“To Think with the Whole Body” Katia Sepúlveda in Conversation with Nina Hoechtl, Band 17: PINK LABOR ON GOLDEN STREETS. QUEER ART PRACTICES

“The video Wish (2010) is projected on two screens and the song Black Wish by The Last Poets fills the small seminar room of the University Program of Gender Studies (PUEG) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). All of us, participants of the seminar Del queer al cuir: desplazamiento geopolítico sur y desde las periferias / From Queer to Cuir: Geopolitical Displacement from the South and the Peripheries, organized by the poet, essayist and performer Sayak Valencia, rock our bodies to the song’s rhythm and at the end of the video we start a heated debate about gloves, white, brown, black, feminine, masculine, trans hands, fisting and post-porn. I am sitting – by chance and unknowingly – close to Katia Sepúlveda, the Chilean artist whose video has just been presented. She has been living in Germany over the last nine years. Soon enough we get to talk, I thank her for the presentation, and three years later I write her an email, asking if she would be interested in a conversation for a publication in Europe. A few hours later I find her consent in the inbox. The following exchange came about through several emails in a hybrid of German and Spanish, revisions and translations, over a period of one month from the middle of February to the middle of March 2015.”

For the whole conversation, see:

Schriftenreihe der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien Band 17
PINK LABOR ON GOLDEN STREETS. QUEER ART PRACTICES
Hg. Christiane Erharter, Dietmar Schwärzler, Ruby Sircar, Hans Scheirl

Pink Labor on Golden Streets: Queer Art Practices is particularly concerned with combining, juxtaposing, or playing off various artistic strategies where form and politics intervene. Two artistic attitudes, often perceived as divergent, are described here: the choice of form attributed to political issues versus political stances dictating the question of form. This book sheds lighton contradictory standpoints of queer art practices, conceptions of the body, and ideas of “queer abstraction,” a term coined by Judith Jack Halberstam that raises questions to do with (visual) representations in the context of gender, sexuality, and desire.

Authors: Madeleine Bernstorff, Cana Bilir-Meier, Kaucyila Brooke, Anna Daučíková, Vaginal Davis, Christiane Erharter, David J. Getsy, Jack Halberstam, Harmony Hammond, Stefan Hayn, Nanna Heidenreich, Daniel Hendrickson, Werner Hirsch, Nina Hoechtl, G. B. Jones, Jakob Lena Knebl, Michael Lucid, Ulrike Müller, Barbara Paul, Johannes Porsch, Karol Radziszewski, Raed Rafei, Roee Rosen, Hans Scheirl, Dietmar Schwärzler, Katia Sepúlveda, William J. Simmons, Ruby Sircar, Eliza Steinbock, Ginger Brooks Takahashi

Presentation: Entreverar y torcer en grupo: prácticas investigativas, situadas y vulnerables

Text: El Teatro Maya como travestismo cultural. Una lectura performativa y descolonizadora de su arquitectura

My text “El Teatro Maya como travestismo cultural. Una lectura performativa y descolonizadora de su arquitectura” in Spanish is part of extravío #8 (2015) “Visualidades descoloniales: producciones desde América Latina“.

This text emulates the form and structure of a dramatic script in which a guided tour takes place at the Mayan Theatre, in order to show the ways in which the culturally different and the culturally exotic inhabit architecture. It is addressed from a specific angle —that of cultural travestism— and in relation to a particular architectural, cultural and historical context: the Mayan Theater, which opened in 1927 in Downtown Los Angeles in California, USA. Through focusing on the concepts of performativity and drag of Judith Butler, “cultural travestism” of Jossianna Arroyo, and the “coloniality of seeing” of Joaquín Barriendos, the processes of appropriation, exoticization, incorporation, commodification and consumption of imageries belonging to modernity/coloniality of the Mayan Theater are analyzed.

Lecture performance: L*S LUCHADOR*S EXÓTIC*S: Por el instante de un ¡¡¡beeesoooo!!!

Exhibition: REBELLION, Tampere (Finland)

My video installation Tales of Protest. A necessity will be part of the exhibition REBELLION curated by Minna Henriksson.

REBELLION
curated by Minna Henriksson
September 3-30, 2015
The exhibition takes place in libraries, cafés, restaurants, and other public spaces in downtown and suburban Tampere.

