Archive for the ‘festival’ Category

Call for contributions to Queeristan 2012

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

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Below is a Call for Contributions for the important political festival and gathering Queeristan 2012 that takes place in Amsterdam between May 18 and 20 this year. Queeristan is said to be one of the central meeting places for anti-racist queer critique in the area. This year they have a “freaky” framework for the festival:

All the freaky people
make the beauty of the world
(Michael Franti)

With this message Queeristan is calling out whoever is interested in using freaking beauty to achieve a different queer politics. Together, let’s join forces in a festival that will take place in Amsterdam from May 18-20.

What is Queeristan? Certainly not a(nother) country. Behind it there is a nomadic collective of activists based in Amsterdam whose interests do not exactly rhyme with law&order, nor with setting up new borders. Nonetheless Queeristan is all about providing a space. Not only an autonomous space that dodges logics of profit and commercialization, but also a platform to both explore and counter the normative workings of gender and identity. A safe environment for queers and a factory of resistance. Our critique departs from the simple fact that buying “normalcy” in the guise of being either male or female, a Dutch or a foreigner, gay or straight, either one or the other, simply means to be disciplined by a choice made elsewhere, to be docile towards it, to keep your mouth and your eyes shut.

Although Queeristan strives to bring together all sorts of sexual outlaws, we do not want it to be another gay pride: we are not interested in using the beat of our music to celebrate the “integration” of just some queer lives whose skin color, citizenship, cultural and financial means are played as “assets” within a liberal democracy that trades rights as if it were a stock exchange. Instead Queeristan wants to be a festival where dissent unpredictably materializes and becomes shareable in a performance, in a workshop, but also in a work of art, or in partying all night long. There is no fixed formula for Queeristan. There is a togetherness based on affinity with political projects that focus on the body as the site where social aggregation and exclusion can be concretely addressed. Queeristan discerns the battlefield where a geopolitics of consumerism, migration, human rights is enforced. Queeristan resists.

Amsterdam becomes Queeristan the moment we recompose the space we inhabit to uncover the possibility of troubling our private, individual consumer identity. To start using our bodies and intersect the multiple layers of stories and practices that shape them as they tie them to one another. Therefore Queeristan is calling activists, artists, performers, queers to come up with proposals that aim at re-inventing the modes of encounter, feeling, and understanding our bodies and with interventions that seek to spatially short circuit and re-map Amsterdam beyond its neoliberal rhetoric of gay-friendliness and connect it to other places and struggles.

If Queeristan’s politics resonates with yours, come onboard and share the platform by joining the collective in our weekly meetings in preparation to the festival. Or, if you have exciting ideas for a workshop, a performance, an art exhibition, or other, original formats cooked up by your queer creativity: we are looking forward to receiving your proposals – being aware of the nasty logistic limits of time, space and money – to construct the festival that will form Queeristan this spring.

Please send all your inquires and proposals (max 500 words) to queeristan (at) gmail.com

Deadline for submissions is February, 29 2012.

On that freaky note – it is worth mentioning that the German artist and theorist Renate Lorenz’s long awaited book Queer Art – A Freak Theory is out in just a couple of weeks. 2012 is a freaky queer year indeed.

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Queer ‘guerrilla’ activism in China: Reflections on the tenth-anniversary Beijing Queer Film Festival 2011

Monday, October 10th, 2011

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by Elisabeth L. Engebretsen

On June 19 this year, the fifth biennial Beijing Queer Film Festival (BJQFF) closed after five days of screening over thirty queer films from China and abroad, hosting talks and parties, and with people attending from all over China, as well as from overseas. Queer and straight volunteers ensured a smooth-running festival, and a funding initiative assisted youth from inland provinces to attend, watch queer films and socialize in a distinctively queer community, some for the first time in their lives. This is a considerable achievement when seen in context of the persistently difficult socio-political climate for minorities in the country. While it has often been assumed that queer life is invisible, silenced, and poorly organized in societies like the Chinese, where formal recognition and legal protection remain absent, a rather different and more nuanced perspective emerges when we look more carefully into specific events and their particular context, such as this film festival. In the BJQFF organizers’ press statement they suggest that it was perhaps despite and even because of, official bans and police surveillance that they succeeded in hosting the film festival and achieving their aims – celebrating the importance of showing queer films, and spreading knowledge of queer cultures in a society where non-mainstream voices are stifled all too often.

This upbeat and celebratory attitude alongside a flare for ad-hoc activist creativity – or guerrilla-style tactics – are key characteristics of queer social activism in mainland China. Guerrilla activism in general works to empower marginalized groups by creating a temporary platform for transmitting their voices and experiences, and works relatively independently of established channels and vehicles of communication and organization. These strategies are of particular relevance in China, where authorities regularly but quite unpredictably, censor and crack down on dissenting activities. Yang Yang, chairwoman of this year’s film festival, said:

While it is unfortunate that we had to be guerilla-warriors [sic] once again in order to hold this festival, we feel empowered and invigorated by the reactions of the audience and the filmmakers, and we’re ready to continue with our goal of spreading queer films and queer culture in Chinese society.

