Trikster Blog

[English below]

Trikster – Nordic Queer Journal lanserer i dag sitt tredje og største nummer hittil, fylt av queer litteratur i tekst, lyd og bilder.

Triksters tema-del “Queerlitt” inneholder bidrag fra nordiske og internasjonale forfattere som stiller skarpt på begjæret og kroppens betydning i litteraturen. Felles for bidragene i “Queerlitt” er at man ikke alltid vet hvor man har dem – de forstyrrer både seksuelle, språklige, og sjangermessige grenser.

Trikster er stolt av å kunne presentere den New York-baserte spoken word-poeten Staceyann Chin, som i sin performance setter fokus på kroppsliggjorte erfaringer av rasisme og sexisme. Men humor er aldri langt unna, som i diktet hvor Chin instruerer lesbiske i hvordan man forfører streite kvinner. I “Manlighet” undersøker og utfordrer de svenske poetene Hanna Hallgren og Johan Jönson maskulinitet og kjønnstilhørighet, mens Dennis Cooper og Eli Levén flørter med det pornografiske i deres tekster om flyktige erotiske møter i “Switch”. Andre bidragsytere til “Queerlitt” er Christian Yde Frostholm, Kajsa Sundin, Tova Gerge, Jonas Brun, Kristofer Folkhammar, Ulrika Dahl, Britta Tegby Frisk og Carlos Díaz. Flere av bidragene tar utgangspunkt i Queerlitteraturdagen i Gøteborg i 2008, organisert av Linn Hansén og Athena Farrokhzad, som sammen med Mathias Danbolt har redigert Trikster #3.

Trikster #3 byr også på et intervju med den britiske kunsthistorikeren Gavin Butt, som forteller om hans nye prosjekt om seriøsitet, og hans ønske om å gjøre queer teori morsommere. I nummerets kritikkdel utfordrer Sara Edenheim norske queer-forskere i sin anmeldelse av Når heteroseksualiteten skal forklare seg, Jon Helt Haarder leser med og mot Stephen J. Walton, Peter Edelberg jubler over boken Criminally Queer, Susanne Christensen svarer på Wenche Mühleisens kritikk av feministisk litteraturkritikk, og Tommy Olsson ønsker han var homo, etter å ha sett Slava Mogutins fotografier.

Trikster er et flerspråklig, gratis webmagasin som utkommer to ganger i året.Trikster #3 er redigert av Mathias Danbolt (ansvarlig redaktør), Linn Hansén og Athena Farrokhzad, og er Støttet av Fritt Ord, Nordisk Kulturfond og Senter for Kvinne- og Kjønnsforskning ved Universitetet i Bergen. For ytterligere informasjon, besøk www.trikster.net eller kontakt Mathias Danbolt påmathias@trikster.net / +45 41 15 16 13.

Trikster #3: Queer literature

The third issue of the web magazine Trikster – Nordic Queer Journal is now online on www.trikster.net.

Trikster #3 is entitled “Queerlitt”, presenting queer literature with contributions from several Nordic and international writers and artists. Through video, images, and texts this issue of Trikster focuses on the body and desire in literature – giving attention to the sound of the voice, as well as bodily and textual gestures.

Trikster is proud to present the spoken word poet Staceyann Chin through video performances, and a conversation with the Swedish activist-theorist Ulrika Dahl. In her energetic performance, Chin touches upon the bodily effects of racism and sexism. But humor is never far away, as in the poem where she instructs lesbians how to seduce straight girls. Seduction is also central to Dennis Cooper and Eli Levén’s contribution “Switch”, where they read each other’s texts about the erotics of sexual encounters.

Trikster #3 also includes an interview with the British art historian Gavin Butt. In “Dismantling the Serious Machine” Butt talks about his new project on cultural seriousness, where he reflects upon the amusing but difficult task of making theorizing more fun.

