version 0.1 (abstract) | 25/05/2006
version 0.2 (script) | 07/08/2006
"Queer" phaenomena
A critical discussion about current uses of "queer" as an urban image factor, as a label for homonormative ambitions and as a cultural modifier
Intro:
With our contribution we want to introduce three phaenomenas of the current queer discourse in our context. Each of these phaenomenas stand for a specific perception (and use) of queer issues. It is our aim to discuss these tendencies and to reflect on their impact on queer politics and practice. Today there are big differences on what is meant with »queer«, between theory and common life, between personal practice and communities sense, between different cultural, social and ethnic contexts. While for some »queer« is a funky term of a new form of cultural expression, for other it is understand as a term for political empowerment, while in some places the CSD parades are more or less shortened as commercial festivals, on other places the marches for equality and tolerance are threatened by prejudice, active intolerance and even violence. But are there the common goals and aims of our queer politics? What are the perspectives beyond the differences? We think that there is a need for a open and broad discussion about this, and we would like to give one input on this discussion.
(A short introduction of ourselves)
Background: We see a need for a common and critical discussion about current phaenomenas. To approach this issue, our contribution will be part of a two-track tour through Poland and Germany, scheduled for august and september this year. The first track will come with the issues described here. Our next lecture will be Poznań on friday. The second track will be held by people from warszawa in two stations in Germany, in Bremen and Hannover at the beginning of october. This second track will be to illustrate and discuss the current situation and issues of LGBTQ's in Poland. Both tracks are thus two different efforts to find a common approach on this discussion. They are organized by an informal network of LGBTQ activists from poland and germany.
What we mean with the term "queer":
About queer, reduced to our common denominator (you can spend terrific time in debating the question „What is queer?“)
In our conception, the idea "queer" covers more than the relations and experience of gender and sexuality. Queer can also be understood as a tactical, temporary coalition against unequal and unjust states of the society. That means to observe, to criticize and to change from a queer perspective the relations of power and oppression, the restraint of normalisation and heteronormativity as well as the repression of politics and economy. But as important as to use the tools and tactics of queerness for political activism is the critical review on our own ways we think and act.
As examples of the current use of "queer" we want you to introduce three aspects in this context, afterwards we take a look on possible questions (and answers), that we would like to discuss with you.
Queer as an urban image factor
A vivid urban queer scence can be understand as a positive factor for urban developement and marketing. An american scientist, Richard Florida, created a so-called »Creativity Index«, where a "gay index" is one decicive factor. In this logic only cities with a tolerant climate for non-straight communities can reach a good »Creativity Index« ranking. Beside culture, art, creativity, tourism, nightlife and lifestyle the images of gay cultures are used for a tolerant and open-minded image of the city. The yearly gay pride parades became an obvious part in the calendars of events of the cities. In this sense queer cultures contribute to an ideal of diversity for the creative city. But how affects the transformation and re-definition of the city into a corporate city onto the gay community respectively the queer life in the city? The discovery of queer life as a location factor promises more importance and perception and within the chance to take part in public and social life, but there's to question and reflect which parts of queer life are appreciated and which are further marginalized and put under a taboo.
additions & sources: /UrbanImageFactor?
Queer as a label for homonormativity
the "initiative queer nations", founders and members of the board of trustees
The second part is an example about a current gay and lesbian efforts to stablize and establish their position in Germany. One current effort is an initiative to establish a »Queer Nations« institute by german mainstream gay and lesbian representatives
This initiative claims to build a central institution of research of homosexuality. Quote: "The aim of the association is to further study and research into the history and the sociology of homosexuality, along with public awareness for subject, in order to advance the equality of people of differing sexual orientations." (charter of the initiative) Supporters of this initiative are academics on social sciences, journalists, actors and other media VIP's.
The name of this institute has a strange double meaning -- Queer, which stands for more, than just for a gay and lesbian sexual orientation and Nations, the construction of a spatial and political entity. There has been other uses of the term "queer nation" before, a short comparision might be useful to approach its latest use.
(The transformation of a term and its visualisation)
The political movement queer nations in US in the early 90s was a follow up of »act up campaigns«. It was organized in chapters in major US-cities, it used direct and media action in public space to fight against homophobia and hatespeech. After a few years, these groups disappeared. Quoting a critique of these groups: (...) "they ultimately collapsed under the weight of their contradictions: 'queer', after all, means 'diversity', whereas 'nation' implies 'sameness'" (Susan Stryker)
- You can see a green, triangel logo, which comes as a trashy, 80s DIY-mashup with "alternative" symbolism, the peace sign and the (pink) triangle, the sign of gay inmates in concentration camp.
