LGBTQ activism in the New East
February 16, 2018 3:28 PM Subscribe
Being LGBTQ is a new series from Calvert Journal that includes Live by night: An evening with Maydana, Ukrainian drag queen and asylum seeker, No Silence:
Growing up LGBTQ in the forgotten world of Transnistria, Secret histories:
LGBTQ life in pre-revolutionary Russia, Horoom Nights: Inside the secretive queer night at Tbilisi’s world-famous Bassiani club, and more...
LGBTQ activism in the New East
In their own words, LGBTQ activists from across the New East talk honestly about gender identity, political repression, the hard work of activism and their hopes for the future. From cinema to street protest, these are the people determined to make life better for their communities.
Katarzyna Perlak: The artist reclaiming queer tradition for Poland
On Saturday 11 November, around 60,000 Polish nationalists marched in Warsaw to mark the nation’s Independence Day. The rally was marked by various strains of fascistic rhetoric and symbolism — slogans included “We Want God”, “Europe must be white” and “Gays and lesbos, the whole of Poland is laughing at you” — and attracted international consternation. Naively, the West seem shocked at this mass manifestation of the kind of socially conservative, nationalist myth-making that has brought the Law and Justice (PiS) party to power, though quite how this hand-wringing should be squared with the rise of Trump — who lauded “Western civilisation” onstage in Warsaw only weeks beforehand — and the Brexiteers is anyone’s guess. The day before the march, in the western city of Wrocław, two women in billowing white dresses were “married” in a traditional folk ceremony as part of Katarzyna Perlak’s performance piece, Polish Wedding without Censorship.
Turbofolk: How Serbia’s outrageous pop music brought gay desire to the mainstream
Contemporary Serbian pop-folk is a veritable homoerotic fantasy land, pioneered in full mainstream view by gay male directors and creatives, where divas call the shots and male objectification is endemic.
Defiant bodies: Meet the photographer behind these tender portraits of Tbilisi’s queer community
“First of all, there is nothing shameful about the naked body,” is the first thing the Georgian photographer tells me, when I ask why he has pursued nude photography across genres. For the last few years, Tsertsvadze has been taking delicate nude portraits of queer people in their own homes in Tbilisi. Broaching the subject, the photographer is ardent yet cautious. Neither LGBTQ experiences nor nude photography are topics taken lightly in Georgia, and for this reason Tsertsvadze has never had the opportunity to show his work anywhere but online.
Queer zines: Making art from eastern Europe’s secret LGBTQ archives
In 2005, artist Karol Radziszewski founded DIK Fagazine, the first arts publication in Poland dedicated to the exploration of contemporary homosexuality and masculinity. 2005 was a crucial year for many reasons in Poland; as the right-wing political party Law and Justice (PiS) won the election with a conservative agenda, Lech Kaczyński, then mayor of Warsaw and later President of Poland banned the Parada Równości, the city’s Gay Pride parade. In the same year, an important gay novel, Lovetown (Lubiewo) by Michał Witkowski was released, and Karol’s solo show, Fags, became the first openly homosexual exhibition in Poland. Against a backdrop of increasing hostility and often violent resistance towards homosexuality from nationalist and religious groups, Radziszewki has spent more than ten years researching and producing a growing archive of queer histories from eastern Europe, a project which has become the centre of his artistic practice.
LGBTQ literature: Take a journey through New East history with our reading list
If you want evidence that LGBTQ culture has always been present in eastern Europe, then look no further than its literature. Throughout the 20th century and into the post-socialist period, writers have tackled issues of sexuality and gender identity across genres and styles — often interweaving their LGBTQ narratives with historical events and questions of national identity. From pre-revolutionary Petersburg to the streets of Solidarność-era Warsaw and contemporary Kosovo, here are seven books you need to know.
LGBTQ activism in the New East
In their own words, LGBTQ activists from across the New East talk honestly about gender identity, political repression, the hard work of activism and their hopes for the future. From cinema to street protest, these are the people determined to make life better for their communities.
Katarzyna Perlak: The artist reclaiming queer tradition for Poland
On Saturday 11 November, around 60,000 Polish nationalists marched in Warsaw to mark the nation’s Independence Day. The rally was marked by various strains of fascistic rhetoric and symbolism — slogans included “We Want God”, “Europe must be white” and “Gays and lesbos, the whole of Poland is laughing at you” — and attracted international consternation. Naively, the West seem shocked at this mass manifestation of the kind of socially conservative, nationalist myth-making that has brought the Law and Justice (PiS) party to power, though quite how this hand-wringing should be squared with the rise of Trump — who lauded “Western civilisation” onstage in Warsaw only weeks beforehand — and the Brexiteers is anyone’s guess. The day before the march, in the western city of Wrocław, two women in billowing white dresses were “married” in a traditional folk ceremony as part of Katarzyna Perlak’s performance piece, Polish Wedding without Censorship.