Artists

Nina Höchtl
Tales of protest. A necessity
Sep 3rd−30th at Hervanta library (address Insinöörinkatu 38)

Isse Karsten
“Landet som icke är” hommage to Edith Södergran
Gouche on wood and a poetry book

Unitary Urbanism” hommage to Guy Debord
Gouche on wood and a text

Sep 3rd−30th at Pispala library (address Tahmelankatu 14)

Antti Eskelinen
Ctrl + Alt + Del
Mixed media
Sep 3rd–30th at Main Library (address Pirkankatu 2)

A selection of a fanzine collection
Sep 3rd−30th at Hirvitalo (address Hirvikatu 10)

Magdaleena Jakkila
Drawing and a watercolor painting
Sep 3rd−30th at Hirvitalo (address Hirvikatu 10)

Maaria Jokimies
Eternal optimist
Acrylic painting
Sep 3rd−30th at Main Libary (address Pirkankatu 2)

Jarno Telsavaara
Collage
Sep 3rd−30th at Main Library (address Pirkankatu 2)

Filippo Zambon
Partisans
Photograph and text prints
PhSep 3rd−30th at Hervanta Library (address Insinöörinkatu 38)

Juho Hänninen
Oranssi fanzine archive 1977–82
Sep 3rd−30th at Hirvitalo (address Hirvikatu 10)

Petra Bauer
Sisters!
One-channel video
Sep 3rd−30th at Hervanta Library (address Insinöörinkatu 38)

Kristina Norman
After-War
4-channel video
Sep 3rd−30th at Nekala library (address Lounaantie 2)

Tomi Hyttinen
Lucy#1, Mietze#1, Mietze#2
Cotton, wool
Sep 3rd−30th at Main Library (address Pirkankatu 2)

Fokus Grupa
I Sing to Pass the Time
Paper prints
Sep 3rd−30th at Pispala library (address Tahmelankatu 14)
Sep 3rd–30th at Hirvitalo (address Hirvikatu 10)
Sep 3rd–30th at Nekala Library (address Lounaantie 2)

Silja Puranen
Pigwalk
One-channel video
Sep 3rd-30th at Tesoma library (address Kohmankaari 9)
Central Municipal Office (address Aleksis Kiven katu 14−16 C)

Nekalan Propagandakomitea (Nekala Propaganda Comittee)
Vapaa Nekala (Free Nekala)
Mixed media
Sep 3rd−30th at Frenckell square, downtown Tampere

Vastatila
Vastatila presents
Sep 3rd−13th at Central Municipal Office (address Aleksis Kiven katu 14−16 C)

Anni Waris
Demonstrations in Helsinki 2008–13
Sep 3rd−30th at Main Library (address Pirkankatu 2)

NÆS – Nomadic Agency/Archive of Emergent Studies
Excercise no. 4 (up in the air)
Sep 3rd–30th at public space in the center of Tampere

INVASORIX
Sep 16th–30th Galleria Katko (address Hämeenpuisto 25)
Sanni Weckman

Memento
Oil paintings, 2014–2015
Sep 4th–30th at Restaurant 931 (address Kehräsaari B)

Joanna Lamberg
What have you done
Ink on paper, 2015
Sep 3rd–30th at Yellow House (address Vellamonkatu 1)

Heli Ström
Value
Installation, 2015
Sep 3rd–30th at Club Vastavirta (address Pispalan valtatie 39)

Mikko Silvennoinen
Vuores
Video, 2015
Sep 3rd–30th at Yellow House (address Vellamonkatu 1)

Presentation: “Becoming Luchadores Exóticos”, ATHE, Montreal (CA)

On Saturday, August 01, 2015  I’ll present “Becoming Luchadores Exóticos: Ephemeral Evidence and the Joy of Intervening into the Present” at

Je me souviens – I Remember, ATHE 2015
July 30 – August 2, 2015
Montréal, Québec, Canada

Flexing Memory: Professional Wrestling’s Embodied History
August 1, 2015, 4:00:00 PM – 5:30:00 PM

SPONSORING FOCUS GROUP:
Performance Studies Focus Group

This panel explores professional wrestling as an embodied archive, in which contested ideas of race, gender, nation, and class are captured and (re)performed in a repertoire of tropes, characters, and scenarios.

