Manifestos for Queer Futures #3

Manifestos are a powerful transformation medium, they are often composed not by one voice, but by a polyphony that condenses ideas, energies and wills. The project “Manifestos for Queer Futures” that opens the HAU festival “The Present is not enough – Performing Queer Histories and Futures” is following up on this practice and states the importance of not being a single being. What we witness is a group endeavor of a multitude that share, act and perform a same common. Showing a living dynamic of culture practices, intellectual circuits, affective networks, crossing time, imagining futures and enacting a potentiality of living otherwise. 

As part of the festival, HAU initiated an open call for artists based in Berlin, who were invited to submit proposals for a manifesto that expresses their vision for a queer future. 270 artists replied to the open call, and 26 were selected and will be presented on the stage of HAU2. The spectrum of projects covers a wide range, from works with cultural and socio-political references, active examinations of the past, to visions of a possible future.

This is what the artists say about their work:

Bráulio Bandeira, Nicky Miller & Stasys Žak
“Valentine Date with Space”

“‘Valentine Date with Space’ is a theme of today under the techno beats and strobing neon lights. The non-conformist bodies, the stylish Sex. Space is an element in which queer culture can reflect its future. Through a penetration into that space, we communicate to an oversexualized culture, moving to a repetitive trance that exploits the concerns of fluidity in gender on the matters of love, as if in the search for a soulmate. We morph ourselves into each other in repetitive motion and the music and dance cum as a futuristic queer manifesto.” 

Ian Kaler
“WE ARE THE CHANGE WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR”

“‘WE ARE THE CHANGE WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR’ is a re-write with excerpts from Kaler's piece LIVFE (an autobiographical fiction) and new materials. Text and performance (Kaler), live video (Imogen Heath) and music (rRoxymore) weave together present time with notions of longing and belonging, play with repetition and abstraction, associations, imaginations and fantasies of selves. As a manifesto WE ARE THE CHANGE WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR asks us to connect with our body_ies as condition_s that is_are joint, deeply personal, sometimes vulnerable, layered and experiential.”

Choreografic framing, text, performance: Ian Kaler
Music: rRoxymore
Video: Imogen Heath
Text coaching: Jane Palmer
Project management: das Schaufenster

Iury Trojaborg & Ming Poon
“Mirror, mirror, here I stand. Who is the fairest in the land?“

“As what is queer today will not be queer tomorrow, we believe that a queer future must constantly re-invent itself through new strategies of resistance and production of knowledge. It does not place the dominant power at the centre of cultural knowledge and reference. It is one where we occupy the space that is rightfully ours as humans, in all our diversity and colours. We use the mirror as a symbol of our resistance and a call to self-awakening.” 

Concept and performance: Iury Trojaborg and Ming Poon
Music: Canto de Oxum von Vinicius de Moraes and Toquinho (1979)

Candice Nembhard
“The Morning After Love”

“‘The Morning After Love’ is a cinepoetry project by writer, performance artist, and poet, Candice Nembhard. Combining spoken word and cinema, the short film examines the aftermath of a brief romance between an Afro-Caribbean woman and her Afro-Deutsche lover. In the hours following their short affair, the two women explore whether or not there is true love after lust.” 

Written and Directed by: Candice Nembhard
Director of Photography: Mona Schlegel
Assistant Director of Photography: Esther Heller
Editor & Post Production: Katrina Singleton
Starring: Candice Nembhard and Shelly Phillips
Music: Shelly Phillips

Sanni Est
“Photophobia”

“‘Photophobia’ is a sound ritual by singer, composer and producer Sanni Est that incites the urgency of ressignifying eurocentric cultural and academic values from an afro-futuristic, trans*inclusive feminine perspective. Making use of sound manipulation and visual art, the 9-minute performance aims at to evoke an alternative perception of knowledge, once freed from the surety bond of the colonizer.”

Concept, research, text, music, visuals: Sanni Est
Music video “Brain Damage“: Valquire Veljkovic

PAUSE

Jao Moon
“The Lifetime of Fire”

“It’s a ritual where a bunch of candles are lit on the head of a naked body, moving in circles, while the melted candles are falling on the body of the performer, the wax is leaving their marks on the skin, showing the pain and the pleasure when burning it. This sadomasochistic act is a metaphor of burning the norm. What really interests me is to decolonize our ancestral memory, deconstruct our traditions, break them, expose the cracks, questioning and pointing out the normativity.”

Concept and performance: Jao Moon

Jeremy Wade
“THE CARETAKER”

“The following performance is an excerpt from the first ten minutes of ‘The Clearing’, a one hour forty-five-minute solo recently created and performed by Wade with live music by Marc Lohr exploring five different characters engaging in technologies of impossible repair. In the rehearsal process Wade and his collaborators called tonight’s excerpt ‘The Caretaker’ and built a series of hallucinatory procedures around this figure for the work of dismantling reality, evoking solidarity and addressing the forces / structures that are making us sick. The Caretaker’s work is to write new myths and narratives so that future clearings might occur.”

By and with: Jeremy Wade
Music: Marc Lohr

Ania Nowak
“To the Aching Parts! (Manifesto)”

“To the Aching Parts! (Manifesto)” dreams about a cure for the ill systems of body politics, soothing your chronic pain, autoimmune disattachment and chemical imbalance. In sickness and in health.”

Text and performance: Ania Nowak
Sound: Justyna Stasiowska
Outside eye: Julia Rodríguez

Cointreau On Ice
“Laudatio”

“Cointreau On Ice wurde aus dem Bedürfnis heraus gegründet, in kollektiver Arbeitsweise experimentelle Performances zu entwickeln, die einer Öffentlichkeit queere Lebensrealitäten vermitteln und für die Performer*innen Subversion und Selbstermächtigungsgesten darstellen. Zwischen Rap, Dance, Lip Sync und politischer Rede nutzen sie im HAU die Form der ‘Laudatio’, um heteronormative Vorstellungen von Geschlechterrollen in Frage zu stellen.”

By and with: Claudio Campo Garcia, Johanna Köster, Justin Mamat, Sita Messer, Gregor Schuster, Meo Wulf