A new video work by The Huxleys, Radical Joy extends their light-painting series into a moving image — a fever dream of colour pressed against the darkness.

It begins where queer people have always gone to survive: the dance floor. That dark room, that strobe, that hour at 3am when a body stops apologising for taking up space. Shot partially on Super 8mm film, light is painted by hand around figures in motion, entirely in camera — grain, flare and all, with no post-production, no digital fabrication and no AI. What accumulates is a portrait of queer bodies as luminous things, blooming inside the shadow rather than despite it.

The joy here is not composed or dignified. It is absurd, manic, free-range — laughing too loudly, dancing in the wreckage. Insisting on happiness in a hostile time is a preposterous act, and Radical Joy performs that absurdity deliberately, ecstatically, at full volume. with a pumping new soundscape and song created by The Huxleys in collaboration with sound artist Mark Mitchell.