Book about Red Dawns festival just released!

Tea Hvala (ed.): Rdečke razsajajo! Interviews with the organizers of feminist and queer festival Red Dawns (KUD Mreža, 2010)
Slovene / English, soft binding, 104 pages, 32 black/white photos, price: 8,00 € (+ postage)
Cover by Anna Ehrlemark

Red Dawns fest is breaking new ground in Slovenia. And that is really important: that a relatively known festival is opening new themes in the public sphere. Our international collaboration is important for the same reason. You have to bring people from abroad if no one here has thought about a certain issue yet! In addition, the international view brings awareness about the global nature of problems we are dealing with, like the lack of social justice. --Jasmina Jerant

The interviews collected in this book were made in 2009 when International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns celebrated its 10th anniversary. The interviewees discussed Red Dawns' contribution to the visibility of feminist and queer (counter)publics in Ljubljana. Tea Hvala interviewed the following past and present co-organisers of the festival: Anna Ehrlemark, Mirjana Frank, Danaja Grešak, Ana Grobler, Jasmina Jerant, Ana Jereb, Anja Kocman, Jadranka Ljubičič, Urška Merc, Slađana Mitrović, Lidija Radojević, Nataša Serec, Tanja Škander, Suzana Tratnik, Daša Tepina and Vesna Vravnik.

The book is in Slovene, except for the interviews with Anna Ehrlemark and Jasmina Jerant which are in English. Tea Hvala originally made seventeen oral interviews for her MA research in Gender Studies, part of which can be read here (pdf.). In it, she discussed Red Dawns festival as a rare example of a grassroots feminist public in Slovenia. Association KUD Mreža, the co-founder and organiser of the festival decided to publish the interviews in book format primarity because in Slovenia, there are very few works where the specifictiy of (feminist and queer) counterpublic organising would be discussed by the people who make it possible, rather than by academics.

In Ljubljana, the book is available for sale in Azil Bookstore (on Novi trg 2 or at the Museum of Modern Art) and in Modrijanova knjigarna (on Trubarjeva 27). For discount price, visit KUD Mreža's seat on Masarykova 24, ACC Metelkova mesto. For mailorder, please write to rdece.zore@gmail.com.

The book release was made possible with the generous help of many donators as well as public funds, provided by Municipality of Ljubljana and the Slovene Ministry of Education and Sport.

Izšel je zbornik 'Rdečke razsajajo!'

Tea Hvala (ur.): Rdečke razsajajo! Intervjuji z organizatorkami feminističnega in kvirovskega festivala Rdeče zore (KUD Mreža, 2010)
Slovenščina / angleščina, mehka vezava, 104 str., 32 čb fotografij, cena 8,00 €

V zborniku intervjujev, ki so nastali ob deseti obletnici delovanja Rdečih zor, o svojem prispevku k vidnosti feministične in kvirovske javnosti v Sloveniji razpravljajo nekdanje in sedanje (so)organizatorke festivala: Anna Ehrlemark, Mirjana Frank, Danaja Grešak, Ana Grobler, Jasmina Jerant, Ana Jereb, Anja Kocman, Jadranka Ljubičič, Urška Merc, Slađana Mitrović, Lidija Radojević, Nataša Serec, Tanja Škander, Suzana Tratnik, Daša Tepina in Vesna Vravnik.

Ustne intervjuje s sodelavkami festivala je opravila Tea Hvala, ki je v svojem magistrskem delu iz antropologije spolov Rdeče zore obravnavala kot eno redkih neakademskih feminističnih javnosti v Sloveniji, na odločitev za knjižno izdajo intervjujev pa je vplivalo predvsem dejstvo, da je pri nas izšlo zelo malo del, v katerih bi o delovanju manjšinskih javnosti razpravljali ljudje, ki jih ustvarjajo.

Citat iz knjige: "Zdi se mi, da se je z Rdečimi zorami spet začelo govoriti o feminizmu oziroma različnih feminizmih. Tega precej časa sploh ni bilo, še posebej potem, ko je zamrl Ženski center. Da se govori o feminizmu in feminizmih v današnjem času, je zelo pomembno, ker so se feministične iniciative iz osemdesetih razpršile v nevladne organizacije za boj proti nasilju nad ženskami, teoretsko delo, tudi v univerzitetne programe, domače raziskave in še kaj. To stanje in naša preljuba demokratična ureditev pa sta ustvarjala lažni vtis, da feminizma več ne potrebujemo. A ga potrebujemo, četudi morda v nekoliko drugačnih oblikah. Sama sem pogrešala dogajanje, feministične razprave in zbiranje na javnih prostorih." –Suzana Tratnik

Knjiga je naprodaj v Knjigarni Azil (Novi trg 2 in Moderna galerija) in Modrijanovi knjigarni (Trubarjeva 27), s popustom pa na sedežu KUD Mreža (Masarykova 24, AKC Metelkova mesto) v Ljubljani.

Izid knjige so omogočile številne donatorke, Mestna občina Ljubljana - Urad za mladino (Oddelek za predšolsko vzgojo in izobraževanje) in Ministrstvo za šolstvo in šport - Urad za mladino.

Izšel je zbornik 'Feminizam: politika jednakosti za sve'

V knjigi Feminizam: politika jednakosti za sve (posebna številka beograjske revije ProFemina) je izšla daljša verzija mojega eseja Težave s queerom (krajša je izšla v letošnji februarski št. revije Tribuna.) Zajeten zbornik, ki je na voljo v tiskani in spletni PDF izdaji, sta uredila Jelena Petrović in Damir Arsenijević.

Iz njunega uvoda: Knjiga Feminizam: politika jednakosti za sve nastala je kao rezultat zajedničkog rada istraživačica, teoretičarki, kulturnih radnica, aktivistkinja, od kojih su neke, silom prilika, postale i organizatorke, fondrejzerke i birokratkinje - ukratko, feministkinja koje su svojim angažiranjem i prisutnošću na različitim mestima i u raznim prilikama, u poslednjih deset godina, pokazale da je teško, ali moguće i nadasve potrebno misliti i živeti feminizam. Danas se feminizmi suočavaju sa ponavljanjem lekcija iz prošlosti, iz kojih pokušavamo da shvatimo i odredimo nove-stare feminističke paradigme: emancipacije, jednakosti i solidarnosti, a sve to u ime nove kolektivnosti.

Radovi u knjizi, kao aktuelna tekstualnost iz koje proizlaze i u koju se pretaču svakodnevne materijalne prakse, bave se upravo ovim feminističkim paradigmama i govore o nužnosti stvaranja novog kolektiva koji angažuje i menja ne samo okoštale akademske, kulturne, političke javne prostore i njihove raspršene identitarno-kompetitivne diskurse već i nas same. Knjiga nas je podstakla da postavimo niz pitanja i potražimo odgovore koji bi omogućili stvaranje zajedničke platforme za rad i njegove učinke u različitim, prepletenim poljima društvene javnosti. (...) Zašto ta kolektivnost mora biti nova i u odnosu na šta je ona emergentna? Zašto govorimo samo o ženskom rodu i svim ‘drugim’ rodovima, koji su društveno konstruisani politikom marginalizacije i isključivanja? Čime i kako se mogu graditi solidarne i zajedničke prakse koje temelje na feminizmu i jednakosti?

Pogovor o fanzinih na festivalu Vrnitev 13. brata

Kolektiv 13. brat se je odločil prekiniti desetletno pavzo, ki je nastopila po zadnji številki fanzina 13. brat. V podobi webzina je ponovno oživel v digitalnem svetu. Ob tem novem začetku smo pripravili družabno poljudnoznanstveni dogodek, katerega namen pa je med drugim tudi zbiranje sredstev za delovanje portala 13. brat. Vstopnina bo namreč v celoti namenjena plačilu stroškov izdelave in vzdrževanja webzina.

Pred koncertom bo ob razstavi fanzinov in fotografij koncertnega dogajanja potekal pogovor nekdanjih ter sedanjih zinmejkerjev o vlogi in pomenu alternativnih medijev nekoč, danes in v prihodnosti. V sproščenem pogovoru bodo sodelovali avtorji in avtorice fanzinov Tea Hvala (Pssst …), Dejan Požegar (Jaywalk), Marko Rusjan (13. brat) in Simon Markič (D'Iks). K pogovoru je seveda vabljeno tudi poslušalstvo.

Za koncertni del prireditve bodo poskrbeli prijatelji 13. brata, ki želijo s svojim nastopom podpreti naše delovanje: sedaj že kultna zagrebška zasedba Analena, s svojim emocionalnim posthardkorom. Družbo jim bodo delali lokalni bendi Real Life Version (melodičen hardkor), Iamdisease (sludge metal hardkor), Hellcrawler (death'n'roll), The Hoax Program (roknrol hardkor) in Haron (alter post metal).

