The art-based research process called “Dream Machine” (DM) consists of the collective creation of a moving light device that will help the participants to focus on their personal experiences and ideas, while at the same time immersing them in a shared activity that facilitates queer bonds. 

This is followed by workshops (WS), where all participants can translate their reflections on everyday life, as well as the new experiences of queer belonging into writing, filming and other artistic forms. The results of this process are later deposited in a queer multilingual online archive and presented at the exhibition called “the Magic Closet.” The Magic Closet will give important insights about queer lives in post-Soviet spaces without endangering their existence and avoiding the reproduction of pain narratives; it will let queer people share their experiences, feelings and dreams while staying anonymous and safe.

The original Dream Machine apparatus was invented by Brion Gysin.[54] It is a do-it-yourself stroboscopic flicker device that is easily built. It consists of a rotating cylinder with specifically shaped cutouts and a light source (usually a lightbulb) inside that produces visual stimuli. By building this device and developing a collaborative protocol, we initiate a creative process that contains sequences of free association, writing, cut up texts, text arrangements, taking photographs and/or filming.

Once the apparatus is built, the participants locate themselves in front of the Dream Machine with their eyes closed, allowing the light to be projected over their faces. The play of light creates a strobe effect behind the eyelids and evokes eidetic cinematic imagery. This process brings about a meditative state between sleep and wakefulness, letting subconscious content surface. It sends our participants on “a voyage of exploration without restrictions.”[55]

Drawing on art-based research methodologies and refusing research that demands pain narratives [4], we create, in conjunction with local queer communities, spaces of resistance, where queer lives can enjoy (relative) safety and people can build connections to each other and imagine better futures together. Using the methodology of the Dream Machine, a kinetic flicker device, we create spaces where anyone can focus on their lives, feelings and dreams, subsequently transforming their experiences into different artistic forms from texts to videos and from drawings to performances. Moreover, we reappropriate the concept of the gay closet[5] as a positively connoted magic closet – an open-access digital archive of traces that emerged during the Dream Machine sessions that recognizes the queer lives in post-Soviet spaces but does not endanger them or make them vulnerable.

Katharina Wiedlack et al., “‘The Magic Closet and the Dream Machine’: Post-Soviet Queer Knowledge Production in Times of Increased Trans- and Homophobia,” Connections. A Journal for Historians and Area Specialists, January 27, 2023, www.connections.clio-online.net/article/id/fda-133562.

The Magic Closet: Art Spaces As Safety Zones For Post-Soviet Queers by Masha Godovannaya, 11 min., video, sound, 2020, Austria

The Magic Closet: Art Spaces As Safety Zones For Post-Soviet Queers (2020) is a short film developed by the working group of “The Magic Closet and the Dream Machine,” shot and edited by Masha Godovannaya in May 2020, in the middle of the pandemic. It summarizes theoretical and practical aspects of the artistic research “The Magic Closet and the Dream Machine: Post-Soviet Queerness, Archiving, and the Art of Resistance.” 

The film is a long shot of the four participants (Masha, Tania, Kathi, and Ruth) standing and reciting a text in what looks like one frame. Both “one” and “frame” are an illusion, a construction of unity built during editing and post-production. It was a formal decision that we made jokingly thinking: “No one was risking a coronavirus infection while shooting this video. Social distancing was performed according to the rules.” We shot each other separately in the frame, lip-syncing our own dialogue while one of us was reading it off-frame. 

We met at the beginning of May when the security protocols were slightly eased in Vienna. It was our first meeting after the lockdown. With the “safety and health” concerns still on everyone’s mind, we had no other choice but to critically reflect on the imaginary “post-covid19”, or, as many started calling it – “the new normal”. The split screen united by one frame was an aesthetic move towards such a reflection.

THE FILM’S CREDITS:

Text by:

Katharina Wiedlack 

Masha Godovannaya 

Ruthia Jenrbekova 

Iain Zabolotny

Concept, camera, editing:

Masha Godovannaya 

Sound, titles:

Ruthia Jenrbekova