Of course, many would argue that these are fundamental ingredients of (queer) activism in many places in the world. In the following, therefore, I would like to reflect on certain qualities of queer social activism in mainland China, by discussing the Beijing Queer Film Festival event in some detail. This is not, I emphasize, an attempt to argue an absolute cultural or queer Chinese difference, and I recognize the conundrum of the universality/particularity bind involved. In short, this tense dynamic involves, on the one hand, that some might consider queer activism in China as part of a universal, and similar if not identical, process of rights activism towards equality for all; on the other hand, some emphasize the unique particularity of a given cultural location – such as ‘China’ – against the (implicitly western) global flows of rights, pride, and rainbow flags.

In a recent special issue of the journal Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique on transnationalism and queer Chinese politics, Petrus Liu discusses this dynamic vis-a-vis queer academic practices (Theory), and points out that Eurocentric queer theory typically sees China as a relevant concern “only as the producer of differences from Western queer theory” (Liu 2010: 297). The referent of Chinese specificity, he suggests, often works to establish China as existing in the past, lagging behind in queer developmental progress, or to place China as exceptional, and categorically outside of, and hence irrelevant to, queer theory. In other words, China is important only insofar as it is positioned as a categorical and negative opposite to a generic ‘west’ and to queer scholarly inquiry. In a globalizing world, it is clear that both positions are problematic, as Liu also argues; while queer life in China is undeniably shaped by local culture and history, there is no denial that foreign impulses inspire and help shape current formations of queer identity, politics, and community. The Beijing Queer Film Festival event, then, serves as a poignant example of this local-regional-global dynamic.

Ten years of queer “guerrilla” activism: A short history of the Beijing Queer Film Festival
During its ten-year-long existence, the Beijing Queer Film Festival has encountered its fair share of official trouble. Started in 2001 by a group of Beijing University students and tongzhi (‘queer’), the festival has been organized every other year or so by a changing group of volunteers. The first two festivals (in 2001 and 2005) were marked by official interruptions and bans, forcing the organizers to keep their festival underground and far away from official eyes. In 2005, for example, I was in Beijing conducting research on lala (‘lesbian’) communities there, and attended the festival with some of my local friends. The opening event was scheduled to take place in a central lecture hall at the prestigious Beijing University. Organizers had applied to authorities for permission to hold the event, but not citing the ‘homosexuality’ focus of it in order to increase the chances of getting permission. In the end, officials were tipped off, conducted a last-minute check-up, and upon finding festival material with direct references to LBGTQ, they promptly canceled the event. A mass of people were stranded outside the hall, not knowing what to do. An impressive informal community effort, facilitated by personal connections in the arts community, cell phone messaging and Internet use, enabled the festival to quickly transfer to the Dashanzi art district on the other side of town, where the inaugural welcome and screening event took place to a packed, cheering audience, the next evening.

The third and fourth festivals in 2007 and 2009 were held in Songzhuang village, an alternative arts community, some distance outside central Beijing. This was a conscious choice of location in order to evade official scrutiny and censorship. The 2009 festival also co-hosted China’s first queer arts festival, Difference-Gender, which attracted several hundred visitors to its opening event. However, the organizers met considerable problems as authorities visited the site the day before opening and ordered a cancellation of the exhibition, arguing that this public art show boasted the ‘improper subject of homosexuality’ and ‘pornographic’ exhibits (see, Liao 2009). Organizers negotiated with police until only hours before the scheduled opening, and were finally able to hold the event, albeit with some empty spaces on the wall; the title/artist tags remaining as visible proofs of censorship. In the words of Xu Bin, leader of the Beijing-based lala (‘lesbian’) group Tongyu (‘Common Language’):

It was the triumph of the younger generation of China’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community. It was the triumph of their confidence to claim for proud exisitance [sic], triumph of their courage to insist on doing what they believe to be right! (Liao 2009)

The Songzhuang film festivals in 2007 and 2009 received little overt harassment from police and national security, despite the continued presence of official intimidation and innumerable requests for information and paperwork in the run-up to the events. This of course drained resources, challenged volunteers’ patience, and perhaps most importantly, necessitated that organizers remained on their toes, ready to deal with any possible intervention from authorities at any time. Comic relief works wonders in such testy environments; at the opening screening of the 2009 festival, where I was in the audience, one of the organizers humorously addressed the ‘hidden’ plainclothes police in the audience, saying he hoped they would also enjoy the films. All in all, the original programme remained pretty much intact, and this relative success encouraged the organizers to think bigger as they prepared for a large-scale tenth-anniversary festival in 2011.

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Members of the 2011 BJQFF Organization Committee (from left to right): Yang Yang, Cui Zi’en, Stijn Deklerck, Wei Jiangang, Fan Popo. (Photo: BJQFF)

In April this year, however, organizers had to adjust their plans due to official pressure. The Chinese government has become more edgy in the recent couple of years compared with the early 2000s. This is due to both domestic and global events, reaching far beyond the ‘improper subject of homosexuality’ – such as international sports (2008 Beijing Olympics) and trade (2010 Shanghai Expo) events, environmental disasters, ethnic minority riots, and a string of popular uprisings due to increasing socio-economic inequalities. The official cancellation of DOChina, an independent documentary film festival scheduled to take place in May, signaled that Songzhuang village was no longer a safe haven for alternative art events. As it soon turned out, other art locations around Beijing were also experiencing a severe climate of government control and censorship, so it was becoming very difficult to find venues willing to host the queer film festival. As Stijn Deklerck, member of the 2011 BJQFF organization committee explains:

Apart from Songzhuang, we also made screening agreements with several other locations.  One by one they told us however that hosting the Beijing Queer Film Festival was too risky.  They were afraid of being shut down by the authorities, and they told us that they didn’t want to work with us anymore.