Program:

20.00: Pogovor o fanzinih, webzinih in ostalih medijskih marginalcih (galerija Tir)
21.00: Koncert (velika dvorana)
01.30: DJ Stardust (mala dvorana)

Vstopnina: 5 €

Sobota, 28. maj 2011 ob 20.00, Kulturni center Mostovna, Solkan (pri Novi Gorici, Cesta IX. korpusa 99A)

Predavanje in pogovor 'Težave s queerom v Ljubljani'

 Grafit na Roški cesti v Ljubljani (foto: Enči Brenči)

»Ne tlači me v (o)queer!«, odličen grafit aktivistične skupine Vstaja Lezbosov, je zajel celo mavrico lokalnih interpretacij tega izmuzljivega pojma, ki se povečini izključujejo. Kaj pomeni queer, če pink partizanke očitno nočejo, da jih kdorkoli tlači v njegov okvir? Mar ni bil queerovski aktivizem mišljen kot upor proti togemu in ozkemu razumevanju identitet? Kako in kdaj se je izrazito opozicijski koncept spremenil v lastno nasprotje? Zastavljajo se še druga vprašanja, recimo, v katerih kontekstih se pri nas pojavlja ta izmuzljiva tujka? Ali zastopa novo samoopredelitev, novo nevidnost (za LGBTI skupnost), življenjski slog, modno muho, novo politiko, posebno teoretsko metodo ali celo novo paradigmo? Menda ne vsega naštetega?

Skratka, odkar je tudi v Ljubljani v določenih krogih popularno trditi, da si queer, je iskanje politično spodbudnih odgovorov na omenjena vprašanja še posebej pomembno za lezbično in gejevsko skupnost, saj queerovska novotarija (zaenkrat) zadeva predvsem njo. Zakaj? Ker je ta skupnost, kot je leta 1997 na podlagi intervjujev z lezbijkami zaključila Suzana Tratnik, naš »alternativni dom«, iz njega pa so tudi v Ljubljani izključeni »tisti, ki niso 'v celoti drugi', a tudi 'ne povsem/zadostno naši'«; torej obrobneži, odpadniki, izobčenci ali, kot bi rekli Američani, queeri.

Na ta in podobna vprašanja bomo skušali odgovoriti s pomočjo Tee Hvala, sociologinje, ki je kontekste, v katerih se pojem queer pojavlja v Sloveniji, raziskala v eseju Težave s spolom, ki je bil objavljen v februarski številki revije Tribuna.

Vabljene, vabljeni! 

V sredo, 25. maja 2011 ob 20.00 v Klubu Tiffany (ŠKUC - Kulturni center Q).

Essay 'Queer Trouble in Ljubljana'

On Friday, April 29^th 2011, I presented my essay Queer Trouble in Ljubljana at the Import – Export – Transport: Queer Theory, Queer Critique and Activism in Motion conference in Vienna. Below, you can read the abstract and introduction. The complete version is going to be published in 2012 by Zaglossus.

The essay was originally written in Slovene and published in two versions; the short one can be downloaded as PDF from Tribuna magazine (February 2011), the full-length can be read in Feminizam - politika jednakosti za sve anthology (ProFemina, Belgrade, 2011).


Queer Trouble in Ljubljana
 
Abstract
“Ne tlači me v (o)queer”, a graffiti on the streets of Ljubljana claimed “do not push me in a box” and “do not label me as queer”. It summarized an array of contradictory interpretations of the term queer that have appeared in the local academia, LGBTI media and LGTBI community in the last fifteen years. I analyze them in order to see how imported ideas about queer identity, queer politics and queer theory have been received, questioned and transformed by local knowledge production and practices.

Introduction 
People who do not participate in feminist or lesbian and gay (LGBTI) initiatives in Ljubljana but contribute to other political struggles often ask me what the meaning of the word queer is. Since they know I am co-organizing Rdeče zore (Red Dawns), a self-proclaimed feminist and queer festival, they expect me to know. It is a difficult question, I begin, and there are several answers, only some of which are politically encouraging. Then I quote “Ne tlači me v (o)queer,” a paradoxical graffiti written by Vstaja Lezbosov (The Insurrection of Lesbos) activist group in 2009. By claiming both “do not push me in a box” and “do not label me as queer” the slogan summarized an array of contradictory interpretations of the word queer that have appeared in the local academia, LGBT media and LGBTI community in the last fifteen years – in that order of appearance. The graffiti also suggested that ideas about queer identity, queer theory and queer politics have been significantly changed by local knowledge production and practices; changed in ways that bare no resemblance to the discourse of anti-assimilationist activists in the United States in the early 1990s. Since the term was adopted from literature about activism in the U.S. and brought to a completely different sociopolitical context, the change was expected. Less expected was its consequent refusal in large parts of Ljubljana's lesbian and gay movement. Indeed whom or what does the word queer represent today if young lesbian activists do not want to be “pushed” in its frame? In other words, how did this decisively oppositional concept turn into its own negation, into yet another constraining “box”?

In the U. S., queer activism formed within the LGBTI movement in response to the compromising politics of “homo-cons”. In order to reach their aims – gradually reduced to the demand for recognition of their “we're-just-like-you” normality – privileged members of the movement flirted with patriotic, militarist, racist, sexist and even homophobic politicians. In Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore's words, activist groups such as Gay Shame “sought to expose both the lie of a homogenous gay/queer ‘community’, and the ways in which the myth of community is used as a screen behind which gay people with power oppress others and get away with it” (Sycamore 2004: 272). Twenty years later, conservative voices can be heard in Slovenia as well even though the political differentiation of the movement happened in another context.

The lesbian and gay movement in Ljubljana began to form in the mid 1980s together with other civil rights movements, many of which – including the peace movement and the feminist movement – were institutionalized after Slovenia declared independence in 1991. The gradual pacification of struggle demanded by their sponsors (the state, Western foundations) did not affect the LGBTI movement to the same extent. Activists from the 1980s say that their insistence on autonomy, diversity and specific visibility was challenged later, in the late 1990s, when neoliberal capitalism and political conservatism began to show their sharpest teeth. As sexism and homophobia increased, some lesbian and gay groups invigorated their Leftist attacks on institutions of power while others, especially those that embraced identity politics as their only viewpoint, continued to seek legal recognition by those same institutions.

The term queer was introduced when the political differentiation of the movement began to take shape. It was met by curiosity, political analysis and historic memory. On the one hand, queer activism seemed to offer merely a new name for practices that were already present in the movement of the 1980s. As such, the term was superfluous. On the other hand, the introduction of queer theory coincided with the “cultural turn” in academia when recognition became the most important theme of feminist and LGBTI studies – studies that had only recently entered university programs. As such, queer theory was viewed with suspicion: it seemed to be yet another colonizing discourse, one that fit too nicely with the voluntarist ideology of neoliberal capitalism. The fact that queer activism advocated a further fragmentation of the relatively small movement confirmed, rather than rebutted that suspicion.

Of course, discursive colonization of local knowledge is only possible if there is nobody to counter it. If there is, the meaning of an imported concept is going to change. If it turns out to be politically harmful or inefficient, the concept can be altogether refused and abandoned – or used by those who profit from its inefficiency. In the words of feminist political theorist Lidija Radojević: “In Slovenia, the meaning of ‘queer’ […] is going to be defined by the people who are thinking about it” (Hvala 2010a: 71). So far, the term has been most often discussed in relation to gender identity or/and sexual orientation and in relation to a distinct lifestyle and club culture. Less often, it referred to academic research methods, contemporary artistic practices and political organizing. The obvious question is whether or not queer as a concept can be accommodated within all those frames of reference and if so, at what cost. I am not going to attempt to answer it as the focus of my essay lies elsewhere: I am going to look at a variety of interpretations in the LGBTI movement in order to see how the concept was adjusted to suit our needs.

(...)

Vabilo na okroglo mizo in odprtje razstave 'Zlobna deklica'

Srbska vizualna umetnica Ana Nedeljković v svoje ustvarjanje vključuje različne umetniške prakse, med katerimi prevladujeta ilustracija in prostorska instalacija. Projekt Zlobna deklica temelji na prepoznavnem ženskem liku in njegovi manipulativni rabi v različnih kontekstih. Zlobna deklica v ironičnem smislu predstavlja ultimativno bitje, ki je hkrati nevarno, norčavo in naivno. Skozi prostor se širi z nenadzorovanim podvajanjem in pri tem ustvarja neštete klone, ki se zbirajo v skupinah in si, kot nekakšni virusi, prisvajajo vse, kar jim pride blizu.

