Q
and scenarios are played out on site in the presence of the
UNIT 1: QUEER SCHOOL
OF THOUGHT
WEEK 2 - QUEER PRAXIS
Tuesday 22nd - Wednesday 23rd of November
“Queer people have often forged love and revolution in
unmapped places. Donning invisibility has sometimes
saved lives, but lives deserve to be whole-their memories
bursting with stories, histories, monuments, landmarks,
folklore, music, loss, victories, sacrifice and style. And yet
queer lives have never been so visible and vulnerable as
they are now.”
Aastha D , Queer Refusal , Disegno Mag 2022
Last week you have been investigating, problematising,
mapping and registering moments of ‘Queer erasure’ within
the city and beyond. For artist Helen Cammock, to collect and
care for the stories of a culture’s history, memory and
existence is in itself a form of resistance. This is particularly
of essence when certain stories are rendered invisible, unwor-
thy of telling or of being archived by major institutions. The
LGBTQ+ community’s histories are rooted in both oppression
and liberation against dominant, binary power structures.
Ultimately, documenting queer histories is less about ‘who is
represented’ and more about ‘who is absent.’
Moving forward, we ask that the stories, accounts and subjects
you identified should not only be mapped and archived, but also
performed and projected into the public sphere. Situated
practice relies on those perfomed, live actions where themes
community and relevant actors.
A. QUEER PRAXIS
Paolo Freire defines praxis in ‘Pedagogy of the Opressed’ as
reflection and action directed at structures to be transformed.
FROM MAPPING TO PROJECTING
Task:
Based on your mapping exercise last week we ask that you
conduct a performance piece or produce an installation to
highlight the stories of ‘Queer erasure’ that you identified. To
render them VISIBLE and bring them to the fore. Your interven-
tions are to be enacted directly on site and the outcomes to be
documented imaginatively.
Consider the following:
-Would you choose to enact/memorialise the past or project a
future, alternative scenario on site?
-Could your intervention be a campaign, a funeral, a demon-
stration, a parade or an art exhibition?
-For this, you can work with a variety of mediums and media.
You can use movement, sound, photography or physical
artworks.
-Think carefully about how to document your intervention. The
‘recording’ of your situated piece can be a score, a short film,
a 3D scan or a series of photographs.
-Will your interventions be subtle or exuberant (and why)?
To read:
Into the Outside: The Chapters so Far, Helen Cammock,
Photoworks, 2017
Performance ‘scoring’ reference:
Francis Allys - 7 Walks
To visit:
Performer and Participant gallery at the Tate Modern
To google-search:
‘Queering Brussels’, 2022
An exhibition that puts forward a critique and a possible future of the
city of Brussels through queer prisms. The exhibition presents several
queer architectural projects and offers a complementary programme
with guided tours of the city as well as lectures on the themes of
gender, the city and LGBTQIA+ issues.
Next Week 21.11
Tuesday 22.11:
9:30am-3pm Chair-making workshop with artist Jack O’ Brien.
-Please bring any relevant material at your disposal (existing
art supplies, coloured paper, cardboard, waste materials found
around CSM, fabrics, unwanted household items, plywood
offcuts etc)
Wednesday 23.11:
10:30am-1pm Queer Praxis presentations D102A
-Consider how you would like to present the outcomes of this
task. Would you prepare the room in advance with the
‘recordings’ of your interventions on your chosen sites? Think
about processes of curating your work as part of your learn-
ing. This should be a collective endeavor.
(reference: Hans Ulrich Obrist’s ‘Kitchen Show’ 1991)
https://waysofcurating.withgoogle.com/exhibition/the-kitchen-show