In England and Australia, they are parties called "Queer Nation"
- The Queer Nation party series at London in the 2000s comes with a black and white logo, it works with a punkrock typographic style, readable as subcultural or subversive
And the queer nations initiative in germany in 2006
- an coporate design agency way of making a logo, cornerless, round form, unintrusive colors, very neutral on impact and meaning (it doesn't hurt), a form that could be used for arbitrary uses
How can the concept of the initiative "queer nations" be assessed?
After the area of »Gay liberation« in the 70s, the fight against »ignorance and fear« during the upcoming of the AIDS pandemia in the 80s, and the gay marriage campaigns during the 90s, gay and lesbian mainstream activists in Germany seems to lack of further perspectives. While homo- and other sexual derived phobia, hatespeach and hatecrimes are not vanished in german society today, media and the mainstream discourse has accepted certain forms of gay and lesbian cultural presence. The protagonists of this presence endeavor to fortify their positions (external as accepted and tolerated parts of the society, internal as opinion leader), while they adfirm common (mis-)interpretation of non-heterosexualities and while they exclude different concepts and understandings of »non-straight«
- Here "Playing" good conduct of the protagonists could be read as a strategy: Beeing monogamic, working and successfull, neutral on sexual aspects (a-sexual), and at the first glance neutral on all aspects of politics execpt the own identity politics
- But on the second glance it has of course another, broader political dimension: Even if their focus is on identity politics, it transports general political values and notions, like european, western centric lifestyle and morality, which excludes or degrades non-western cultures and non-yet-assismilated, »lagging« cultures
- (An example: Protoganists of the initiative like the journalist Jan Feddersen have a focus on migrants with an arabic, islamic background and their »basic or natural homophobic« attitude. That perception might be reasonable on certain events and perception, and it scratches the problem of different cultures in a same spatial context, but it transports settings of right, leading and wrong, lagging cultures.) and makes use of racial attributions.
Critics, like in an open-letter by the lesbian-feminist-queer academic network, reject a concept, which is based "on patriotic-nationalistic signs" and fixed on a "assimilative perspective of normalization and integration"
According to this crititque, the initiative "Queer Nations" seems to be an effort to normalize and establish gay and lesbian culture in the "heart" of german society, exluding non-western and non-binary (hetereo, homo) cultures. It is, so to say, a project "to freeze social identities and to eliminate the claims of equality" (Brian Holmes). We have to ask further questions: What are the intentions behind these efforts of normalization, of "homonormativitiy" (L. Duggan), and what consequences on the meaning of queer, the rights and awareness of other arouse from this? Are resarches of history and sociology, are such "politics of identity and assimilation", as critics say (E. Stedefeldt), the final word of gay liberation? What could be different, open and further tracks of development, not based on consensus but on dissent.
additions & sources: /LabelForHomonormativity
Queer as a subcultural modifier
(Christiane)Our inquiry and critique on the label queer and its signs just as well concerns representations of subculture. My interest is in the effects that queer signs produce when they are used in the transition to mainstream-contexts. Do these effects irritate, normalize, do they become any given, unconcerned meaning?
The following images will be used to illustrate, how queer subcultural expressions carry a lifestyle that increasingly establishes in music, in arts, films and other fields of cultural production. (all pictures are taken from the band ’Tempeau’, consists of two actors, pictures from a concert, used for concert-posters, promotions)
one band, switching between two different cultural codes: crossdressing in 2005, playboy style in 2006
In my several discussions with Thomas and Ulf, our questions turned on the mode of our reading these images. We assembled different aspects like ‘very queer’, ‘erotic’, 'playing with gender and sexuality', 'sexism' and ‘extremely straight’. The force of the concept ‘queer’ seems to enable most different possibilities of meaning. We recognized queer signs of trashy crossdressing that can be read ‘polyvalent’; the ‘playboy-style’ (re)signs a heteronormative arrangement. The phenomena can be described as a descent that runs from image one to image three. It revises any queer statement from the first image on.
The possibilities of reading an image depends on the context, its subtext, a space you stay in and the codes you know and work with. Sometimes are nuances, aroused by slightly mismatched styling that arranges the difference between a mainstream representation and a queer one – in the same context. An images' meaning also depends on your co-reading which bases on knowledge about how queer signs are used to look funky. I’m not really sure, if the third picture is the mentioned ‘playboy-style’ or a quotation of heteronormativity or a quotation of kinging. But considering this, is there a necessity of the distinction marks ‘queer’ and ‘non-queer’ images for progressive potential in (queer) subcultural strategies?