Odprtje razstave: ponedeljek, 18. april 2001 ob 20:00 v galeriji Kamera (Kino Šiška)

Projekt Ane Nedeljković odpira vprašanja o reprezentacijah žensk v umetnosti in širšem kulturnem prostoru. O njih se bomo na okrogli mizi Hudobni svet – zlobna deklica? pogovarjale/i z avtorico, teoretičarko Teo Hvala ter novinarko in moderatorko pogovora Mašo Ogrizek.

Okrogla miza: ponedeljek, 18. april 2001 ob 18:30 v galeriji Kamera (Kino Šiška)

Vabljene, vabljeni! 


Dogodek organizira Kulturno in izobraževalno društvo U3KRASNE v sodelovanju s CUK Kino Šiška.

Predstavitev stripa Nemirno morje

Pri Forumu Ljubljana je v zbirki Ambasada Strip izšel moj prevod stripovskega albuma Nemirno morje Helene Klakočar. Na predstavitvi v četrtek, 31. marca 2011 ob 18.00 v KIOSKU Kina Šiška, bo - žal v odsotnosti avtorice - potekal pogovor o albumu, avtobiografskem stripu in (ne)vidnosti stripovskih ustvarjalk. Vabljene/i na pogovor z urednico zbirke Katerino Mirović in mano.

Zgodba se prične junija 1991, ko se počitniško jadranje po Jadranu sprevrže v beg pred vojno v Jugoslaviji. Da je morje nemirno tudi v krajih, kamor se zagrebška umetnica in galeristka, ki je nenadoma postala begunka, zateče s svojim partnerjem in hčerkico, je razvidno že iz tveganih postankov v grških in italijanskih pristaniščih. V sklepnem delu se umetnica, ki pričakuje drugega otroka, z družino zateče na Nizozemsko, kjer se odloči, da bo raje plula po viharnih vodah svobode, kot da bi pristala na životarjenje na mrtvem morju nizozemske azilantske politike.

Helena Klakočar je diplomirala na Oddelku za grafiko na Akademiji za likovno umetnost v Zagrebu, iz slikarstva in animiranega filma pa na Nizozemskem. Poleg samostojnega dela je kot slikarka, ilustratorka, striparka in animatorka sodelovala z umetniškimi skupinami Zzot, Divlje oko in Migrative Art. Med letoma 1990 in 1991 je vodila program zagrebške Galerije SC. Sodelovala je na več mednarodnih razstavah, trenutno pa pripravlja projekt F.W.P. / Prvi svjetski mir. Za prvi del Nemirnega morja, ki je izšel l. 1999 pri belgijski založbi Freon, je l. 2000 na mednarodnem stripovskem festivalu v Angoulemu v Franciji prejela nagrado Alph-Art za najboljšo tujejezično knjigo in posebno nagrado radia France Info.

Dogodek organizira Kino Šiška v sodelovanju s Forumom Ljubljana.

Časopis Dnevnik je 4. junija 2011 objavil intervju z avtorico pod naslovom Realnost begunskega življenja.

The World SF Blog: Reflection on In Other Wor(l)ds workshops

The "ideologically suspect" World SF Blog, dedicated to new science fiction, fantasy, horror and comics from around the world is edited by Lavie Tidhar. On March 14th, the blog featured my article on In Other Wor(l)ds workshop series where I explain how and why it all started four or five years ago ... The article can be read here or below.

In Other Wor(l)ds: Workshops in Collective Writing of Feminist-Queer Science Fiction 
As a feminist activist, passionate reader of utopian fiction and hesitant writer, I often wondered why nobody in Slovenia seemed to be interested in literary games, for example in collective explorations of unthinkable ideas and unheard-of styles. My question and a possible answer might have something to do with the fact that I am relatively young yet older than my country.

Let me explain. I come from a twenty-year old country whose official language, Slovene, is spoken by two million people. In 1991, Slovene literature was appropriated for nation-building goals as it neatly legitimized the claim for Slovene independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – even though this political demand had little to do with art and a lot to do with the rise of ethnocentrism in the region. This (and the war that soon spread to Croatia and most fatally wounded Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina) has profoundly influenced the “serious” status of literature in Slovenia.

As an art form of national importance, literature has been serving the interests of established authors and theorists who continue to prescribe aesthetic norms that discourage innovation and guarantee that marginal authors and genres are going to stay in that position. Of course, an alternative writing scene does exists but genres such as science fiction, fantasy or horror are barely present. And since the literary market is so small (the usual print run for works released by small publishers is 800-1000 copies for fiction and 500 copies for poetry), genre authors can forget about either commercial or critical success. I was never sure whether this was a blessing or a curse.

With the help of my friends, many of whom are musicians, comics artists and zine writers, I was able to think of it as a blessing. They often organised music and comics jam sessions where strange, sometimes humorous, sometimes poetic, sometimes scary conjunctions arose from, so it seemed, pure chance. I enjoyed these encounters very much and in 2007, I decided to invite other amateur writers to jam with me and make writing a less solitary experience. So we sat around a table and started playing the Surrealist game Exquisite Corpse. Since we were less interested in automatic writing than in the points of interaction, we adjusted the technique to our needs. We decided upon a character, a setting or a plot twist and began to write. When our aching fingers forced us to stop, we assembled the pieces into a messy monster-piece, read it out loud and almost died laughing. The synchronicities were fantastic and frightening, as if our unconscious cared little for our elimination of the game’s automatic aspect. It seemed that our “emphatic repudiation of individualistic artistic value”, as Mel Gooding puts it in The Book of Surrealist Games (1993), really resulted in a “collective revelation” – one that taught us to trust our imagination and our abilities as writers.

The first public workshop took place in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) at the feminist-queer festival Ladyfest in 2008. The title In Other Wor(l)ds seemed most fitting for the occasion. It paid homage to Gayatri C. Spivak’s book In Other Worlds (1987) in which she tried to develop a methodology that would allow for non-patronising representations of “Third World women” in (Western) theory and fiction. It referred to another author whose view on the distance between – or rather, proximity of – fiction and fact is exciting for feminists and other intuitive visionaries. In the context of science fiction, Wittgenstein’s famous statement that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world” seemed to suggest that it is possible to write about Others, those metaphorical aliens, in ways that change my own (position in the) world in the process. In short, science fiction seemed to be the perfect genre for people who think about otherness in practical details, rather than abstract concepts.

At the workshop, I invited the participants to write stories that relate or transform gender variant human characters to aliens, fremdsprachenmonstermavens, kiggies, dodots, levitating broomsticks and other queer creatures. We discussed examples of feminist Sci-Fi to see what has been done, what hasn’t been done and why it might be still hard to do it. For example, we asked why does the critique of Cartesian dualism in Ursula K. Le Guin’s ground-breaking novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) not automatically extend to the critique of homophobia. And why does the Other, the radically different, the hardly imaginable, often seem so monstrous? We also talked about the ways to queer the rigid conventions of gender and genre. Since ideas in Sci-Fi are often disguised as characters, we figured they are inevitably gendered, thus it must be possible to genderfuck with them in all sorts of ways. So we tried out the recipe.

In Amsterdam, we defined the characters and a plot feature. We wrote about Bo, the human, and Vlar (or Vlarrr), the non-human character. We said we’ll let them choose the setting as long as they accept to meet and run away from – or towards – something together. The stories were written by Brigitte, Anne, Sara, Diny, Caroline, Nina, Anouk and yours sincerely. The second workshop happened in Salzburg (Austria) at a conference about innovations in open-access media. Since we wrote with pens on paper, we focused on the social innovation of a very old medium indeed: language. We decided to split in a German-speaking and an English-speaking group because these were our only common languages: the group consisted of eleven people whose mother tongues were Portugese, English, Slovak, French, German and Slovene. We managed to hold hostage individual authorship for three hours and wrote about three characters – Kim, V, and 0/1 – whose gender and character were subject to rapid change. The stories took place in Salzburg in the year 2050 and were written by Cristiane, Debi, Red, Dušan, Paul, Sarah, Christian, Nikoletta, Jenny and Imre. Later, I self-published the English stories from both workshops in a zine called – you guessed it – In Other Wor(l)ds.

Since then, the concept has been used for brainstorming purposes at other independent feminist-queer events in Belgium and Great Britain to promote zine-making and self-publishing. A participant from Amsterdam, an architect, told me she and her colleagues found it useful in their profession. As for me, I finally held some workshops in my home-town, Ljubljana, in 2010. We were hosted by a radical library, an arts association and twice by a feminist-lesbian collective. The characters varied from Rx Vulgaris (a symbiotic mechanoplant), Vanja (a transgender cyborg), The Decoratives (gay activists) and female anthropomorphic cats fighting gentrification to local politicians and self-appointed intellectuals – suggesting we disguised political satire as Sci-Fi. The combination certainly worked! In addition, the hosts liked us enough to help us scrape together funds for the release of a book entitled Svetovi drugih (KUD Anarhiv, 2010).