The organizers finally decided to hold their festival at the Dongjen Book Club, an activity center in Xicheng District in west Beijing. Worried by the overall climate of fear, they decided not to publicize the exact name and address of the new festival location. Only the times of the screenings were made public, and people could only obtain the screening address after booking a ticket.

On Sunday 12 June, it became evident that the safety measures adopted were far from enough to keep the authorities at bay. Representatives of the Beijing Xicheng District Public Security Bureau, Culture Bureau and Bureau of Industry and Trade turned up unannounced at the Dongjen Book Club and demanded a sit-down with the BJQFF organizers. After a short talk, in which they made references to a number of Chinese laws, they declared that the festival was illegal and that it had to be cancelled. They announced that they would post police officers at the Dongjen Book Club during the festival, and they expressed that there would be harsh consequences if the organizers disobeyed their orders.

In an emergency meeting, the BJQFF Organization Committee unanimously decided to still hold the festival but at a different location. It was paramount that the festival not be silenced and erased, as Cui Zi’en, noted film-maker and long-time queer activist, co-founder of the festival, and member of the 2011 organizing committee:

The BJQFF was started as a platform to question and challenge mainstream culture. Since mainstream in China is mainly constructed by the government, we all felt a duty to not let the BJQFF be silenced by government bureaus, but to challenge their decisions on which films are acceptable for screening.

With only three days left till the festival opening, scheduled to start on June 15, the organizers started to engage all kinds of bars and cafes in Beijing. Uncertain if the authorities would find out about the new locations, they decided to avoid a concentration of activities in one single place. The opening ceremony on the evening of June 15, which attracted over 100 participants, for example, took place at the Vinyl Cafe, a hip venue in downtown Gulou Dajie, a popular tourist and hipster area of old back alleys and modern bars and restaurants a stone’s throw away from Tiananmen Square. Fan Popo, director of the Beijing LGBT Center, and one of the BJQFF organizers, described the atmosphere preceding the opening thus:

We were alarmed by the fact that the officials found out about the Dongjen Book Club, because we never publicized that the festival would take place there. What was even scarier, was that the authorities also knew about the previous talks we had with other screening locations. So we decided we needed some new safety measures, and one of them was to keep switching locations during the 5 days of the festival.

Another strategy employed by the organizers was to give the outward impression that the festival was indeed cancelled, informing all the people who had already booked seats that the festival would not take place. Only invited guests, volunteers, personal friends and LGBT organizations were informed about the new schedule and locations. This strategy posed a significant dilemma, namely that the possibilities for participation were severely limited, making the festival into ‘just’ a community gathering for those already established in the queer activist circuit and their immediate circle of trusted allies. However, in the difficult political climate of today’s China, other strategies aiming at more openness and general inclusivity have proven time and time again to result in total clampdown and cancelled events – generating very difficult dynamics within queer networks.

Despite all these difficulties, the film festival did open on June 15, and went on to host five full days of screenings and talks. Though not all screenings originally scheduled could take place, more than 30 films were screened in four thematic clusters: Film-makers’ Profile, Overseas Nation, Queers from Diverse Cultures, and National Panorama. To mark the tenth anniversary volunteers put together a special Beijing Queer Film Festival Retrospective Program; it consisted of a documentary film with film clips from BJQFFs ten years, and a panel discussion focusing on the development and future of queer film festivals in Asia.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1cZbdloq-U

Global connections and regional outreach
Although the film festival is located in Beijing city, and many of the organizers are based there, it is important to emphasize that the BJQFF has national and even international importance and reach. The program has increasingly included work by directors and activists based elsewhere in China, for example, and a growing trend in the film program is a focus on documenting personal experiences and histories. This contributes to diversifying ‘the Chinese queer experience’ and ‘identity’ quite significantly. At this year’s festival, more than 15 Chinese queer film-makers presented and discussed their work, with many of their films premiering at the festival. A focus on personal oral histories and narratives was running like a red thread through many films. Take for example “The next generation” (Xia yi dai, 下一代), a 90-minute documentary film that presents accounts by ten LGBTQ and straight university students from various parts of China (watch original episodes with English subtitles here). Directed by Queer Comrades-webcast host, Jiangang Wei, the film presents honest, personal accounts of love, family, education, sex, and the future. Similarly, the fifteen-minute “My journey of self discovery” (Faxian ziwo zhi lü, 发现自我之旅; directors: Ana Huang et al.) is a collage of selected shorts from a long-term lala (‘lesbian’) community workshop of digital storytelling, many with autobiographical contents (watch shorts from the Lala Digital Storytelling Project here. For updates on English translation/subtitles, more here). Then there was the tenth-anniversary collage film, “Our story – Beijing Queer Film Festival Ten Years” (women de gushi: Beijing ku’er yingchan shinianji, 我们的故事 – 北京酷儿影展十年纪), a documentary based on material recorded by the different BJQFF organizing committees over the years, telling their own stories about their participation and organizing.

