Phobia: Politics of Hate and Fear in and towards LGBTIAQ+ Collectives

LGBTIAQ+ Programme 2023

Azucena Vieites, Juguemos a prisioneras, 1993-1996. Museo Reina Sofia — Azucena Vieites, *Juguemos a prisioneras*, 1993-1996. Museo Reina Sofia

Held on 29 jun 2023

This fresh edition of the LGBTIAQ+ programme looks to explore the possibility of imaginatively and politically turning around the logics of hate and fear that run through us, socially raising questions around who personifies a non-normative sex-gender or body position. Thus, the programme endeavours to steer clear at once of victimisation which non-critically takes on a “phobic” logic determining it and any attempt at naïve “solutionism” ignoring the deep-seated roots of violence.

The activities here examine different cases of phobic violence, primarily the struggles that are structured despite and opposite them. They are carried out from contemporary debate, assembling agents which lead these debates in the present: from archive, ranging across and reactivating traces and documents with a decades-long scream for freedom in contexts of repression and extreme persecution; from the performance of the body, a living archive of these forms of violence and resistance; and from the collective exploration of new artistic and political imaginaries by convening a study group.

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The suffix -phobia pervades many of the terms that designate modes of social discrimination in non-normative sex-gender bodies and identities: lesbophobia, transphobia, homophobia, sissyphobia, fatphobia, and so on, terms that also align with others, such as xenophobia or aporophobia, and share the same semantic structure.

Although the literal meaning of phobia is “fear”, its meaning has shifted to become associated with a compulsive and irrational aversion to the “other”, whereby we perceive a threat to our integrity as individuals and as a community. Opposite that which we have a phobia towards we simultaneously flee and respond, deploying mechanisms of expulsion and destruction.

It has been forever present in the beginnings of every community, yet a culture of phobia is gaining ground in the organisation of social space for reasons stemming from the biopolitical and necropolitical matrix of contemporary populations.

Phobia feeds into discourse, shapes imaginaries and governs attitudes and behaviours which spread like wildfire through the media and on social media. Members of LGBTIAQ+ collectives are not averse to such phobias and often reproduce them with such hostility that it exposes an inner fear and hatred towards themselves.

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Curator

Jesús Carrillo

Thursday, 29 June 2023

Documents 26. Queer Before Queer

Documentary Archaeologies in Archivo Arkhé

This latest edition of Documents includes a conversation on the experience of Archivo Arkhé in recovering the historical memory of LGBT prior to 1969 and a visit to its new premises in Madrid. Founded in 2016 in Bogotá by Halim Badawi and Pedro Felipe Inestrosa, the space compiles publications and documents related chiefly to Latin American art and queer subject matter. Thus, Archivo Arkhé looks to establish itself as a documentation centre which is accessible to researchers interested in one or more of its strands, as well as granting visibility to its holdings via temporary exhibitions.

Tickets
Friday, 30 June 2023 Nouvel Building, Protocol Room

I Declare Myself a Transvestite on Four Stages

Multimedia Performance by Frau Diamanda

In this multimedia stage piece, straddling monologue, confession and the activation of body and music, artist Frau Diamanda looks to explore the mutation of transvestite identity, punctuated by questions of class and race and affected by (neo)colonisation and hyperbolic exaltation. The staging serves to execute multimedia, spoken word and live music to approach the concept of transvestiteness in a way that is immersive and expansive, moving the spectator closer to that which is considered strange or far from their day-to-day.
Friday, 7 July 2023 Nouvel Building, Protocol Room

Reasons and Hate. Phobic Logics in and towards LGBTIAQ+ Collectives

Round-table Discussion

Hate and fear run through our bodies, minds, actions and discourses in different ways and from different angles as a symptom and consequence of violence which is inherited and reactivated in the present. Today, we are witness to spiralling phobia which tends to flood social space, driving out difference and stopping other types of affects from germinating. This round-table discussion features the participation of Ballet Djédje, Demetrio Gómez, Elena Prous, Tatiana Romero Reina and Iki Yos Piña, the voices of different agents hit hard by these logics of hate and fear and who refuse to assume the role of victim that pushes them aside and threatens to absorb the energy and capacity to evolve and build other ways of relating.
28 October – 16 December 2023 Nouvel Building, Workshops, Protocol Room, and Floor 5, Study Centre

Bodies that Are Not One. Fat Practices on the Border

Study Group

The eight sessions in this study group coordinated by Lucrecia Masón and Tatiana Romero seek a place of knowledge in the body to, from the border — as materiality and not metaphor — set in motion a series of provocations where “fat practices” (artistic, theoretical, political) look to interrupt that which is imposed upon us as universal.

Registration