The most recent workshop happened on February 19^th 2011 at the winter edition of Lad.i.y.fest in Berlin. We played several Surrealist writing games in Sci-Fi settings with feminist-queer aspirations. For example, we collectively (de)constructed sentences like “The sexy robot slapped a strong community.” Later, we wrote several short stories, based on our favourite Exquisite Corpse sentences.

I no longer have to wonder where are all the people interested in literary games. I found them and learned that, locally speaking, “serious” literature and its inevitable identity crisis, is none of my concern. The fact that I am older than my country is an absolute advantage: I don’t even have to take myself seriously!

In Other Wor(l)ds stories from Berlin

The In Other Wor(l)ds workshop took place at the f.a.q. Laden in Neukölln on February 19th on the occasion of Lad.i.y.fest Berlin. We played several Surrealist writing games in Sci-Fi settings with feminist-queer aspirations: Definitions (Question and Answer), Conditionals and two versions of Exquisite Corpse. In the first version, we collectively (de)constructed sentences like “The sexy robot slapped a strong community”, in the second we wrote short stories, based on our favourite Exquisite Corpse sentences.

The following mistress-pieces were written by Nina, Laura, Tanja, Dare, Sybille, Katha, Raoul, Cy, Tina, Audrey, Sabine, Skyler, Tea and another (for now) anonymous participant. The list of stories will expand as soon as we manage to decode our exquisite handwritings. Until then – enjoy the ones below …

Many thanks to Lad.i.y.fest organisers for hosting the workshop and the Slovenian Embassy in Berlin for donating the wine! (The Surrealists were right: “The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine!”)

Definitions (Question and Answer)

What is your idea of queer science fiction?
Biting the dog again and again.

What does a star look like?
Like the cow that went up the mountain.

Why is it cold?
Because the night belongs to the creatures.

Is there such a thing as luminous wonder?
Depends on the light.

Must there be light at the end of the tunnel?
Look, the teddy bear is acting like a cat!

What is the best place for a secret?
That would be just too complicated to answer.

Which pizza do you like? Peperoni?
No, the one with the book from last year.

When is it the time to fall in love?
I don’t care. Let’s just do it now.

Why are sad people so complicated?
Because blue robot ponies don’t have a sex.

Why did the Snowqueer slip on the pavement?
Because the stars are pink and there is a huge teddy bear jumping on the top of the mountain.

What’s your favourite way of making sure you’re really awake for class in the morning?
I look for a fly that flew millions of years ago in a tropic forest and got trapped in amber.

Where did you find this book?
That’s misleading the truth written in the book.

Why did you sell that pink car?
Because the nuns told me so.

How can you travel from London to Siberia?
Look for a white rabbit with your answer in her mouth.

What would you do if you noticed you peed in your pants after laughing too hard?
It’s quite simple: you would want to try to cover it with a large carpet.


Conditional

If you walk into a queer party and you can’t find anyone who looks like you, then you can fit two green jellies inside your trifle spacesuit.


Exquisite Corpse
Follow the links to reach the stories based on the first three sentences.

An ambitious thought is swimming with the multiple cyborg.

A beautiful facility manager is insisting on a heart-breaking glass window.

A wild teddy bear cried over a deconstructed baby.

The yelling princess hurt an apple-shaped glitz business.

A stupid bicycle basket fell onto a terrible caterpillar.

The beautiful bowling ball is spitting a slow cigarette.

A blue ant sculpted the queeriest crocodiles!

An amazing power is playing with spicy gloves.

A rather curious box will devour an exhausted mirror.

The wonderful Amazons danced with a very used box.

The phenomenal train met a furious birthday cake.

The sexy robot slapped a strong community.

A precious cupboard secretly fell on Cinderella.

Part 1: An Ambitious Thought ...

In Other Wor(l)ds stories from Berlin - Part 1: 
An Ambitious Thought Is Swimming With the Multiple Cyborg


I. No Escape
The ambitious thought is swimming with the multiple cyborg. The flowers are falling from the trees, the birds are singing out loud and there's a terrible noise that seems like thunder: it is the nostalgic voice of another cyborg coming from the distance and it sounds like the saddest song on Earth ... Our multiple cyborg decides there and then ...

… to go to Earth and look for the other cyborg and maybe save it from its sadness. But the 1st cyborg had forgotten how people live on Earth. It was seen by the anti-terrorist forces and put in jail. There, it heard so many sad songs that it couldn't recognize the one it heard on its planet. As the 1st cyborg had no gender, the guardians put it in a cell in the women's quarter, alone, because in their world, if you are not a man you are not something else but assimilated to women. So the 1st cyborg descended deeper and deeper into sadness and soon its mission was forgotten. It thought only of the sad songs and its inability to fit into one gender box or the other. Teardrop after teardrop fell onto the concrete floor until one day one of those salty teardrops tore a hole in the floor, opening a trapdoor and sending the 1st cyborg down down down until it landed at the feet of the cyborg it had intended to save from sadness when it came to Earth.

“Hi, there you are! I was waiting here for you, really sad and terribly alone,” the other cyborg said.

“Yes, I heard your sad voice and so I decided to look for you and free you from your sadness,” the 1st cyborg explained, “but now I see this idea was too romantic. Since I've been caught and trapped here, I've become just as sad as you are.”

“Yes, but at least we're not alone now, and maybe we can escape from here.”

The other cyborg already looked a bit happier.

“But we are in a prison, there is no way to escape!”


II. The Supersonic Message
An ambitious nostalgic thought is swimming with the multiple cyborg. The cyborg carried this thought for a really long time. Thoughts were falling from its head like a fish bowl kicked so strong that all the fish fly far away ... Anyway, a head full of thoughts and some strange memories: memories from the wild sex party they threw last night.

What was that? Nostalgic thoughts? They represented what the cyborg has been longing for: cyborgs from all kinds of places, dancing to slow motion songs in ballerina suits. Oh, for sure it felt like swimming. Swimming in a sea of metallic kisses and passionate oil. That was when the multiple cyborg remembered that special robot that looked like a piece of machine from the future in 1920. All kinds of thoughts started to return to its head: “I’m gonna organize a play party this evening!”

The cyborg thought of sending a supersonic message to the whole galaxy, one that can be translated as: “Welcome to the strangest place in the universe! Everything is possible here: fucking cyborgs, aliens, robots and maybe lost humans … for one night in our timespace but in your timespace, it could represent more or less, it depends!”

The cyborg sat back, satisfied with its message. Smiling to itself, it pressed its scrawny grey thumb on the ‘send’ button.


III. Revenge of the Lonely Cyborg
The ambitious nostalgic thought is swimming with the multiple cyborg. The thought swims backwards, against the current, passing through channels and bouncing off rocks and fallen tree stumps, further and further into the past. The cyborgs swims alongside the thought, guiding it around islands and through marshy areas. While floating under a bridge, one lazy summer afternoon, the thought questioned itself.

“Why am I going backwards?” it said loudly to itself. One of the older cyborgs raised his wide head out of the water and answered: “Because you must revisit the past before you can move into the future.”

Slowly floating, the thought wondered what he would find in his past. At this point he couldn’t remember where he was coming from nor which way he had gone so far. Only when he bounced against a rock or a tree stump, he had a short flashlight of memories, astonished and confused about the way he had made so far. Where was the beginning, his origin? Or was there no origin at all? Would he just lose himself on the journey, fragmented and untraceable? And then, even if he could follow the way back to one origin, what would it tell him about the future?

Probably that he should take care of the dog more often, or write some letters to his family – the kind of precious advice that life is teaching you all through. Or: don’t step on the line, try to walk the sidewalks without stepping on the lines because that brings bad luck.

Anyway, the cyborg was lonely. A forty year old cyborg with no hopes for a future (technology doesn't last that much), thinking and meditating all day long: why nobody told me that technology doesn’t last forever, that we must be trashed too, necessarily, at a certain point? Why nobody teaches us this in school and we have to learn it the hard way ... when our metal is only good for ironing?