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BJQFF opening screening. (Photo: BJQFF)

Eight film-makers attended from outside of mainland China to share their films and personally talk about their experiences. They included queer cinema pioneer Barbara Hammer, Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival organizer Sridhar Rangayan, Taiwanese queer documentary film maker Mickey Chen, and Chinese-Canadian video artist Wayne Yung.

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Barbara Hammer. (Photo: BJQFF)

I asked Barbara Hammer about her thoughts on the BJQFF this year; her response:

The fortitude and strength of the LGBTQI organizers at the 10th Beijing International Film Festival was truly amazing.  Regardless of police shut-down, the show always went on. Humor, consistency, and darn good programming was enhanced by bringing together international guests.  One night we all gathered, friends of the festival, and brain stormed how it could continue and in what guise or form. Many ideas came out that night. I look forward to continuing to support Beijing queers in any way I can!

In this way, the festival’s importance extends far beyond the actual event itself, and beyond Beijing city and its local queer activists there. The BJQFF is an explicitly inclusive and proactively engaging in outreach beyond the limits of identity, and beyond the limits of one particular city. This includes the positive welcoming and active recruiting of non-queer volunteers and participants as queer allies, building a funding programme that encourages attendees from regional China, and inviting overseas queer film makers not only from the generic ‘west’ but from Asian countries, such as India and Taiwan this year.

In addition to film-makers, volunteers, and regular participants, the 2011 BJQFF sponsored 25 individuals from China’s “remote areas” (pianyuan diqu, 偏远地区) to attend the festival. ‘Remote’ in this context refers to regions beyond the hyper-modernized coastal region and economically developed areas such as Chongching and Guangzhou. Such ‘remote’ areas are generally considered to offer less opportunities for queer community building and networking. BJQFF operated an online-based ‘viewer registration’ program where interested people from all over China could sign up, and in the end 25 lucky people were selected to attend the ten-year anniversary festival. In this way, the festival event and rationale provide a social and educational agenda beyond an already formed community based in the metropolis. This outreach focus strengthens the intimate links between the practice of alternative art, culture, and politics throughout China. As aptly expressed by one of the lucky funded participants, Songzi, a young man from Nanning, in the southern Guangxi province, when asked by Queer Comrades about his impressions: “I thought it was very interesting; I saw a lot of films that I really liked … I hope that more people can accept our community …”

These conscious strategies toward expanding inclusion, diversity, and participation, then, contribute to expanding a queer academic, and activist, focus on ‘Beijing’ to one that is simultaneously trans-regional and trans-national without resorting immediately to a one-to-one comparison with ‘the west’; it expands the definition of “China” as well, showing on-site audience and distant observers alike that “China” indeed is no homogeneous culture or location; within China there are marked regional differences in terms on queer activism, culture, and related practices. Additionally, the continued emphasis on showing films from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong – locations that share history, culture, and language in fundamental ways, but which also differ significantly – help foster cross-regional conversations and reflections on queer life and activism in Chinese societies. Thus, the BJQFF provides an important occasion for coming together and engage in conversations, education, and, let’s not forget: to have fun, despite the continued climate of censorship.

In closing:
Chinese queer festivals and events such as the BJQFF constitute crucial interventions into dominant cultural and political representation of sex and sexual difference in Chinese society. Perhaps the most fundamental importance is that self-identified queers and their straight allies directly and unfiltered present their lived experiences and personal desires to the audience; they are not mediated, explained or objectified by medical or academic ‘experts,’ as has long been a requirement for public discourse on homosexuality in post-Mao China (see, Cui 2002). Therefore, on a local level, these events help push queer voices up from the underground, generate self-respect and pride, and present knowledge of non-normative sexuality to the general population. On a global and theoretical level, the socio-political communication of queerness, self-respect and pride in these contexts, trouble the globalizing ‘brand’ of “pride” that celebrates public visibility, unmediated displays of queerness such as Pride Parades, and which in turn relegates ‘Other’ strategies to the closet of shame, silence, and arrested development. A specific focus on Chinese queer activism, then, such as film-making and -screening, contributes to expand our definitions of queer politics beyond the dominant ‘queer theory’ lexicon. Perhaps, then, a detailed examination of the event of the BJQFF, such as the one attempted here, could help challenge us to re-configure entrenched ways of thinking sexual meanings and pride globally, in ways that position different practices in proximity, dialogue, and coevalesence; and furthermore, in ways that show “China” as central, not peripheral or even irrelevant, to thinking Queer Theory and non normative sexual politics in our transnational times.

