Why think about art and (audio-)visual culture from a queer perspective? In order to criticize dominant symbolic orders, as well as to develop queer cultural politics? If representation does not simply depict or imitate something absent, but functions as production of meaning and social reality, it has a political dimension. Yet, why would one call certain aesthetic strategies or cultural politics queer? Is there something like queer art? What does is mean to queer dominant symbolic orders? What does it mean to exert sociopolitical struggles through aesthetic means?
According to theories of hegemony, late modern governance operates less through repression and more through gaining consent for social inequalities and capitalist socioeconomic orders. Such processes of consensus production depend on cultural products and practices, like movies, literature, news, documentaries, photography, music, and visual art, that influence what is called common sense. Yet, under which conditions do cultural practices reproduce and stabilize normative power constellations, and when do they have resistant or subversive effects? Is there a difference between everyday and artistic, between social or cultural practices? How do they differ or intertwine? What does it mean to break compliance via cultural means, in a fictional space or a utopian time?
RECENT EVENTS
for a full overview of events, please research the chronological archive