Even the complaining and meditating took too long, so our cyborg took a life-changing decision: “I am going to crash to the Earth, in a techno-pole, to show them where technology leads: to death ... Ah, ah, ah, I am becoming diabolic because no hope is left, no future for me, no future for others! I am going to destroy all 'scientific centers' and put bombs everywhere! Maybe the survivors will find parts of my body, maybe they'll wonder how a cyborg could be so lonely?! They might understand that all planets are perfect and loneliness exists everywhere …”


IV. In the Here and Now
The ambitious nostalgic thought is swimming with a multiple cyborg called Az. It lives in another world, far from us. Whoever built it had in mind an ideal world. Az should be clever, free-minded, not straight, but it met another cyborg called By, lost in this ideal world.

By: It’s boring, we don't have to fight anyone!

Az: I don’t agree! This world is so wonderful, no more discrimination! Everyone can live freely!

By shook its head sadly: “What good is freedom if it wasn't fought for? Furthermore, what do we learn by relaxing in this peaceful paradise? Is there no challenge here, can't we use our minds for a single moment?”

Az didn’t know what to say. It arrived to this ideal world just a few days ago: “How long have you been here?” it asked.

“3 years, 99 days, 4 hours and 36 minutes,” By replied.

Az: “And what did you do all this time? You just seem to be bored with this perfect place and you’ve forgotten what it means to fight. Now the fighting for freedom looks like a great heroic adventure to you but don’t forget about the all pain and suffering it causes!” Az looked a bit furious because his beautiful thought was questioned that way.

Oh, stop telling me what to think,” By replied angrily, “you came here with your fantastic thoughts about perfect life, telling me your wisdom – but you didn’t live this life! What do you know about it?”

“The point is that when you arrive to the ideal world, nothing is like you imagine it would be. When you live 'this' life, the ideal world is far away, unreachable. And it seems to be perfect because our reality is 'here'. Our reality doesn’t taste good, the ideal world does. But the ideal world is not here.”

When By stepped into the ideal world he couldn’t believe it because it had became part of the 'here' and the 'here' is where we experiment, what we live. And if we live something we don’t like, then we have to fight to change it. This desire for change, even in the paradise of the ideal, was too shocking for By, who realized that he was never living in such an ideal place, that this static picture was an illusion of reality. When By met Az, he realized there were many things that needed to be done. And that’s when he joined Az in the fight. He also realized that Az was not a 'he' but a 'she' and that by calling 'him' 'he' was trying to see the world as a place made only for him.

When he saw that there were others, different ones, and saw a part of the fight as well, he started to call Az for what she was, a complete cyborg, independent of pronouns. And both kept on fighting together. Ideal world or reality, call it as you want. The fact is that they are fighting HERE.


Part 2: A Beautiful Facility Manager ...

Part 2: A Beautiful Facility Manager ...

In Other Wor(l)ds stories from Berlin - Part 2: 
A Beautiful Facility Manager Is Insisting on a Heart-Breaking Glass Window
 

I. Clashing Histories
A beautiful facility manager insisted on a heart-breaking glass window.

“Give in, give in to my beauty!” shouted the manager. By now she was in despair. Normally, her charms always worked, no matter how pressing the window’s heart-ache was. This window didn’t make a screech. One if its panes moved slightly, from left to right, as if to say: “No.”

“What do I have to do to heal your shattered window-heart? I tried duct tape, chewing gums, even the new subparticle glue … Please, talk to me!”

Was this a dream? A bad one, it seemed. A kind of nightmare. Since when did he notice that this special window was talking to him? And why did he think it was female? Nobody knew he liked women. It was forbidden, the machines didn’t want it. Why was he so sad about the broken glass? He couldn’t remember. This shouldn’t be happening. The machines. Was evolution really this bad?

He was male. That was the only thing he knew.

“Go to hell,” he shouted, “go to hell, all of you!”

Stretching Robin woke up. He looked over to the corner where he kept the window. She was still there. Shattered. And his dream slipped away from him.

“Time for another appointment with the high Wita. Stay there,” he said, “and don’t move.”

Talking to a mirror again, oh dear. He crawled up the ladder and into the air vent that protruded insignificantly into the room. He had to make his way to the bowels of the ship. It was magik time. He had to witness the Ritual.

“Psst.”

He heard a sound as he tried to wriggle him ample hips through the small hole. He paused, sweating. No other life forms apart from the Facility workers were allowed in the ship. That’s unless you count the witches. And of course, no one knew about them.

“Psst.”

He heard it again. He lowered his feet down onto his screen shelf where all the Universe’s oracles were kept. He pushed his shoulders through, and bruising the right one, he landed with a bump on the second layer of his cabin.

The only thing with even a vague Life-Energy was the mirror. But that was impossible. Surely the forces had died long ago with the genocide that had rid the planets of all humans. Womyn. Was that how it was spelled? He wasn’t sure. The histories seemed to clash.

Moving over to the mirror, he observed his long lashes repeated in her eyes.

“Why the fuck mirrors? Are mirrors glasses? Window-glasses? What a stroke of genius of fate. Of course, at this point people did not believe in faith, a somewhat anachronistic concoction, anymore. But then, in spite of technology, how do you know – to have picked mirrors as the last remnant of life-energy?

The thought of recovering a mirror, that symbol of vanity and coherence of the self, tickled Robin’s sense of glory. He pictured himself as the hero, just like in the texts he had at one point read in brain training.

Robin the hero would save those he loved most – women, womyn – and himself, rescue them from the planet where it was possible to survive only with the help of mirrors. Robin didn’t know exactly where to but knew how it should look like. He gave the idea a second thought and suddenly he wasn’t sure anymore if he knows where to go. Sure about the need to leave and sensing that the journey away from the planet will be long and exhausting but nonetheless necessary, Robin started preparing for the journey of his life.


II. Potatoes Don't Have a Gender
A beautiful facility manager was insisting on a heart-breaking glass window. She was sitting in a large oval room, surrounded by kaleidoscopes of windows. Rainbow-light was reflecting everywhere, bouncing off her hair, giving it the colour of the old flags she had seen in the history Portals, carried on poles by strange women with short hair. Her salopettes were slightly wet with sweat and she was sitting surrounded by fragments of broken glass.

A short, curvy figure walked up to her: “What are you doing, Ariadne?”

“Shh!,” the other said. Her stained fringe shook irritably: “'I'm concentrating.”

It had taken her so long to get to this point, she felt. And yet only a few hours ago she had been sitting in the mess-cafeteria, sipping her tomato juice with Vox. And now they were here, at last. And she had to concentrate. Hard. Or everything might be lost.

Vox ate her mashed potato hungrily. Ariadne was acting strangely. Quiet, frowning. Holding her tomato juice in her hand, barely drinking it and eating nothing, even though they had a busy day of Lyte Krystal mining ahead. What the hell was going on with her?

Annoyed, she finished and slurped down her cold, luminous energy T. In a way she felt manipulated, as if she was in some kind of sarcastic system of cow-willing-sipping luminous energy T in the morning, replenishing, just to pour all the energy into the Lyte Krystal. On the other hand, their plan was projecting an arduous night ahead.

While sipping on the mashed potatoes (yes, they could be sipped as well if X-rayed with the sharp light of the awakening morning), they were sorting out the last details of the night that was lying ahead. They didn't let themselves be bothered by the annoying phone ringing, or by people who were passing by, iodizing in wonder at the two persons sitting on the floor, surrounded by glass-spirals, eating breakfast and talking just as casually as if they were shopping at the market. No, they didn't let themselves be disturbed by the BIG ONE, who was flying into town and who was way more important than any of their human concerns.

Ariadne's concentration period was finished. She opened her eyes again and instantly the rainbow-light disappeared from her voluminous hair. As she looked around herself, nervous about the BIG JUICY ONE's arrival, she noticed that her hair looked even longer and darker in the shattered glass reflection. She wished she could cut it right there, at once, just like Vox did after seeing the holographic representation of her strong predecessors' history of struggle against the BIG ONE. What worries! Now, only a hundred years later, she and Vox were on a diplomatic mission to introduce the BIG ONE to the new mashed potatoes recipe which healed the heart-break off all species, BIG and small.

Everything became great as Vox accepted the new wisdom. And everybody really loved the BIG POTATO ONE. Potatoes don't have a gender. Who knew it would be that easy? And it all started with a facility manager ...


III. Metamorph Now!
A beautiful facility manager insisted on a heart-breaking glass window. So he looked at it. Why do these cyborgs always destroy windows? That was his life: queering ponies, broken crocodiles.

“Mr. Suffer?”

Oh, no. He hated to be called by his real name.

“Yes, divine queen of perverts?”

Cyborgs are so logically engaged. You can’t win.

“Why is there a teddy lying on the second floor?”

“I don’t know. Do you wish that I metamorph it?”

“No, thanks.”

And then he saw it. The face in the window. Again. This planet was a mess.