Finally, I end with the intriguing analysis offered in BJQFF chairwoman Yang Yang’s opening speech:

In my opinion, a queer film festival is not an event only open to “marginal people” who come to escape the darkness of mainstream society. A queer film festival is a platform void of prejudice, a place where people can freely express, show, explore themselves and where they can enter in meaningful exchanges. Every film, every director, every audience has their own viewpoint and so does every one of the organizers. The only one thing that the festival stands for is that everybody who participates can freely voice their own opinion. The festival has a large significance not only for the queer community but also for the whole of society, because sometimes we all can’t see ourselves clearly, sometimes we all need to explore the influence we have on others to understand ourselves, sometimes we’re all living oppressed lives and we hardly realize that we can free ourselves through freeing others.

Our biggest enemy consists of a small number of authoritarian organizations that are using the powerful national propaganda machine to subtly construct mainstream ideology. And our biggest worth, our ultimate goal as a queer film festival is to challenge and oppose this mainstream ideology … The revolution hasn’t succeeded yet. Queers, keep up the good work!

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Sources:

Beijing Queer Film Festival Organization Committee. 2011. 5th Beijing Queer Film Festival Press Release. June 19. (Email received June 20, 2011)

Cui, Zi’en. 2002. “Filtered voices: Representing gay people in today’s China,” in the IIAS (International Institute of Asian Studies) Newsletter no. 29, p. 13 (translated by Chi Ta-wei).

Liao, Karen. 2009. “Difference-gender: China’s first queer arts exhibition” (publication date June 15, 2009).

Liu, Petrus. 2010. “Why does queer theory need China?” in Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, special issue on ‘Beyond the Strai(gh)ts: Transnationalism and Queer Chinese Politics,’ Liu, Petrus and Lisa Rofel (eds.), 18(2): 291-320.

Yang, Yang. 2011. “致辞” (zhici, “Speech”) (uploaded June 13, 2011).

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Elisabeth L. Engebretsen is research fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. Email: elisabeth.engebretsen@helsinki.fi

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Note on upcoming event:
On October 28, 2011, the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies in Copenhagen, Denmark, will host a one-day workshop on Queer theory and activism in China, which will feature talks by 2011 BJQFF chairwoman Yang Yang, Hongwei Bao (Goldsmiths College, London), Benny Lu (Goldsmiths), Elisabeth Engebretsen, as well as talks and screenings of recent films by Cui Zi’en, Wei Jiangang, and Fan Popo. Register and get more information here.

Call for Contributions from Oslo Queer Festival

Monday, July 4th, 2011

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Read more on Oslo Queer Festival’s homepage!

Queer festivals this summer/fall

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Here is an incomplete list of queer festivals and other LGBT related events this summer and fall.

It is nice to know where things happen in case one has the opportunity and desire and money to travel. These are some of the places one might want to visit (or avoid, depending):

25 – 29 May 2011: Kashish – Mumbai International Queer Film Festival (Mumbai, India)

27 – 29 May 2011: OffPride (Zurich, Switzerland)

1 – 5 June 2011: TranScreen – Amsterdam Transgender Film Festival (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

1 – 12 June 2011: Euro Pride (Rome, Italy)

12 June 2011: London’s First Ever Sex Worker Film Festival 2011, (London, UK).

17 – 26 June 2011: Skeive Dager (Oslo Pride Festival) (Oslo, Norway)

25 – 31 July 2011: Queerfestival Copenhagen 2011, (Copenhagen, Denmark).

1 – 7 August 2011: Stockholm Pride (Stockholm, Sweden)

5 – 7 August 2011: quEAR: trans*tonale Ohrenfest (DIY queer audio festival) at Schwarzer Kanal (Berlin, Germany)

17 – 21 August 2011: Copenhagen Pride (Copenhagen, Denmark)

18 – 21 August 2011: Queertopia (Norberg, Sweden)

16 – 24 September 2011: Queer Lisboa Film Festival (Lisboa, Portugal)

22 – 25 September 2011: Oslo Queer Festival (Oslo, Norway)

21 – 30 October 2011: MIX Copenhagen LesbianGayBiTrans Film Festival (Copenhagen, Denmark)

25 November – 1 December: Florence Queer Festival (Florence, Italy)

Queerfestival Copenhagen 2011

Monday, March 7th, 2011

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The dates for the annual Queerfestival Copenhagen is ready: The festival will take place from July 25 – 31.  A venue is still to be announced, but I’m sure that it will be a great festival this year as well. Stay updated on the homepage.

See you in Copenhagen!

Performing Ideas

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

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If you’re into performance art, London is the place to visit over the next years as the research project Performance Matters kicks off a range of events with artists, theorists, and others doing good stuff. Run by Gavin Butt (Goldsmiths), Adrian Heathfield (Rohampton) and Loius Keanan (Live Art Development Agency) together with Owen G. Parry and Augusto Corrieri, Performance Matters is a thing to follow.

While I’m particularly excited about next year’s queer extravaganza under the theme of Trashing Performance (of which I’m taking part as an associative researcher, so I’m involved – no detached commenting here), this year’s symposium on Performing Ideas looks to be great as well.

If you’re in London between 2-9 October, look into the preliminary program on Performance Matter’s homepage. The workshops, lectures, panels, discussions, and performances includes a wide range of amazing participants such as Janine Antoni, Anne Bean, Wafaa Bilal, Maaike Bleeker, Silvia Bottiroli, Jonathan Burrows, Rose English, Tim Etchells, Matthew Goulish, Hannah Hurtzig, Shannon Jackson, Janez Janša, Joe Kelleher, Ong Keng Sen, Bojana Kunst, Boyan Manchev, Fred Moten, Rabih Mroué, Giulia Palladini, Peggy Phelan, Heike Roms, Lara Shalson, Julie Tolentino and many others.

