The act of cruising, ephemeral by nature, doesn’t leave much physical evidence behind. Any surviving artefacts are usually minimal and easy to overlook. But the latest publication from SMUT Press, Cruising Archaeology II: Eurotrash, takes a closer look at this detritus, assembling objects found at cruising grounds across Europe into a fascinating archive.

Created by Jack Scollard, the project follows on from the 2024 photobook Cruising Archaeology, which began as an Instagram account documenting found objects through individual scans, each stamped with a location and date. Since then, the project has gained wider attention, leading to invitations to speak at universities and an upcoming presentation at an arts institution in Ireland.

Now in its second iteration, the project maps sites across Berlin, Athens, Dublin, Barcelona and Paris, from woodland paths and beaches to public toilets. The objects range from underwear and chewing gum packets to various low-grade prescription drugs. Unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of colourful condoms and their ripped, crumpled packaging.

While the same kinds of items show up across different locations, Scollard found subtle differences from site to site. “These distinctions became the markers of place and embed a local context within familiar materials,” Scollard explain. “I find this very interesting to consider; how the landscape itself corresponds to produce particular social dynamics and outcomes.” He recalls finding a Boiler lube packet in Tiergarten – a park in Berlin – linked to the well-known sauna, as well as a “Johnny’s got you covered” wrapper in Dublin, part of an Irish health-service campaign encouraging safer sex practices.

The project is also currently on display as a physical exhibition at Studio Voltaire in London, where objects from the book are presented as jesmonite casts. “I had a reticence around showing the actual objects themselves because I had concerns around what it means to potentially show [other people's] personal items without their consent,” says the artist. With a background in printmaking, Scollard instead chose to show the work through casting: “It means the objects effectively are on display in terms of their physicality but that they are no longer the originals and have this distance from their source.”

That same thoughtfulness runs throughout the project. “It felt particularly important to acknowledge the reality of cruising culture, which is that it is, and always has been, complex and perhaps contradictory at times,” the artist tells us. “There is a tendency to reduce sites of sexual and bodily freedom as inherently utopian; I wanted to probe deeper and ask for whom it is really utopian and what utopian even means. I wanted to acknowledge the reality that risk and danger do play a part in cruising.”

That risk also includes the presence of drug use within some cruising spaces, something the project doesn’t shy away from addressing. Some of the scans contain traces of drug paraphernalia found among the mud and undergrowth of these sites. The project also features interviews with Marc Svensson of You Are Loved and Mati Klitgård of Gay Consent.Lab, both LGBTQ+ non-profits, opening up conversations around chemsex and other forms of drug use in these settings.

Other conversations in Cruising Archaeology II: Eurotrash build on the previous project. One standout in the new edition is a contribution from visual artist Stav B, who addresses the erasure of lesbian cruising spaces. As the artists explain, “it felt important to widen the voices and perspectives around this topic. So much of the cultural dialogue around cruising centres the cis white gay male experience and I was cautious around reproducing certain narratives”.

Since their first publication, Scollard has pointed to wider political conditions that have reshaped how public space is experienced and controlled. “One of the biggest things globally to happen between the first book and now has been the genocide in Palestine. The events that surrounded this, both internationally and domestically, have illustrated the extent to which the state and police can exert control over populations and public space,” he says, linking this to a broader tightening of how protest and gathering are managed in the UK.

With that in mind, it becomes easier to imagine further restrictions on queer public gathering, and on the more ephemeral uses of space that cruising culture depends on. But Cruising Archaeology II: Eurotrash also makes clear that these worlds do not disappear so easily. If cruising is designed to leave little behind, this project shows that its traces still matter – as evidence not just of sex, but of queer life, intimacy and survival in public space.

Cruising Archaeology: The Pleasure Archive Research Centre is running at Studio Voltaire until 5 July 2026.