The texts in “Queerlitt” take their outset in the Queer Literature Day in Gothenburg in 2008, arranged by Athena Farrokhzad and Linn Hansén, who have co-edited Trikster #3 with Mathias Danbolt. The issue also includes contributions from Athena Farrokhzad, Linn Hansén, Christian Yde Frostholm, Kajsa Sundin, Tova Gerge, Jonas Brun, Kristofer Folkhammar, Hanna Hallgren, Johan Jönson, Britta Tegby Frisk, Carlos Díaz, Jon Helt Haarder, Peter Edelberg, Susanne Christensen, and Tommy Olsson.

Trikster is a multilingual web magazine, releasing two issues a year. Trikster #3 is edited by Mathias Danbolt (executive editor), Athena Farrokhzad, and Linn Hansén. Trikster is supported by The Freedom of Expression Foundation, Oslo, Nordic Culture Fund, and Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Bergen. For more information visit www.trikster.net, or contact Mathias Danbolt at mathias@trikster.net / +45 41 15 16 13.

From May 7-10, our friends from Openhagen.net organize the festival Undoing the City in Copenhagen. It will be three days with “workshops, debates, film-screenings, city walks, canal tours, parades, actions and alike will question our use of the city”. They invite all of us who “use the city space and who have a wish to make the city a common space to participate in Undoing the City”. It will be great!

Here is some more background:
“Cities today are scene for a long series of conflicts between different society groups. It’s a battle going on between those who are forced out into ghettolike districts, those who retreat to gated communities in the suburbs, the creative class in the redeveloped city centres, and the police who increasingly are forced to ensure these separations. The city and its space are more and more becoming battle zones – battle zones which call for a re-conquest of the city space against fences, profit and discrimination. It is a battle to be fought with theoretical inputs, political statements and with the entire spectrum of social, cultural and artistic forms of anti-power. We want to challenge both the capitals, the states, the city governments and the creative class’s ideas of the city. And we want to challenge our own idea of the city. Let’s undo the city.”

Read more about the thoughts, discussions (and soon also the program) for Undoing the City on Openhagen.net or on Undoing the city’s Wikispace.

On the 18th and 19th of May, The Society of Queer Studies in Finland hosts the conference “Queer Futurities, Today: Utopias and Beyond in Queer Theory” at ICI in Berlin.

The conference takes its outset in Lee Edelman’s critique of the “reproductive futurism” in his notorious 2005 book No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. The seminar interrogates the term “futurities,” questioning ideas of progressive time and homonormativity. (Read more about the background here).

At the conference, Lee Edelman will hold a keynote entitled “Against Survival: Queerness in a Time that’s Out of Joint”.

Other speakers are: Tomasz Jarymowicz, Volker Woltersdorff, Annamari Vänskä, Jan Wickman, Tuula Juvonen, Tatjana Greif, Katerina Kolarova, Kevin S. Amiddon, Antu Sorainen, Heike Bauer, Christien Garcia, Jin Haritaworn, Željko Blaće & Milo DePrieto, Thomas O. Haakonson, Katherine Wiedlack, Harri Kalha, Alexis Lothian, Tomasz Basiuk, Eveline Kilian, Philip Pass, Anu Koivunen.

See the program in detail here, and read the abstracts – they look great.

This year the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK) at the University of Bergen is celebrating its 10th anniversary.
On that occasion, they organize Theory Now! – “a symposium that gathers some of the most vocal scholars working on the cutting edge of gender theory.” On May 14th and 15th, they give an opportunity to meet with some really great scholars, and hear their lectures free of charge.

These are the invited speakers:

Professor Vikki Bell, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Professor Pheng Cheah, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Assistant Professor Ulrika Dahl, Södertörn University College, Sweden
Professor Elizabeth Grosz, Women’s and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, USA
Professor Judith Halberstam, University of Southern California, USA
Professor Marcia Inhorn, Yale University, USA
Postdoctoral fellow Kari Jegerstedt, SKOK, University of Bergen, Norway
Professor Ellen Mortensen, SKOK, University of Bergen, Norway
Professor Robyn Wiegman, Duke University, USA

See the preliminary program and register at SKOK’s website.

Trikster mourns over the death of the brilliant theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick April 12 2009.