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Oslo Queerfestival 2010

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

Trikster’s editor has been somewhat absent from the blog over the last months due to work load on other fronts, but hope to pick up some speed with news and info about good stuff happening on the queer political, theoretical, activist and academic front.

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In that vein, it is great to see that Oslo Queer still keeps up arranging a queerfest, and this year the festival is held between October 1-3 between Blitz and Humla. The program isn’t ready yet, but it will be probably be good this year as well. This is what they have written so far on their homepage:

“Oslo Queer Festival is a DIY (do-it-yourself) and non-profit event. It’s a non-sexists and non-racist festival which is focused on making a space for creativity and critial thought. Except for the party on Saturday, the entire festival is free!”

Read more on their homepage.

Copenhagen Queer Festival 2009

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

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This summer between July 20-26 the 4th Copenhagen Queer Festival will take place at Gøglerskolen at Kigkurren. The organizers have just presented this years theme: “Fuck money: Commercialization – Mainstreaming – Anticapitalism”. This is what they write on the festival’s homepage about what to expect of this year’s festival:

“Copenhagen is this year hosting the World Outgames and the games are beginning the weekend that the Queerfestival is ending, on the 25th of July. The Outgames has gotten a lot of focus and media attention in Denmark, and Copenhagen has been busy labelling itself as “gay-friendly/pink-city”. We see this only as a capitalistic attempt to make money on the expected 5-10.000 participants, but at the same time the World Outgames is charging 2200 dkr (290 euros) just to participate in a conference. So we decided that its time for an anti-capitalistic queer perspective!

Copenhagen Queermanifestival

With the Copenhagen queer festival we wish to create a queer space. But what is queer? How do we define it, use it, make it part of our lives? How do you define “queer” in relation to “non-queer”? these are just some of the questions we want to work on understanding during the festival. We wish to create a forum where people from all over the world can exchange impressions, viewpoints and ideas. Where we can play, learn, teach, move our boundaries and go places we didn’t know existed.

The festival is strictly D.I.Y. meaning that YOU as a participant must take an active part in making the festival successful. A few things have been planned in advance by the organizing group, but otherwise it is up to the participants to decide in unity how they want the festival to proceed. It is expected that everyone help out as much as they can to ensure that the festival will be a fun and enlightening experience for all.

Non-profit is another keyword for the festival. We wish to create a space which is not based on money, as we find this is the case in society today. The festival is open to all, whether or not they have money.

To create a place that is free for all it is important that we all try radically confront some, if not all (?) of the structures exiting in society today. We need to help each other to break free from structures and norms imposed on us by the capitalist, heteronormative, racist society. At the festival we need to respect each other, listen and think before we act and keep in mind that calling the festival “free” and “queer” doesn’t automatically make it so. We expect everyone to analyze their own actions and what effect they have on other people.

And even though the list is long, we still won’t tolerate racism, sexism, heterosexism, homo/bi/queer/hetero/trans –phobia, in other words: No discrimination based on sexuality, age, gender, ethnicity, class and so on. There will be room for those who make room for others.

Despite our political agenda we must not forget that the festival is also about having fun and meeting new exiting people of all genders and sexualities

We hope to see you in late july for a great week of discussions, workshops, parties and politics!”

Undoing the city in Copenhagen

Friday, April 17th, 2009

Undoing the city

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.”

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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.

Queer festivals 2009

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

Queer Zagreb

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.

The Nights and Days of Tribades

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

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Monday September 8th is the first day of the annual Nights and Days of Tribades week in Helsinki. This is the 9th time they arrange this “Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Culture Festival”, with films, performances, discussions, concerts and parties.

The program for the festival is now online, and they promise that it will be a week of cultural events “ranging from extravagant occasions to more prosaic discussions, presented critically, experimentally, monumentally, digitally or manually – and always passionately.”

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This includes events such as the Tram-O-Rama! party on a tram, a comics seminar, a meeting for ILGCN – The International Lesbian & Gay Cultural Network, a screening of a documentary on the Swedish journalist Barbro ”Bang” Alving, a book swapping arranged by The Invisible Library, and a closing party with performances at the L-Word Club.

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Oslo Queer Festival

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

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Oslo Queer Festival starts tomorrow, and keep going until Sunday. The festival recently released their program, including workshops, concerts, performances, and art shows, with guests from Europe and the US.

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The festival opens tomorrow at 19.00 with the performance New Fashion Rock! by Anne Synnøve Skogstad and Guro Trøseid Gjerstadberget. This also functions as the opening of the festival’s art exhibition, including works by Asta Salvine Gulliksen, Ane Marte Dyvi, Birger Åseson Storås, Rima Qvale, Marit Grøntveit and Robert Robberstad. Later on in the evening tomorrow, the Italian zine Clit Rocket will launch their new issue with a party including among others a concert by The Vibrarians (US).

