Queer Irreverence (as an antidote to authoritarianism)
Tuesday, February 18, 2025 8:30 pm CET/GMT+1KM28, Karl-Marx-Straße 28, 12043 Berlin
Strategies of irreverence – like the intentional disrespect of imposed authority, the flippant disregard for demands of obedience, the playful breaching of restrictive morality and the conscious embrace of the profane – have a long and rich history within queer art and activism. Not only do these strategies expose power structures and their repressive mechanisms of control that serve to maintain various social-political inequalities, but they are also forms of self-reflexivity – working against the ossification of language by subjecting it to ongoing critique and reinvention.
The films in this program exemplify queer irreverence through performative practices that boldly and inventively intervene in (hetero)normalizing, anthropocentric and authoritarian discourses, fearlessly and flamboyantly reclaiming public space as both a stage and a site of protest. Doors open 8:00 PM, screening 8:30 PM.
Ania Nowak’s To the Aching Parts! (Manifesto) (2020, 15min) is a public speech which dissects the language used by and against queer communities today. Devoid of grammar, the text is subjected to the order and pleasure of rhythm. Commissioned by HAU Hebbel am Ufer in the frame of “Manifestos for Queer Futures”, the performance relies on historic references to militancy by minorities to address the dangers of normativity and the need for embodied intersectionality when forming queer alliances today. By taking liberty to play around with the language of resentment and trauma as well as empathy and healing, it proposes to destabilise identities, practices and well known acronyms like LGB or FtM for the sake of a queer future we have yet to envisage.
Kerstin Honeit’s Panda Moonwalk or Why Meng Meng Walks Backwards (2018, 8min) performs an act of queer interspecies solidarity by calling out the mainstream media’s complicity in projecting sexist and racist stereotypes onto imprisoned pandas. Since 2017 the two Giant Panda Bears Meng Meng and Jiao Qing have been hired out by China to the Berlin Zoo for millions of Euros. Unfortunately for the Zoo this profit seeking attraction did not work out as planned – in fact it worked backwards. Meng Meng, the female Panda will only walk backwards – probably protesting against her imprisonment. Surprisingly the international press takes a different, sexist route and suggests that Meng Meng’s behaviour relates to the fact that she has not yet bred and is seeking attention. Kerstin Honeit’s video aligns Meng Meng’s protest with other performances of protesting bodies using movement in public space to address grievances.
“The film is charming, but it is still labour. The labour to engage in demanding what should already be ours.” With a wink to Jack Smith, the New York underground performer and filmmaker, as well as to the history of queer and feminist calls such as “Wages for Housework!”, Charming for the Revolution (2009, 11min) by Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz recreates the “housewife” as an ambiguous figure with an open future. Additional references extend from Deleuze-Guattari’s becoming-animal, to the 19th century dandy, who out of protest against the clock pulse of industrialisation walked turtles on leashes (as Walther Benjamin described him), or to Pasolini’s ironic capitalism-critical film “The Hawks and the Sparrows”.
No Democracy Here (2018, 25min) by Liad Hussein Kantorowicz is an experimental documentary about political domination. Liad is a leftie human rights defender-dominatrix who re-educates her right-wing slaves about the ethos of leftist values like economic justice and direct democracy using BDSM practices. On election day Liad decides to give her slaves the ultimate political domination session – outdoors and in public, where she teaches them about the pillars of democracy. At the end she forces them to engage in the ultimate political BDSM practice – voting, but only for the ‘correct’ political party, the one reflecting her political beliefs. This film uses BDSM as an allegorical critique of electoral democracy. It explores the meaning of ‘consent’ and ‘free will’, which are frequently used in a BDSM-context, and applies them to the context of electoral democracy and public political processes. The film was shot in 2013 on the streets and in voting polls on election day in Israel.
Queer Irreverence (as an antidote to authoritarianism) is programmed by Angela Anderson as part of the event series Thinking Toward Feminist Futures curated by Agata Lisiak, supported by Janina Schabig, and funded by the Experimental Humanities Collaborated Network.
Ania Nowak approaches vulnerability and desire as ways towards reimagining what bodies and language can and cannot do. Nowak develops formats such as live and video performance, installation and text. In her practice, Ania engages with bodies in their nonlinear feeling and thinking capacity to tackle the difficulties of companionship and care in times of perpetual crisis. Her work attempts to reimagine the notions of disorder, pleasure, disease, intimacy, pain, sexuality, class and accessibility as sites of binary free living. Nowak collaborates with alternative educational programs in Eastern Europe, such as Kem School in Warsaw and the School of Kindness in Sofia. Ania’s works have been presented at Berlinische Galerie, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Akademie der Künste,Sophiensaele, KW, Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Nowy Teatr, Warsaw; 14th Baltic Triennial at CAC Vilnius and 12th Gothenburg Biennial, a.o. Nowak recently held solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and Galerie Wedding – Raum für zeitgenössische Kunst in Berlin.
Kerstin Honeit works as an artist with experimental documentary moving image formats. Honeit's research-based work deals with the translatability of socio-political issues into resistant aesthetics and counter-narratives. Her focus is on the politics of the (film) voice and in particular on how the voice as a queering event, between the moving images, can shake up prevailing gaze regimes. Honeit's work has been presented internationally in exhibitions and at film festivals, including KINDL, Berlin / Whitechapel Gallery, London / Hammer Museum, LA / CAC, Quito / Fajr International Film Festival, Tehran / n.b.k., Berlin / Off Biennale Cairo / International Short Film Festival São Paulo / MMOMA, Moscow / HKW, Berlin / International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen / Berlinische Galerie, Berlin / Gallery 400, Chicago / BFI London / MCAD, Manila.
Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz have been working together in Berlin since 2007. They produce installations that choreograph the tension between visibility and opacity. Their films capture performances in front of the camera, often starting with a song, a picture, a film or a score from the near past. They upset normative historical narratives and conventions of spectatorship, as figures and actions across time are staged, layered and re-imagined. Their performers are choreographers, artists and musicians, with whom they are having a long-term conversation about the conditions of performance, the violent history of visibility, the pathologization of bodies, but also about companionship, glamour and resistance. Their work has been recently shown at 35th São Paulo Art Biennal, Crystal Palace/Reina Sofia Museum Madrid, Centre Pompidou Paris, Hammer Museum Los Angeles, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Whitechapel Gallery London, New Museum New York, Coreana Museum of Art Seoul, National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne, Kunstmuseum Basel, Van Abbe Museum Eindhoven, Julia Stoschek Collection Berlin or the 58th Biennale di Venezia (Swiss Pavillon).
Liad Hussein Kantorowicz is a musician, artist, perpetual migrant, queer trash diva, and a master of the margins. Liad lives in Liadland, physically in Berlin, but emotionally located between continents, places she’s lived, and where her heart lies. Liad’s history of political work in Palestine and Europe inspired and informed her artistic work. Her performative methods create space where those considered sexual or political deviants can feel seen. In April 2024 she released under her musical project LIADLAND the album NOTHING TO DECLARE, a reference to her lifetime of being a political activist with a big mouth, and it’s a signifier of crossing borders between nations, between identities, between worlds, and trying to contain all of these realities and transitions within oneself. Focusing on Palestine freedom, sex workers’ rights and queer liberation, she showcased in Europe’s biggest performance festivals: Impustanz/Vienna, City ofWomen/Ljubljana, Sommerfestival/Hamburg, and Berlin’s 10th Biennale. NO DEMOCRACY HERE is the first of her two films.
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