Turbofolk: How Serbia’s outrageous pop music brought gay desire to the mainstream
Contemporary Serbian pop-folk is a veritable homoerotic fantasy land, pioneered in full mainstream view by gay male directors and creatives, where divas call the shots and male objectification is endemic.
Defiant bodies: Meet the photographer behind these tender portraits of Tbilisi’s queer community
“First of all, there is nothing shameful about the naked body,” is the first thing the Georgian photographer tells me, when I ask why he has pursued nude photography across genres. For the last few years, Tsertsvadze has been taking delicate nude portraits of queer people in their own homes in Tbilisi. Broaching the subject, the photographer is ardent yet cautious. Neither LGBTQ experiences nor nude photography are topics taken lightly in Georgia, and for this reason Tsertsvadze has never had the opportunity to show his work anywhere but online.
Queer zines: Making art from eastern Europe’s secret LGBTQ archives
In 2005, artist Karol Radziszewski founded DIK Fagazine, the first arts publication in Poland dedicated to the exploration of contemporary homosexuality and masculinity. 2005 was a crucial year for many reasons in Poland; as the right-wing political party Law and Justice (PiS) won the election with a conservative agenda, Lech Kaczyński, then mayor of Warsaw and later President of Poland banned the Parada Równości, the city’s Gay Pride parade. In the same year, an important gay novel, Lovetown (Lubiewo) by Michał Witkowski was released, and Karol’s solo show, Fags, became the first openly homosexual exhibition in Poland. Against a backdrop of increasing hostility and often violent resistance towards homosexuality from nationalist and religious groups, Radziszewki has spent more than ten years researching and producing a growing archive of queer histories from eastern Europe, a project which has become the centre of his artistic practice.
LGBTQ literature: Take a journey through New East history with our reading list
If you want evidence that LGBTQ culture has always been present in eastern Europe, then look no further than its literature. Throughout the 20th century and into the post-socialist period, writers have tackled issues of sexuality and gender identity across genres and styles — often interweaving their LGBTQ narratives with historical events and questions of national identity. From pre-revolutionary Petersburg to the streets of Solidarność-era Warsaw and contemporary Kosovo, here are seven books you need to know.
Something that got me right off the bat is the extract from Niolam Ja Se Kochaneczke [Once I Had a Lover] (the video is also embedded in the whole piece about Katarzyna Perlak and her work, and it's subtitled in English). It's amazing.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:18 PM on February 16, 2018
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:18 PM on February 16, 2018
Calvert Journal is great, and I should check it more often. Thanks for this excellent collection of links! The one on LGBTQ life in pre-revolutionary Russia has good information, but this section has an odd omission:
posted by languagehat at 7:53 AM on February 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
As many liberal and protest movements and parties appeared at the beginning of the 20th century, the decriminalisation of homosexuality was discussed more and more, especially in legal circles. One of the leaders of this trend was Vladimir Nabokov (father of Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov), a well-known lawyer and one of the co-founders of the Constitutional Democratic Party. In fact, Nabokov was the first Russian politician who publicly supported gay rights, writing research papers on the legal status of the LGBTQ community in imperial Russia and advocating for the abolition of an outdated law.Nabokov's son Sergey (the author's younger brother, killed in a Nazi concentration camp) was gay; you'd think that would be worth mentioning in this context. On the other hand, that fact isn't mentioned in the author's Wikipedia page, either. Odd.
posted by languagehat at 7:53 AM on February 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
The piece on turbofolk is a great read. My knowledge of the genre doesn’t go too far past the 90s, when it was (as the article points out) essentially the soundtrack to a genocide. The connections between war criminals and turbofolk artists were numerous and deep (in a famous example, Ceca, one of the titans of the genre, was married to Arkan, a Serbian paramilitary commander who was assissaniated while on trial for crimes against humanity, and remained involved in his political party after his death). The fact that the inheritors of the genre are now instead using it as a vehicle for queerness in a deeply conservative society is fascinating.
posted by Itaxpica at 8:36 AM on February 17, 2018
posted by Itaxpica at 8:36 AM on February 17, 2018
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