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The is situated at Indigo, Brenneriveien 9, though the parties in the evenings will be held at The Villa. Tickets for the festival can be bought online or at Tiger record store, as well as at Indigo. See you there!

Preview on Trikster #2 at Copenhagen Queer Festival

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

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We are happy to invite everyone to a pre-release preview party for Trikster #2 on Saturday July 26 at 19.00 at Copenhagen Queer Festival.

The second issue of Trikster will be online in the middle of August, but this Saturday, I will give a short “guided tour” of Trikster #2, presenting and discussing different texts and art projects from the upcoming issue.

Trikster #2 circles arounds the theme Querying Space, with contributions that investigates sexual, architectural, artistic, separatist and academic space(s). The issue also includes reviews, cartoons and other pieces.

Come and have a drink with Trikster at Copenhagen Queer Festival, and get a glimps of our new issue. We are looking forward to see you!

Copenhagen Queer Festival

Sunday, July 20th, 2008

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Tomorrow, Monday July 21, is the first day of this year’s Copenhagen Queer Festival at Kigkurren 1-3 on Islands Brygge. It will be a week full of workshops, discussions, parties, concerts and performances in the cozy and intimate Gøglerskolen, where the festival takes place. The festival is stricktly a DIT (Do-It-Together) event, so come and join in on creating a great festival!

During the week there will possibilities to attend workshops on non-heterosexuality and racism, on feminist drag, on creative writing, on making-your-own-dildo, on “antilookism”, on drugs on the left wing autunomous scene, on DJ- and VJ’ing, on queer pornography, and several other topics. On Saturday July 26 there will also be a unique chance to see a preview on Trikster #2, due to release in mid August (more on that later)! See the preliminary program for the festival here.

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On Tuesday there will be a big Welcome Party starting at 22.00 with concerts by the electro hip hop punk rock feminity glam zap SCREAM CLUB (US) and the queer performance singer NICKY CLICK (US)! (CC: 20 kr.) Later in the week, there will be concerts and performances by Nuclear Family (DK), PUMP! Body Politics Licked Out My Dancing Shoes (DE), Noah Grain (DE), Stella Sounds, Howdie Ho, LAGO, and others…

Support Party for Copenhagen Queer Festival

Tuesday, June 10th, 2008

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On Saturday June 21 at 21.00 there will be a sleazy support party for Copenhagen Queer Festival at Folkets Hus at Nørrebro in Copenhagen.

Copenhagen Queer Festival takes place between July 21-27 at AFUK, Kigkurren on Islands Brygge in Copenhagen. The support party will give a taste of what to expect later on this summer. The party will fill three floors in Folkets Hus, and among other things contain dirty DJ’s and VJ’s, cocktail-lounge, dress-up/dress-down corner, chill-out & enjoy-eachother-lounge and the exclusive chance of supporting the local queer festival and having a great time, all at once! (Cover charge: 40 DKK)

The day before the support party, on Friday June 20 at 19.00, Enhedslistens Queerudvalg will thrown another queer cafe event, Cafe Under Dekonstruktion, at Folkets Hus. Here the organizers of the Copenhagen Queerfestival will give a presentation of the festival, and everybody is invited to decorate the place for the support party. If you have loads of fantastic fabrics and materials at home, bring it!

Program for Queerlitteraturdagen i Göteborg

Monday, May 19th, 2008

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Nå er programmet klart til Queerlitteraturdagen som arrangeres 31. mai i Göteborg. Queerlitteraturdagen har i år temaet “Kropp og språk”, og festivalens kunstneriske ledere er Athena Farrokhzad og Linn Hansén. Queerlitteraturdagen holdes på Pusterviksteatern i sentrum av Göteborg, og er en del av HBT-GBG-festivalen. Det er gratis inngang. Slik ser programmet for dagen ut:

12:00 Panelsamtal: Queer och censur.

Deltagare: Reb Kerstinsdotter (genusvetare, chef för PrideHouse), Mathias Danbolt (konstvetare, redaktör för Trikster) och Hanna Hallgren (kritiker och poet). Moderator: Marit Östberg (journalist, fd. redaktör för Kom ut).

Hur förhåller sig queerrörelsen till ämnet censur? Varför pratar man så sällan om det, trots att det är en så central fråga? Vad finns det för olika traditioner i bögvärlden och flatvärlden? Hur kan man tänka kring frihet, utrymme, tabu, performativitet, historia, maktkritik? Utgångspunkt bland annat i Bo Cavefors inställda medverkan under Queerlitteraturdagen 2007, inklusions- och exklusionsmekanismer i det queeraktivistiska klimatet, och en återkommande diskussion om PPP (porr/prostitution/pedofili).

13:00 Författarsamtal: Dennis Cooper
Samtalsledare: Kristofer Folkhammar

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Hur förhåller Dennis Cooper sig till form och innehåll utifrån ett queert perspektiv? Hur tänker han kring om narrativitet när han i sina texter balanserar på gränsen mellan fantasi och verklighet, i starka och explicita skildringar av våld, sex och övergrepp? Hur förhåller det sig med litteraturens pornografiska funktion? Vad krävs för att någon/något ska fungera som musa? Finns det ett egenvärde i att befinna sig i periferin (både litterärt och generellt) eller är det den enda möjliga positionen? (Se Coopers hjemmeside/blogg)

14:00 Föreläsning: Tiina Rosenberg talar om Zarah Leander

Tiina Rosenberg föreläser om den queera divan Zarah Leander. Varför blir vissa kvinnor gayikoner och inte andra? Tankar om genus, sexualitet, nation och politisk skam utifrån fallet Zarah Leander.