Sedgwick was one of the most influential and important theorists for the development of queer theory, with seminal books such as Between Men (1985), Epistemology of the Closet (1990), Tendencies (1992), and Touching Feeling (2003). Her death at only 59 years leaves a big gap in contemporary queer theory, literary analysis, affect theory, and poetry.

According to the obituary in The New Yorker, it was the breast cancer she had been battling with for over a decade that caused her early death. In A Dialogue of Love (1999), her book on her diagnosis of breast cancer, she writes about one of her conversations with her therapists, where she says “What I am proudest of is having a life where work and love are impossible to tell apart.” That’s an ideal to strive for.

The Brooklyn-based band and peformance collective MEN is visiting Scandinavia in May! The group started in 2007 when the Le Tigre members JD Samson and Johanna Fateman started to write new songs, collaborating with HIRSUITE members Michael O’Niell (Princess, Ladybug Transistor) and Ginger Brooks Takahashi (LTTR, The Ballet).

Their tour plans for Scandinavia looks like this:

Copenhagen on May 7 at Basement, Vesterbro (but who sells the tickets?)

Oslo on May 8 at Revolver

Bergen on May 9 at Garage

Stockholm on May 13 at Debaser

Malmö on May 14, but place is not yet announced.

For those who can read Norwegian, Reidar Engesbak in Blikk has interviewed JD Samson here.

Journalisten Anders Haahr Rasmussen har skrevet en meget fin og interessant tekst i Information med tittelen “Den hvide mands byrde”. Teksten tar for seg hva den hvite, heteroseksuelle, velutdannede mannen stiller opp med i møte med kritikken om priviligerthet, som rettes fra feministisk og postkolonialistisk hold. Men hvordan forholder man seg til sin privilegier utover reaksjonær maskulinisme, eller politisk korrekt dårlig samvittighet og skyldfølelse?

Informations “repræsentant fra verdens vel nok mest privilegerede mindretal” leter etter en mer refleksiv og positiv definert posisjon, og intervjuer på veien Maja Bissenbakker Frederiksen, Caroline Bergvall, den fine feministiske mannegruppen Lakaj (Asger Kjærsgaard Larsen, Kristoffer Bunch, Asger Martiny-Bruun) og Sonja Schwarzenberger. Det har det kommet en god tekst ut av.

Den 17. april arrangerer Oslo Queer seminaret “Queer i Media” på Litteraturhuset i Oslo. Oslo Queer skriver følgende om seminaret:

“Med dette seminaret vil vi sette søkelys på queer som tema i media, og hvordan og i hvilken grad det blir presentert. Vi vil utforske spørsmål som, hvordan setter vi queer i fokus i mainstream media? Hvordan ville det sett ut? Hvordan lager/støtter vi queer og alternative mediaer? Seminaret er på Litteraturhuset 17. april kl 1900. Det blir paneldiskusjon, performance, og vegetarmat. Inngang, deltakelse, og maten er gratis!”

Panelet består av Dana Wanounou (redaksjonssjef, Radiorakel), Reidar Engesbak (journalist, Blikk), Anniken Vargel (journalist), Mathilda Piel (redaktør i Kom Ut). Performance med The Hungry Hearts.

The summer is approaching, and the planning of this years’ queer festivals is moving ahead. Here are some dates and places in Europe:

5-10 May: Queer Zagreb, Croatia (Facebook)

12-25 May: Queer Up North – International Festival, Manchester, UK

21-25 May: Queer Insurrection, Leeds, UK

4-7 June: entzaubert – a radical queer DIY film festival in Berlin, Germany

5-7 June: Off_Pride – The Alternative Queer Festival in Zurich, Switzerland

6-12 July: Jafnaðr – Nordic Queer Youth Festival, Malungen, Norway

20-26 July: Copenhagen Queer Festival, Denmark

11-15 August: Aalborg Queer Festival, Denmark

20-23 August: Oslo Queer Festival, Norway (myspace)

14-20 September: The Nights and Days of Tribads, Helsinki, Finland

If you have more information about places and dates, leave a comment.