Understanding queer as a critical term, camp and drag express delight and joy, just as social and political intentions. In our actual case, let me suppose male characters, who use queer strategies for their performance. The heteronormative males learned from drag and camp to perform with pleasure their masculinity ‘queer’. Crossdressing does not longer mean awkwardness but ‘hipness’. Here, the strategy and its political or social claim, seems to be equal to the performers. I think they are more interested in an effect of temporary lifestyle. Their indefinite representation offers a plurality of addressing and projection and allows the performers' retreat in the case of any critics. The effect I presume here is that heteromasculinity is confirmed by the employment of a queer code and its consumption. From that point of view the drag strategies failed by reason of appropriation.
As I have demonstrated, queer images and signs, which were stigmatized earlier, become part of the mainstream. Up to now, addressing otherness, as well as performing the unnaturalness of heteronormativity were applied as suitable strategies against the repression of normalisation and homophobia. Now we face the question, if queer representation in subculture can be still influential. In other words, can visible queerness still challenge the normalisation when queer signs do not longer self-evident equal political impact? I think ambiguous irritation and producing of uncertainty - if mainstream and queer use the same signs for different meaning of communication - could be the very effective queer strategy.
performance 'renee' 2005 
Tatu 2006
In actual queer discussions, strategies against normalisation and de-politisation of signs focus on counterpublic modes like the production of new alternative contexts, readings and meanings by explicit, faster queering or requeering. Let me give you as an example Beatrice Preciados' term ’becoming invisible’ as an act of becoming temporary innoticeable in order to protect oneself against repression and embracement through neoliberal consumption. I hope she means by it that the 'invisible queer' tactical reappears - suddenly, surprisingly and incalculable – in order to experimental political acting. I hope she does not mean that queers' visibility should disappear alltogether, because addressing ‘otherness’ via queer images and signs is not only point of attack for mainstream, heteronormativity and neoliberalism. It is simultaneous undispensible with the appearance of an otherwise way of being, that is supported by the option to blend into queer images. Queer visibility must take place in publicity but also in spaces that are safe, with the conscious risk of the temporary exclusion of the other in each case.
What the phenomena of modifying subculture in addition reminds is that we can’t criticise the embracement of queer signs by the mainstream without having a critical view on the effects of the concept ‘queer’. The inherence of anticategorialism in queer does not only settle different signification that can be subversive - at the same time it settles a consumable flexibility that encourages demands of mainstream and normalisation. As we exposed: queer can be trouble-free part of the neoliberal plan and the aims of political economy – as you like. If you don't like - how looks a queer performance that is not incorporated by commodification?
additions & sources: /SubculturalModifier
/Questions
(copy and paste more questions here)
Questions for discussion (III) What can be understood as a political queer practise, for example in Hamburg and Warsaw? Are cultural codes and expressions like style and fashion reasonable and effective strategies? Is normalisation undesired on principle?
Outlook
Queer could be understand as a "tactical, temporary coalition" (as the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) described the political concept of Act Up coalitions).
Politics could be understand as a concept of dissent not of consensus
Such dissent has to "become more precise, more reasoned, more explicit, if the new claim to equality is to have any effect on the existing divisions of the world." (...) "It is to engage in an unstable mimicry that seeks to prove its claim to equality on a public stage, while inventing new signs, new pathways through the world, new political subjectivities." (Brian Holmes)
We would like to introduce two examples, of how such "dissent" could look like. We don't introduce these samples, to say that they are perfect oder successful, but to discuss with you how possible tactics and actions could be done to develop such ways of "unstable mimicry"
facsimile of an publication of a new "hot spot" of subculture in bremen. on the picture are traces of a past "tagging" the "hot spot" with words of sexual activities
picture of a performance by bremen group "kraß" during "kontrolle der räume" opposing the campaigns for gay marriage
Persons
Our Panel will be prepared and held by:
Thomas Böker, Bremen, cultural activist, co-organizer of the cultural center »zakk«, member of »kraß« (a queer project) and »city.crime.control« (group working on urban issues, city developement and public space)
Ulf Treger, Hamburg, cultural producer, member of the projects »city.crime.control« and »offene kartierung« (working an mapping and perception of urban space), volunteer and co-founder of »q-tipp« (a local plattform on queer culture at hamburg)
Christiane Wehr, Hamburg, artist, queer filmer, student of philisophy and queer studies at the university of Hamburg, member of »offene kartierung«
Translation by Jacek Galkowski, Warszawa