Session Coordinator
Eero Laine, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

PARTICIPANTS:

Eero Laine, The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Tapes and Legends: Replaying the Professional Wrestling Archive

Broderick Chow, Brunel University of London
Muscle Memory: Re-enacting the Strongman in Pro Wrestling and fin-de-siecle Physical Culture

Nina Hoechtl, National Autonomous University of Mexico
Becoming Luchadores Exóticos: Ephemeral Evidence and the Joy of Intervening into the Present

This paper focuses on luchadores exóticos (roughly, queer wrestlers) who have been part of lucha libre (Wrestling in Mexico) since the 1940s. They have challenged a space that is generally considered to be something that is centrally about masculinity – an ovation to machismo. Accompanying my presentation is a slideshow – an archive – of images of exóticos put together by myself and drawn primarily from lucha libre magazines. This visual assembling of the appearances, outfits, acts, poses and gestures that compose the exóticos’ performances helps to ask questions around the images’ potential to outline some of the issues in examining lucha libre as a form that is embodied, oral, visual and most of all ephemeral, and last, if not most importantly, to emphasize this arena as a space where alternate modes of textuality and narrativity might emerge.

Conversation: BIGOTES, MÁSCARAS Y MOVIMIENTOS FUERA DE RITMO, July 15, EX TERESA ARTE ACTUAL, Mexico City

Exhibition: OUT OF THE CLOSET ARCHIVES, July 2, Chopo University Museum

OUT OF THE CLOSET ARCHIVES: SPECTRES AND DISSIDENT POWERS
July 2 – September 10, 2015, Chopo University Museum
In the frame of the 28th International Festival for Sexual Diversity (FIDS)

Opening program:
19h Demonstración Tupper Sex (Contacto Condondería)
19:30h Demostración de productos por Lovemouse – tienda para hombres trans
20h Karaoke con Walpurgis
21h DJ ALI GUA GUA

Curatorial proposal: Nina Hoechtl/Naomi Rincón Gallardo
Research team: Fidel García Reyes, Maria de Lourdes Velasco, Amor Teresa Gutiérrez, José “Toñe” Hernández, Liz Misterio, Benjamín “Walpurgis” Martínez
Mural mapping: Alex Aceves

This mapping, outlined by the flashing of a disco ball, is inhabited by spectres who wander, disappear and reincarnate again and again – an inevitable part when you dive into an archival revision. While spinning, the flashings are able to illuminate some presences as much as they leave other materials, memories and practices in the dark. Archives that remain inaccessible like mysteries that keep awake the desire to unveil them. Out of the closet archives as places that provide access to a past as a way to point out possibilities for other presents and futures. Exorcist archives of cultural practices that are enchanted as they resist being mystified.

From Mexico City`s traces of joyful and homosexual meeting places – mostly biomale – to the need of making a separatist lesbian parade; from the LGBTTTI Pride celebration to the categorical rejection of the non-category queer; from the dramatic divisions between different groups of dissident sexuality to the mass coming out of the closet; from homosexual activisms with a socialist stance to the multiplication of consumer niches for sexual diversity, this mapping attempts to interact with inconsistencies, contradictions, unassimilable differences, resistances, absences and desires to show the complexities of the politics of sex practices between eras and generations.

In this ambiguous territory, which we call sexual diversity, how did we get to make contemporary subjectivities liveable, thinkable and desirable? Which sorrows, sweats, losses, joys, ruptures, shames, secrecies, boredoms, repetitions and conflicts have preceded what we can act now? And which are missing? How can we maintain ourselves dissident against both commercial-institutional seductions and the possessive binomial of power/knowledge? How to think and work on “an intersectionality of struggles and not [on a celebration] of identities?” (Angela Davis, 2015)

Participants:
Altres Costa-Amic Editores
Archivo Histórico y Fanzinoteca del Museo Universitario del Chopo
Archivo Histórico de LeSVOZ A. C. y Comité Organizador de la Marcha Lésbica de México.
Archivo Histórico del Movimiento de Lesbianas Feministas de México,1976-2015, YMY. Yan María Yaoyólotl
Archivos y memorias diversas
Archivo Piratas de Género
Archivo sobre el movimiento BI. Jorge Yañez
Archivo Super Gay, Los 41, GHAI. José Luis Castillo Torres
Bala Studio
Colección Rafael Cruz Báez
Colección Horacio Guerrero
Colección Musas de Metal Grupo de Mujeres Gay. Paulina Martínez Peredo
Jorge Claro León
Contacto Condonería
Armando Cristeto
Diversidad sexual en la producción literaria mexicana: colección de Fidel García Reyes
Fondo I, CAMeNA/UACM
Jorge Estrada
Fabiola García
Rotmi Enciso, Ina Riaskov / Producciones y Milagros Agrupación Feminista / Archivo feminista
Museo del Estanquillo
Lovemouse
Luna Gótica
Sladom

Exhibition and publication project: LA MÚLTIPLE LUCHA, IG BILDENDE KUNST & VBKÖ, Vienna (Austria)