He looked down and returned to his work. They called him Mr. Suffer but nobody knew his real name. He forgot it a long ago, in the Third-Iron-Age. And no one bothered to give cyborgs a name these days. There were too many of them … us … no, them. So hard to think of the trillions of slick figures of his kind. And of course, that is what the humans always wanted. To de-figure them. To take cyborg culture and hide it from all second-class citizens of the Eleventh Galaxy. No wonder, he thought cynically. With the combined life-force of these eternal lifeforms, a revolution could be staged.

“Screech.”

Again he heard it, that sound that his Professoress once described as the sound of fingers scraping a blackboard.

“Screech.”

Quickly, he looked up. Nothing.

“Queenie, oh queenie,” he mumbled.

His Supervisoress reappeared.

“About that teddy: can you metamorph it after all? Its fuzzy little legs are bringing out my maternal instincts.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Typical, he thought. She was scared.

Scribbling little letters which don’t deserve their name onto the surface of the table, the divine queen of perverts was pondering: “Is there a difference between Teddies and Cyborgs, and if yes, who gets to name them? In a way, Teddies had been just very lucky but maybe also strategic in selling their fuzzy legs as completely inoffensive; so trivial and cute that revolutionary metamorphosis could not be thought of.”

Queenie started thinking aloud but just couldn't get it why the Cyborgs were always said to be biologically engaged. After all, she never saw any Cyborg sharing its desire with another Cyborg. At least not with her own eyes. Or was she simply ignorant? Maybe she imagined desire in a certain way, thought it had to assume a certain shape ...

In this moment, Mr. Suffer realised he was in his own world. There were still teddies around him but no cyborgs in sight although he could swear he smelled the overwhelming saliva from their mouths ... not in sight but surely present. Instead, only a sales-person was looking at him like he was insane. He was sure that this sales-person thought so, but he didn’t care about it. Cyborgs were around him and they might have desires, too (he just didn’t see them) ... and he himself ... yes, he himself ... a small flash of insight grew … became huge ... yes, he desired them! He desired THEM!

“Oooh! Cyborgs,” he screeched like a nail scraping against rusty metal, “why wasn’t I constructed as an autoerotic cyborg, why can’t I just please myself?!”

“Don’t despair,” shouted the divine queen of perverts, “metamorph! Metamorph now!”

“Yes, I am ... am ... mmh ...”

His electronic consciousness faded out for a second, perhaps a century. When he opened his eyes again, he realized he was tied to the iron frame of a velvet-red bed. A dozen fluffy and warm teddies were sitting on his chest, salivating with desire and gazing transfixed into his many compound eyes.

“Who am I,” he thought, “what have I become?”

Perhaps it no longer mattered ...


IV. One grows, one grows up to the task of growing
A beautiful facility manager was insisting on a heart-breaking glass window. The window belonged to a fancy shop with antique teddy bears. They were not in the best shape, some of them were missing legs, some of them had no head, but looking at them, the facility manager could cry tears – so beautiful they were in their uniqueness! They were to be exhibited, the facility manager decided, and so s_he went against the conviction of her_his colleagues and clients who thought s_he's gone crazy. S_he was standing in front of the shop, looking at it from a distance, aware of the treasure that was lying behind the wooden bulk windows. S_he was thinking of teddy bears and their heads and legs and bellies and filling that was partly pushing to the surface of their beings. S_he could almost smell their fur, it had the sweet odour of years of humidity.

“Aaa-khm!”

The facility manager moved her/his beautiful head towards the sudden sound. What was that?

“Aaa-khm,” repeated the sound and by now (s)he knew that this was not some random noise from the street, not the cracking of the boards that covered the window – no, the sound was coming from behind the boards. (S)he brought her perfectly violet nose closer to the window and looked at the damp teddy bears from real close. One of them seemed to move slightly, as if to stretch its muscles. Suddenly, it pulled out a sign that said: “WE ARE NOT EXHIBITS. FLUCK YOU!”

“What?”

“Which part of the sentence you didn't understand?”

“Maybe the 'Fluck you' part.”

“C'mon, I'm a bear. Do you expect a perfect pronunciation or what?”

“I didn't even know that a toy is able to talk.”

“I'm lonely. And my name is Zoo, by the way.”

“What kind of a name is 'Zoo'?”

The bear seemed to grow: “What kind of a job is a 'facility manager'?”

“You're a naughty little bear.” Am I really talking to a bear, she thought in the mean time, I should visit the doctor. While it wondered, the bear apparently returned to its inanimate stasis. And then: “Naughty little bear, am I? Are you trying to dominate me or what?”

Aa-khm laughed: “Well, I guess they don't call you 'Bears' for nothing. Who would think that toys are into BDSM?!”

To her/his surprise, the teddy laughed heartily with her. Did it understand? No one, not even the Sybil-IV's got his/her jokes. They were too old-fashioned, filled with references to a time long gone. So s/he kept laughing, hysterically now, the sound coming deep from hir belly.

“Look, shut-up,” the teddy bear hissed, “you've got to get me out of here. I'm old and trapped. Look, my shagging is starting to get mouldy.” Zoo held up a leg impatiently, showing Aa-khm the newly-formed star crystals. Zoo was here for too long and too frustrated to bandy about PleasSex with a facility manager. However, s_he was pleasantly appealing. Zoo quickly thought about how simple it was for it to label people as appealing or not. Where did it learn that? Behind the glass window, checking out passers-by.

Like a balloon with its sides stretching, Zoo became larger. A kind of an unpleasant feeling, but one grows, one grows up to the task of growing, stretching, filling up space. Like a yeast dough with a slightly fractured surface. Fractured? It started with some cracks, cracks turning into fractals, like sprinkled sugar all over the place. A kind of slow-motion but steady, then a point of fullness, a point where glass resistance is overwhelmed by Zoo's mighty belly, crashing and cracking, shattering all over the floor. The glass window is broken, and so is Zoo's mightily enlarged heart. Literally.



V. Embizzle's Home

A beautiful facility manager was insisting on a heart-breaking glass window. Glass had proven instrumental to Embizzle's daily routine at least once or twice before. Its power to break people's hearts, literally, helped her once to dodge a ticket checker, another time to stop a night train from departing on time.

Looking at the window frame, Embizzle could not help giving in to the – what was by now thought to be obsolete – way of insulating living units. So Embizzle was choosing the occasions, the moments when it used its power very carefully and sparsely. It always focused on something that was incredibly important to it or to those it loved. And it loved people very much. Throughout the years it would observe how its use of power made people do things they wouldn't do otherwise but were just more right – they brought more equilibrium and justice (however vague this concept might be). However, when people would act in a more just way, their hearts would turn bigger and bigger until they would explode.

Embizzle itself was hurt by it and now, at this point was wondering whether the glass windows were the key to get rid of all this pain. After all, the glass was supposedly emotionless – and motionless. But wasn't there always something, someone behind the window glass?

Embizzle tried to look through the dusty window but only saw its own reflection. Its beauty was typical of its species: vertical eyes, horizontal nose, vertical mouth et cetera. But Embizzle was used to her face. So used, xe no longer noticed it. Right now she knew only one thing: her reflection in the dark dusty window was on her way, preventing her from seeing what was behind it. So s/he smashed the window with her fist.

She was surprised to see how easily the glass broke. How soft. It melted away and she was surprised again. The window was hiding a different room. There stood a scientist and mumbled: “Oh no, oh no, oh no.”

Embarrassing. Her beloved H was a small scientist? An ant? An insect with a writing pad in its hands? Ridiculous?

Embizzle wished she hadn't broken the window. This story was going to end really bad and she knew who would suffer in the end – herself. Looking at the scientist she noticed something strange about the creature. Although it definitely had insecticide characteristics it also had the same slightly slanting eyes as H, Embizzle's own long mouth. But, as well as this, the scientist had long white fingers, which were writing feverishly in a book. Looking at H, her own heart was breaking.

“Hello Embizzle.” The creature smiled: “Recognise me? I am your syster.”

And Embizzle knew then, where her ana…est dreams and skills had led her. Here. Home. To this beautiful, tri-specied creature, truly a child of the anti-speciesist Order's own philosophy. Looking at her, Embizzle knew that her hardest work had only just begun. Instead of breaking hearts, she would now have to learn to mend her own.


Part 3: A Wild Teddy Bear ...

Part 3: A Wild Teddy Bear ...

In Other Wor(l)ds stories from Berlin - Part 3: 
A Wild Teddy Bear Cried Over a Deconstructed Baby


I. One-Way Baby Route to Neukölnoid 
A wild teddy bear cried over a deconstructed baby when Elija awakened on its new planet. The sun had just risen and the tidy hills were covered in a kind of pinkish light. Even Elija's skin looked a bit pinkish. Except for the teddy bear and the baby everything seemed to be empty. Just these hills (Elija remembered them from some kids show), everywhere. When Elija looked closer, she saw that the teddy bear's tears were small little wool balls that started rolling down the hills and when they got stuck somewhere, they sprouted little trees with wool-ball leaves.

