The Longing Disco is a live art event shaped by the participants which analyses relationships between music, sentiment, memory and personal longing. It explores the ability of music, lyric, and song to stimulate memory, unravel narrative, and enable a more open way of communicating and sharing our unspoken personal desires. The Longing Disco developed as a series of live events, recreating the nostalgia of the ‘Lucky 7s’ disco where participants brought their own records to the party.

In The Longing Disco, each song has a unique story to tell. Those taking part were invited to anonymously submit up to three song choices most connected to their personal stories of courtship, romance, unrequited love and hope. For each submission, the name of the artist/band, the song, and the reason or story behind their submission was requested. In keeping with the spirit of the event, all submissions were included in The Longing Disco playlist and all stories remain unedited. Vinyl records were encouraged, although CDs, MP3s, and other devices were also accepted, as were email submissions. Where the record wasn’t physically brought to the disco, the song choice was sourced on the participants behalf via a music sharing website. Participants were invited to either write a short text describing the personal relevance of each song choice, or to privately record their story in a specially created recording booth. Songs include those played during the first rush of passion, songs which were the soundtrack to proposals, secretive encounters or break-ups and last-snog-of-the-night songs. Each submission is allocated a unique number, and played in the order that they were received, from 7.30 pm until 12.05am, with the last dance at midnight.

You are invited to make your own song submission and story confession to The Longing Disco which will be played at the next  Disco.

You can also run your own Longing Disco following instructions sent from Nick Fox.

Send us your requests or anonymously submit their own digital confession or  reason behind their song choices. to: longingdiscorequests@foxart.org.uk

Please state:

1.  Artist/singer/band Name

2. The track you want played

3. The reason or story behind your song choice. (all email submissions will be published anon).  By making a contribution to The Longing Disco you are consenting to the possible use of your contribution(s) to be published or exhibited by Nick Fox, either as an extract or in its entirety.

The Longing Disco is  an imprint of The Longing Archive. The Longing Disco has been made possible with support from Arts Council England.

More about the The Longing Archive

A project started during Fox’s residency at the National Glass Centre, Sunderland, in 2009, The Longing Archive is an ongoing art project that explores notions of longing through interaction with individuals, communities and sub-cultural groups. The archive operates as a depository for unwanted love letters, love tokens and their narratives. Examining the differing measures employed to communicate and encode the emotional spectrum of longing, and to explore its contemporary relevance to humanity, the archive provides a key to the symbolic codes of courtship, rejection, loss and desire. Longing, whether collective or individual, represents many things: inconsolable ache, disappointment, fear, distance, but it also represents the possibility of fulfillment, of hope, of love.