No One Magazine is taking an underground tour of queer night life around the globe: Next stop HCMC and Hanoi

The first issue of No One Magazine (the print publication all about underground queer nightlife around the world) took its readers on a trip to Amsterdam featuring 12 stories from collectives, artists, organisers, historians, advocates, and community members of the city’s clubbing scene. For issue two, editors Việt and Jeremy Raider-Hoàng found themselves in the sweaty basements of clubs of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City – Vietnam’s “seemingly contrasting, yet deeply complementary” largest cities for yet another exploration of dance, electronic music and all the things that make up queer identity.

This latest edition expands beyond the interview format of issue one to include essays, poems, maps and photo stories – “capturing nightlife as something to be felt not just told”, Việt tells us. Issue two also debuts a new visual identity inspired by the vibrancy of everyday Vietnamese visual culture: “misspelled signage, local pamphlets, and the playful disorder of street typography.” All tied together with a grid layout that pays homage to “Vietnam’s first decolonized folk art: the Lô Tô game sheet”, Jeremy shares.

Its cover, now turned yellow, is still boldly stamped with the magazine’s no nonsense wordmark: a version of Queering by Adam Nac, designed to evoke movement, “with the altered ‘N’ to represent a heel, paying tribute to bold queer dancers”, says Việt. The stickers that partly cover it are a visual decision that crosses issues – inspired by club stickers used to cover phone cameras at queer parties to “encourage presence and protect privacy” he says, these decorative editions each represent one collective or organisation and all together “form a snapshot of the city’s queer club scene at the time of the magazine’s production.

The duo like to collaborate with a local designer for each issue to give every edition and every city a unique look and issue two, No One in HCMC and Hanoi, saw Việt and Jeremy team up with Dsuy Nguyễn, a graphic designer based in Ho Chi Minh City. True to Dsuy’s colourful and eclectic style, the second instalment boasts a bold visual language that’s bursting at the seams with unconventional visual decisions – a “chaos, fluidity, softness, and joy” that throws stale Western design aesthetics out the window.

“We also aimed to challenge foreign, eroticised narratives about Vietnam by collaborating with 13 Vietnamese story contributors and diaspora voices to authentically reflect our scene,” Việt shares. No One issue two reveals a scene of local DJs, producers, club owners and event organisers that have “transformed underground nightlife from an imported subculture into a distinctly Vietnamese movement”. Unearthing the origins of the cities’ queer club cultures, one highlight amongst the issue’s content is Where Do We Meet?, shares Jeremy, “a story where a historian maps queer Vietnamese gathering spots from the 1970s to today, challenging the claim that queerness is a Western import”.

The pair initially started the magazine following three important personal reflections: “Queer nightlife offers a safer space for marginalised people to explore their identities and connect with others, queer wisdom transcends spaces, cities, and countries, and queer history hasn’t been well preserved or documented.” These three things were front of mind as they set out to create a printed magazine that would travel from city to city, in order to build what they’ve termed as “a growing time capsule of shared and personal queer identities.”

As for the next part of their adventure after issue two, the editors can’t reveal their next destination yet but they tell us that issue three is sure to be “politically and socially charged”, Jeremy shares. “The place we’re heading faces ongoing injustice against queer, trans, and other marginalised communities. For us, this issue is a way to process, reconcile, and find hope through mourning, dialogue, and dancing.”