On Monday the 6th of May, FASHIONCLASH organised a Talk in collaboration with the Toneelacademie Maastricht about queer-driven art practices as a kick-off of the ‘FASHIONCLASH Queer Activity program’.
The Talk included a keynote lecture by Aynouk Tan, followed by interviews with Florian Myjer and Samuel Valor Reyes. The Talk was moderated by Mara van Nes. Participants varied between graduate students from the Toneelacademie, the FASHIONCLASH team, and guests who are interested in learning more on the topic. The Talk began with a lecture given by Aynouk Tan, a writer, curator, moderator, advisor, and public speaker in the field of gender, decolonization and (queer) identity and appearance.
The Talk opened with two main questions directed to the audience: ‘who is queer?’ and ‘who uses queer in their work?’ After the audience raised their hands, Aynouk claimed that “Queerness is a big part of who I am”, hence the interest in learning what other people, especially students, think about it. One of the students’ answers particularly caught Aynouk’s attention when they noted that these are quite difficult questions to answer, since the meaning of the word queer is still unclear to many. “Queerness is a great word, because it has different meanings to different people” Aynouk replies. They explained their idea of queerness and how we as human beings have the power to unpack the four notions (gender, sexuality, expression, and sex) that we have learned in this normative Western society.
Aynouk challenges these four notions by playing with expression and dressing themselves in different ways to see how they feel inside. They strongly believe that “gender is a spectrum” and there are so many different identities that still need to be found in society.
Following the lecture, Florian and Samuel’s interviews focused on how they use queerness in their work, and the importance of being part of a community. To the question ‘do you identify as queer makers?’ Florian reacts “I am on a mission to change the narrative and I do it through my performances”. On the other hand, Samuel aims at letting their performers choose what narrative they want their bodies to tell. They go on by saying “How I work is, I make different identities visible on stage”. Furthermore, Florian’s main goal is to address topics that are often not discussed enough, such as queerness in their performances. They are looking forward to the next step in queer art, and what they refer to as “the ultimate dialogue” in which all the intersections are going into dialogue with each other. In line with this, Samuel stresses the importance of focusing on rural areas and cities that are not queer driven yet.
Overall, the Talk: Queer Driven Art Practices proved to be a great and captivating discussion about what queerness is and what it means to be a queer maker. Through this Talk, FASHIONCLASH aimed at raising interesting questions about queerness and opening new conversations on other topics and sub-topics such as this one.
Words: Martina Bardelli
Photos: Evelyn Luo