15:00 Seminarium: Queer och rasism

Deltagare: Pia Laskar (idéhistoriker, aktivist), Monica Amante (Feministiskt initiativ) och Carlos Diaz (RFSL). Moderator: Lawen Mohtadi (journalist, redaktör för Slut).

Är queerrörelsen rasistisk och/eller färgblind? Hur förhåller den sig till vithet, global fördelningspolitik, asylfrågor etcetera? Vilka subjekt har tillträde till queera identiteter? Hur ser konflikten/ skärningspunken/samarbetet ut mellan queerpolitik och antirasistik politik i Sverige och världen, idag och utifrån ett historiskt perspektiv. Hur skulle det kunna se ut? Utgångspunkt bland annat i debatterna i FI, utvecklingen från förtryckssamverkan till intersektionalitet, queerteoretiska skrifter och praktisk politisk kamp.

16:00 Författarsamtal: Staceyann Chin
Samtalsledare: Ulrika Dahl (och eventuellt Sofia Pulls)

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Hur tänker Staceyann Chin om spoken word-formens politiska potential? Och om politiska litterära strategier i stort? Vilka sammanhang väljer hon att medverka i, och hur tänker hon kring dem? Och vad säger hon om this business of dykery?

Under hela dagsprogrammet huserar dessutom queera förlag och bokhandlar på ovanvåningen, tillsammans med en workshop kring kropp och språk som leds av Helena Sandström (deltagare: Rekon Dekon, Eddie Mio Larsson, Elsa Leth och Tova Gerge).

Kvällsprogram på Stora Scen fra kl. 19-22:

Kvällsprogrammet består av queera, kollektiva, poetiska, specialskrivna framträdanden med:

Dennis Cooper & Eli Levén, Hanna Hallgren & Johan Jönson, Staceyann Chin, Kristin Berget, Malin Backström & Sara Hallström, Jonas Brun & Kristofer Folkhammar, Kajsa Sundin, Tova Gerge & Christian Yde Frostholm, Eva Borgström, Tarmo Rissanen & Aylin Boynukisa. Dessutom workshopgruppen med ett under dagen skapat material.

Århus Queer Festival cancelled

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

The organizers of the first Århus Queer Festival have announced that the festival that was to take place from June 6-8, is cancelled.

The cancellation is due to problems with Huset where the festival was to take place, and the organizers have unfortunately not been able to find another venue. But they will probably and hopefully try to organize the festival another place another time.

But remember that there will be held two other queer festivals in Denmark this summer: July 21-27 in Copenhagen and August 4-10 in Aalborg.

Preparing Copenhagen Queer Festival 2008

Monday, March 31st, 2008

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It is still some time until Copenhagen Queer Festival starts in late July, but the preperation and fun has already begun. On Saturday April 5, an open Skill Sharing Day will be held at Den økologiske produktionsskole (map) at 11 am, with workshops relevant when arranging queer events. This will be a great opportunity to learn about self defence, conflict resolution, performance, and other relevant issues, while having a good time.

On Tuesday April 15, there will be a Political Discussion Evening at 8 pm, at the same place. The evening starts out with different presentations on what’s queer about queer activism, art, festival, politics, and manifestos today, leading up to an open discussion on the platform and code of conduct for the queer festival this summer. One of the editors of Trikster, Mathias Danbolt, will hold a short talk on the history and politics of queer manifestos.

The events are open and free, so come and help shape the festival!

Queer festivals this summer

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Even though Queeruption in Rome is cancelled, the summer is full of queer events. Here are some of them:

April 4 – 12: Transformer – Queer Festival, Bruxelles, Belgium (read more).

April 30 – May 2: Noc Walpurgii (The Valpurgis Night festival) Warsaw, Poland (read more).

May 15 – 18: Entzaubert Queer Film Festival, Berlin, Germany (read more).

May 31: Queerlitteraturdagen (The Day for Queer Literature) in Gothenburg, Sweden (read more).

June 6 – 8: Århus Queer Festival, Denmark (read more).

June 25 – 29: Queer-and-Rebel Days at Schwarzer Kanal in Berlin, Germany (read more).

July 14 – 20: Jafnaðr – Nordic Queer Youth Festival, Norway (read more).

July 21 – 27: Copenhagen Queer Festival, Denmark (read more).

August 4 – 10: Aalborg Queer Festival, Denmark (read more).

August 14 – 16: Oslo Queer Festival, Norway (read more).

September 18 – 21: Queer Beograd, Serbia (read more).

Transformer Queer Festival, Bruxelles

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Transformer

From April 4 – 12 the Transformer – Queer Festival takes place in Bruxelles, Belgium. Information on the festival and program can be found on Transformer Festival’s homepage – it’s mainly in french.