The baby didn't know it was deconstructed, it didn't care. It started playing with the wool balls and wool-ball trees. Elija didn't know what to think about all this, but then she thought that she also didn't have to, and started playing with the baby, throwing wool balls and piling the up. The teddy bear was still crying, so more and more wool rolled down the hills. But when Elija and the baby stopped touching the balls, the teddy stopped crying immediately. It started singing and the baby began to reconstruct itself.

When the baby was in one piece again, Elija noticed that somebody was shouting. A lot of creatures here, she thought. She saw the shouting one crawling on the sand towards them very quickly. It was a giant blue slug, now heading for the baby. It hugged the baby while softly talking to it and seemed very happy.

The happy times were over and done! The community did not approve those happy F-E-E-L-I-N-G-S, as they called them, in the stratosphere of deconstruction. The teddy bear unveiled his mask – it never cried, that was just woollen leakage coming from the old grandpa disguised in a fluffy bear. This was a strategy employed by the people of the planet of Media Deconstruction to deconstruct semi-innocent babies! Then they would use the babies as prototypes to live on planet Earth.

The way to stop this circus was to save the babies by transporting them to another dimension called Neukölnoid where no teddy bear could find them. As we speak, the new babies are coming to their new habitat. And yes, it's a one-way baby route to Neukölnoid! The robots of Neukölnoid will be happy to adopt these new imported life forms.



II. “Bahbahbuaha ...”

A wild Teddy Bear cried over a deconstructed baby.

“Not again!” said the baby, this time completely deconstructed. Teddy Bear had done this before. The last time it was when the omnipresent Robot had a massive jet-lag and started deconstructing the baby furiously.

“Look,” said the baby, “I think someone is manipulating with our time and space coordinates. That's why you leak tears, my dearest Teddy bear.” As soon as the baby said that, the Teddy Bear started vomiting uranium jelly candies.

In that moment, Ara the Third of the 3 Homeless Companions, randomly travelling through the space, entered the enormous bathroom of their ship. She spotted the candy and started to collect it from Teddy and stuffed it into her mouth.

“We have to do something,” Teddy Bear gasped.

“I like the candy,” Ara the huge parrot said. After she took a look at the baby she changed her mind: “OK, I do have an aunt on Planet B3, she is a witch and maybe she can help us. But we probably need the candy to pay her, so you need to stop eating it.”

They found a hygiene products bag in the bathroom and held it under Teddy's mouth to collect the candy. When it was full they left the bathroom and hitch-hiked to Planet B3.

During their travel the baby deconstructed more and more. Its body became only texts and discourses, its gender was gone long ago. But its shit was still real and they had forgotten to take enough diapers along. They used whatever they could find in the various spaceships and spaceship stops but they were still very happy when they finally met the witch. But something was wrong with her.

“Oh, my babyyy,” the witch screamed with tears in her eyes, “I've been searching for you forever.” She took the baby under her hairy armpits, watching it closely.

The baby made babbling sounds: “Bahbahbuaha ...”

What happened to it during the journey? Where did all its words go? Did it lose them? And what did it receive instead of words? The witch smiled happily and looked a bit scary with her black yellow sharp teeth.

“Finally you are ready, baby. The only purpose of your journey was to bring me the total power of deconstruction. I will see, finally see! I'll be the last and final judge.” And so she kissed our little deconstructed baby and sucked. She sucked until nothing was left except for the little crying Teddy Bear.

Back to Introduction
Back to the workshop invitation where the writing technique is explained (in case you were wondering what on Earth this is).

Esej 'Težave s queerom' v časopisu Tribuna

V februarski številki študentskega časopisa Tribuna je izšla krajša verzija eseja Težave s queerom. V njem obravnavam pomene, ki se v Sloveniji vpisujejo v uvoženi in še neprevedeni pojem »queer«. Esej je ilustrirala Ana Baraga, tukaj pa je dostopen v PDF obliki. Daljša verzija je izšla v zborniku Feminizam: politika jednakosti za sve (Jelena Petrović, Damir Arsenijević (ur.), Beograd: Profemina, 2011).

Iz uvoda: »'Queer ... kaj to sploh pomeni?' me sprašujejo znanke in znanci, ki nimajo neposrednega stika s feministično, lezbično in gejevsko sceno, a vedo, da se oba, izraz in jaz, loviva med njimi. Vprašanje je umestno. Odkar je tudi v Ljubljani popularno trditi, da si queer, je iskanje politično spodbudnega odgovora še posebej pomembno za lezbično in gejevsko skupnost, saj queerovska novotarija (zaenkrat) zadeva predvsem njo. Zastavljajo se še druga vprašanja, recimo v kakšnih kontekstih se pri nas pojavlja ta izmuzljiva tujka? Ali zastopa novo samoopredelitev, življenjski slog, modno muho, novo politiko, posebno teoretsko metodo ali celo novo paradigmo? Menda ne vsega naštetega? Kdo in kaj se torej definira kot queer(ovsko)?«

In Other Wor(l)ds workshop at Lad.i.y.fest Berlin

My next writing workshop is going to take place at the 2011 winter edition of Lad.i.y.fest on Saturday, February 19th from 12.00 to 15.00 at the f.a.q. Laden in Jonasstrasse 40 in Neukölln, Berlin. 

In Other Wor(l)ds: Collective Writing of Feminist-Queer Science Fiction

At the workshop, we are going to hold hostage individual authorship. We won’t wait for inspiration and we won’t worry about controlling the narrative either. Instead, we are going to play with the rigid conventions of genre and gender by disguising feminist-queer ideas as utopian characters of our choice.

The roboladies of Hermannstrasse.

The workshop will start with a short discussion about feminist-queer science fiction and the ideas or characters we would like to explore in an utopian setting. We will continue by playing several Surrealist games in “automatic writing” in order to relax and prepare for the climax: the collective writing of gender-fucking and mind-bending speculative stories. To amuse ourselves, we are going to conclude the workshop with a reading of our mistress-pieces.

We are going to play the following games: Definitions (or Question and Answer), Conditionals and two versions of Exquisite Corpse. The game descriptions below are taken from Mel Gooding's A Book of Surrealist Games (Shambhala Redstone Editions, Boston, 1993). In Gooding's words, these games can be played by anyone. The strange conjunctions, humorous or poetic, that they generate give them their point since the exploration of chance with automatic techniques is central to these and many other Surrealist games. 

The two faces of Ardra (from the Star Trek series).

 

Definitions (or Question and Answer): the game is played in pairs. A question is written down, the paper folded to conceal it from the next player, who writes an answer. Remarkable facts emerge. 

Conditionals: for two or more players. The same procedure as before, but in this case the first player must write a hypotetical sentence beginning with ‘If’ or ‘When’, then conceal it. The second player writes a sentence in the conditional or future tense. 

Exquisite Corpse: for a minimum of three players. Each writes on a sheet of paper a definite (‘The’) or indefinite (‘A’) article and an adjective. The sheet is folded so as to conceal the words, and passed round to the next player. Each player than writes a noun, conceals it, and the process is repeated with a verb, another definite or indefinite article and adjective, and finally another noun. The paper is unfolded and the sentences read out. Players may agree on small changes to ensure grammatical consistency. The game acquired its name from the first sentence obtained in that way: “The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.”

 

Konrad Potthoff's Wilhelmine meets Rosie (from The Jetsons).

I modified the game Exquisite Corpse in order to use it for collective writing of stories at In Other Wor(l)ds workshops in the following way: for four or five players (or several groups of four or five). Each participant begins by writing her own story. Ten minutes later, he passes the piece to the next person. After reading it (or not), xe continues where the other person stopped. The workshop is finished when everyone has written a part of every story and they are read aloud to ourselves or to the audience that can endure it;) 

The workshop will be in English. Please, bring a pen and some paper! 

Open to all genders, no application necessary. 

Stories from previous workshops can be read here and here.

Dogodek je podprlo Ministrstvo za kulturo Republike Slovenije. / Supported by the Slovene Ministry of Culture.

RadioCona's So.und.ing Project hosts Wanda & Nova deViator

My text about Wanda's and Nova deViator's collaborative art projects has been included in a radioCona broadcast as part of its Zvo.či.ti / So.und.ing Project in December 2010. The project consists of a series of audio broadcasts about Slovenian composers, musicians, sound innovators, activists, multimedia artists, authors of electro-acoustic and various sound experiments. (Photo: Nada Žgank)


The radio broadcast about Wanda's and Nova deViator's work can be heard here.
Below are the English and the Slovene version of the text.

