped plastic condom wrappers, bottles of poppers, their labels faded and dirty—into a catalog, Scollard paints a surprisingly poignant and detailed picture of the scene. The anonymous Instagram account soon turned into a book, which is now sold internationally. We spoke with Jack about their impulse to collect these objects, the way cruising is evolving, and what’s next for them and SMUT Press.
How would you describe your project, Cruising Archaeology, to someone who’s not familiar with it?
It’s an anonymous Instagram with a with all of the objects that people leave behind—the litter—but repositioned and recontextualized as artifacts. The idea behind it is, what can you learn about this kind of sex by taking this, ethnographic or archeological point of view? What can you learn from the kind of pleasure and sex that people are having in these spaces based on the objects that are left behind? Why do some areas have a higher prevalence of condom packets? Why did I find PrEP pills in certain areas and not in others? Why do some areas have [paraphernalia]?
How did you begin collecting the objects you document?
It started last summer. A friend introduced me to this place that was a very well known cruising area, but also a nudist area. It was also much bigger than a cruising spot. It was also a real social area. I was kind of obsessed with it. I was going all the time. At some point I started collecting the condom wrappers and the things that people were leaving behind. And I thought it would be funny to start scanning them.
I ended up visiting more cruising areas, and as the project developed, because I was doing it so much, I started to engage with question of why I was doing this. What could I learn from it? That’s where the idea of calling it Cruising Archaeology came from.
Why did it feel important to memorialize these artifacts of the cruising scene?
In London, the relationship between cruising areas and local councils can be fraught. The areas that are left, as in Hampstead Heath, the Rose Garden and Hyde Park—most of the councils, really know about it. But there are other areas where they’ve made it very difficult to cruise in. It's important to memorialize them as spaces for communities to meet.
It’s a bit complicated as well, talking about the concept of community, within the context of cruising, because it's obviously meant to be anonymous. So maybe people don't really engage that much beyond just that space. But I do also think that there are regular people that come to a lot of these spaces, and I think it's an important aspect of their lives that these spaces exist.
So you see your role as being someone to declare that these spaces have significant value?
Yeah, and also I think there is a general attitude here that people don't cruise anymore because of apps. Or that it’s not something that young people do. London is a very open and liberal city, and I think maybe cruising often gets associated with people who are not out. Or that it’s kind of secretive.
And actually, I don't think that is the case. There's a very much a mix in terms of age and demographics. And I think it's also important to assert that this is a practice that still exists, and it’s not shameful.
What was the wildest thing you’ve found in a cruising area?
I found like a stick with a face mask on the end, which I guessed must have been used as, like, kind of like a DIY sex toy? But it also seems so rudimentary and painful that I was like—it was so strange.
It sounds like this project pushed you to spend a lot time in and around cruising areas—did you learn anything by visiting so many?
There was like, one place that I'd heard about, but I didn't know exactly where the cruising area was, I was walking along a path, and I saw a kind of small path going off the main path into the bushes.You could tell that people have been walking there repeatedly. I walked the whole way down, and then at the end, I found a whole heap of stuff on the ground.
It's funny how you end up recognizing similar patterns—maybe because I'm looking for them—that people maybe don't see. They call them desire paths—which I always thought funny—where people, constantly walk on the ground, and it wears away. A large part of cruising historically would have been passed on through word of mouth, and that's how knowledge about spaces was passed down. But now it exists in tandem with the internet social groups.
It looks like the Cruising Archaeology Instagram is still updating. Do you have plans for a second book?
I got Arts Council funding to develop this project, so I'm actually planning on developing it into a European wide project. We'll do Berlin, Paris, Athens, Barcelona, and Dublin.
