Friday (Freitag), 13 Juni, 19h-23h
Exhibition opening of “What is Queer Today is Not Queer Tomorrow”
with performance by Eshan Rafi
22h-2h
with performance by Eshan Rafi
22h-2h
Opening party with DJs Ford Kelly & Svetlana Pall Mall. VJ Black Cracker.
TOUCHING / DIANA is an ongoing project using the life and death of Princess Diana as a pathway to exploring queer lives and colonial encounters. While mining the internet archive of the late Diana, I come across an insecure subject with a strong sense of justice who was accorded enormous attention due to her white cisgender body and her aristocratic background. This sense of justice translated into visiting countries in the global south for "humanitarian" causes where Diana touched others, both figuratively and literally, and was also touched by them. At the same time, the constant attention the media placed on her revealed narratives about sickness, loneliness, and finally, death. In this work I ask if the spectre of Diana can be used to talk about marginal queer lives in transformative ways, if her desire to touch others can be used to examine how the act of touching is weighted by relationships of power, and ultimately, if the mapping of her body on to the bodies of queer subjects (beginning with my own body) can produce an indeterminate zone in which relationships to a colonial past and a violent present can be re-articulated / re-imagined.