Co-effectuation: Maja Delak and Luka Prinčič alias Wanda & Nova deViator
The collaboration between Maja Delak and Luka Prinčič began two year ago with the performance Ways of Love (2009) and continued with Frozen Images (2009/10) – the latter was credited to pseudonyms Wanda and Nova deViator. Maja Delak is this year’s recipient of the Prešeren Foundation Award, a choreographer and dancer, who has behind her a considerable number of collaborations with different musicians, dancers, actors, and choreographers. The same goes for the musician, DJ, and intermedia artist Luka Prinčič, who first appeared as a performer precisely in the joint projects with Maja Delak, while in this exchange, Wanda picked up the microphone for the first time, wrote the lyrics for their trippy electro tracks, and also sang them.

Their projects intertwine many – often colliding – languages: rhythm, voice, music, noise; video, photography, theory; manifestoes, poetry. It seems that their reparatory investigation, this courageous picking up from all over, wagered on the possibility of their own surprise over the outcomes of their collaborative process and over what may emerge from their overlapping, dissonances, resonances, slips, and congruencies. It seems that their wager is won – as they have offered to the home audiences a new aesthetics and politics; well, at least to that part of the audience who had missed or overlooked the Ljubljana-based queer dissidents from the 80s.

Maja Delak and Luka Prinčič's performative events scream with punk ethics and kitchy porn chic aesthetics, which come together also in Western grassroots or DIY feminism of the “third wave”. I was reminded of the fact that this feminism skirted the borders of our country precisely at their appearance at the International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns, where Frozen Images resonated as a genuine manifesto! It was a moment of relief and joy and empowerment, because the authors intentionally and unbendingly, passionately and sexily, approached the themes that are rarely dealt with in our space, certainly not at the same time: lust for enjoyment, anxiety, hypersexualisation and pornification of our bodies, violence, idealisation of love, and of course – the motor of everything – consumerism.

Ways of Love meander between the sampled, or temporarily “frozen”, scenes of two types of gender roles: those marked with violence and those founded on consensual submission and dominance. The insight into how to become aware of the power relations in relationships and how to break the vicious circle of violent love is disclosed in the performance precisely with the emptying of form – which could not be other than violent and painful. The second performance event, Frozen Images, raised a possibility of stirring up and overcoming the violence we exert over ourselves under the pressure of buy-and-sell images of Sex Appeal, Beauty, Health, Youth, and Success – with laughter. With lust. With objectifying to our own taste. With our own perverseness and again – with love.

This sumptuous and made-for-all-senses multimedia work by Maja Delak and Luka Prinčič is a genuine cut’n’paste, a swift image and sound collage that allows for many readings and listenings, many feelings and reflections. But only after one tears away from the fleeting images and voicings; only after one dances to the wild riot grrrl version of You Don’t Own Me, with Wanda and deViator jumping all over the stage. And this may very well be the most beautiful achievement or co-effectuation Maja Delak and Luka Prinčič’s collaboration: their accessibility and clarity – despite the work’s decentredness – makes their work is inspiring and empowering. Ultimately also because the “you” from You Don’t Own Me does not refer to a man made of flesh and blood but rather to Martell or some other corporation that imposes patriarchal patterns of behaviour for everyday use. (Translated by Katja Kosi.)

*

Součinkovanje: Maja Delak in Luka Prinčič alias Wanda & Nova deViator
Sodelovanje Maje Delak in Luke Prinčiča se je začelo s performansom Poti ljubezni (2009) in nadaljevalo z Zamrznjenimi podobami (2009/10) – pod slednje sta se podpisala kot Wanda in Nova deViator. Maja Delak je, kot že veste, lanskoletna nagrajenka Prešernovega sklada, sicer pa koreografinja in plesalka, ki ima za sabo že lepo število sodelovanj z različnimi glasbenicami, plesalkami, igralci in koreografi. Enako velja za glasbenika, didžeja in intermedijskega umetnika Luka Prinčiča, ki je v projektih z Majo Delak prvič nastopil kot performer. »Wanda« je prvič prijela za mikrofon, napisala besedila za njune zatripane elektro komade in jih tudi odpela.

V obeh projektih se prepleta – in bode – mnogo jezikov. Ritem, gib, glas, glasba, hrup. Video, fotografija, teorija. Manifesti, poezija. Zdi se, da je njuno reparativno raziskovanje, to pogumno jemanje s sto koncev in krajev, stavilo na možnost, da bosta morda presenečena nad tem, kaj bo v procesu skupnega dela in doživljanja nastalo iz njunih prekrivanj, neubranosti, sozvočij, spodrsljajev in ujemanj. Meni se zdi, da sta stavo dobila. In z njima domače občinstvo, saj sta nam ponudila novo estetiko in politiko – vsaj tistim, ki nismo vedeli za ljubljanske queer diverzante iz osemdesetih.

Iz njunih performansov kričita naredi-sama pank etika in kičasta porno chic estetika, ki sta se menda prvič srečali v enem od zahodnih feminizmov »tretjega vala«. Da je ta feminizem naše kraje skoraj povsem zaobšel, sem se zavedla po njunem nastopu, ko sem občutila pravo olajšanje in radost in moč. Zdi se mi, da zato, ker sta tako premišljeno in odločno, strastno in seksi stopila naravnost k temam, ki so pri nas redko na spisku, sploh pa ne skupaj: o gnanju za užitkom, hiperseksualizaciji in pornifikaciji naših teles, o idealiziranju ljubezni in o potrošništvu, ki vse skupaj poganja. Na feminističnem in queer festivalu Rdeče zore, kjer sem Zamrznjene podobe doživela prvič, je performans zvenel kot manifest!

Poti ljubezni so nasemplani in razdrobljeni, začasno »zamrznjeni« prizori vrste nasilnih spolnih vlog, pa tudi prostovoljnega podrejanja in nadvlade – vlog, ki jih v performansu niti približno ne enačita z nasiljem. V njuni prvi predstavi je olajšanje in uvid v to, kako prekiniti začarani krog nasilne ljubezni, prineslo prav izpraznjevanje forme, ki ni moglo biti drugačno kot nasilno in boleče. V drugi predstavi, Zamrznjene podobe, sta nakazala možnost, da je v nasilje, ki ga nad sabo izvajamo zaradi varljivih kupoprodajnih podob o tem, kako izgledajo seksapil, lepota, zdravje in mladost, mogoče podrezati s smehom. Poželenjem. Mislijo. Objektivizacijo. Perverzijo. In ponovno – z ljubeznijo.

Njuno razkošno, skoraj vsem čutom dostopno multimedijsko delo je pravi cut'n'paste, hiter slikovni in zvokovni kolaž, ki dopušča veliko branj, veliko poslušanj, veliko občutenj in razmislekov. A šele potem, ko se odtržeš od bežečih slik in besed. Potem ko z Wando in deViatorjem, ki skačeta po odru, zaplešeš na njuno podivjano riot grrrl verzijo komada You Don't Own Me. Performansa Maje Delak in Luke Prinčiča navdihujeta in dajeta moč, ker sta dostopna. Ker si pustita blizu. Pa tudi zato, ker v tistem »you« iz You Don't Own Me ne vidita moškega iz mesa in krvi, ampak prej kak Martell ali drugo korporacijo, ki šopa patriarhalne vzorce obnašanja za vsakdanjo rabo.

Bralni krožek o feminističnih, grrl, lezbičnih in queer zinih

Lezbično-feministična univerza vabi na

lezbično-feministični krožek na temo feminističnih, grrl, lezbičnih in queer zinov.

Pogovarjale se bomo o dveh preglednih tekstih »Zine and heard: fringe feminism and the zines of the third wave« (avtorica M.L. Fraser, Feminist collections, 23(4), 2002, str. 6-10) in »Come on, join the conversation! Zines as a medium for feminist dialogue and community building« (avtorica Angela Richardson, Feminist collections, 17(3-4), 1996, str. 10-13).

Oba teksta sta dostopna na naslovu lezfemuniverza(a)gmail.com in na spletu.



Svoje izkušnje z ustvarjanjem zinov in mini razstavo feminističnih, grrl, lezbičnih in queer zinov bo predstavila Tea Hvala, magistrica študij spolov, publicistka in prevajalka, ki je konec devetdesetih izdajala zin Pssst...

V nedeljo, 23. januarja 2011 ob 19h v klubu Tiffany (ŠKUC-Kulturni center Q). 

Lezbično-feministična univerza poudarja varen ženski prostor, zato so dogodki v okviru le-te namenjeni le njim. Vabljene!