September 2021

Queer in_visibility and Resistance and/in post-Soviet contexts

This panel explored queer visibility and life-making within post-Soviet spaces by bringing together theories, methods and perspectives from the areas of art, arts-based research and gender studies.

Together, the panelists highlighted how people meet the challenges to queer
representation and political activism and resist gendered, sexual(ized) and racialized oppression in the context of Lithuania, Siberia, Kazakhstan and the post-Soviet queer diaspora in Vienna.

We discused how scholarly and arts-based research can account for and support post-Soviet queer lives, and the creative ways post-Soviet queer lives exist and resist the pressure in arts, culture and everyday lives.

This question is even more important, since increasing visibility created by transnational solidarity projects and research, potentially also increases the vulnerability of groups and individuals. We focused on questions of visibility, public articulations of queerness, sexual and gender nonconformity, solidarity, support, and community building under the conditions of public violence and state-imposed homophobia.

Katharina Wiedlack, Masha Godovannaya, Ruthia Jenrbekova, Iain Zabolotny, Rasa Navickaitė

Panel Discussion at the 8th annual conference of Austrian Association of Gender Studies

October 2021

a text floating on a river

Film

Masha Godovannaya, Koivo

Vienna

8:50, 16 mm on HD video, color & b/w, sound

The film is a collaboration with poet and art historian Koivo and is based on his poem that hints at his sense of confusion being caught in-between times, spaces, and localities. It starts from his inquiry about how the architectural elements of the past manifest themselves in the everyday – in those mundane structures that support our daily lives and moves: bridges, elevated highways, and underpasses. Together with Koivo and my 16 mm camera, we walked through Vienna tracing architectural residues of the grandiose ancient architecture that was transformed into the urban landscape of a modern city with a haunted history. 

July-August 2021

Dream Machine workshop

The workshop was organized in a queer techno night club and consisted of five evenings, spanning five weeks in July and August 2021.

It included building of and looking at the Dream Machine, freewriting sessions, discussions of possible media to implement each other’s ideas and further implementation of the projects.

Ruthia Jenrbekova

Almaty

July-August 2021

Dream Machine workshop

Iain Zabolotny

Novosibirsk

This two-day-workshop brought together local queer community members and activists, providing a space to hide, create and dream of better queer futures.

May 2021

Opacitatea lui Glissant și queerul post-sovietic. Glissant’s opacity and the post-Soviet queer

Katharina Wiedlack, Masha Godovannaya, Ruthia Jenrbekova, Iain Zabolotny

IDEA#5