QUEER INFECTION, ROME (Italy) – Call For Artists

QUEER INFECTION
ROME (Italy), September 29 – October 1, 2017
CALL FOR ARTISTS
please send your proposals to genderoticafestival@gmail.com

The Queer Roman community is alive and well! We can proudly say that over time places, collectives, and events have been established that have shaped and continually tran(s)formed our community, from which two extraordinary events have been born. On the one hand the four biennial festivals that were GendErotica – queer art contaminations that we are now trying to keep alive and bring back while providing the necessary economic and organizational conditions that may support the work of the artists and organizers. On the other hand, the Hacker Porn Film Festival, which has just been created and is characterized by visionary approaches to bodies, sexuality and pornography, which are capable of stirring even the deepest of transgressive imaginaries. These two events have been able to link our context with a larger creative and expansive international one.

This year should have been the fifth GendErotica festival, instead we are collaborating with the Hacker Porn Film Festival; our curators Senith and FranStable are working together to keep attentions focused on queer culture and to support both festivals, concentrating on underground, queer, subversive, and enticing works.

As we wait for the fifth GendErotica festival which depends on certain economic and organizational conditions, and as we wait for the second edition of the Hacker Porn Film Festival which is growing as it ventures into new territories, we are putting together this event that will take place from September 29 to October 1 at the Kino and HulaHoop (Rome – Pigneto), which takes inspiration from GendErotica ’s Queer Infection, and which will be entirely organized on a volunteer basis. We invite you to respond to our

CALL for QUEER INFECTION LAB

This call is for all performers, authors, and creators that wish to present their artistic work, or political and cultural reflections, and also to organizers, event curators, and associations who are interested in exploring queer themes and their representation in art. This year we don’t want to solely focus on completed artistic projects, we also want to include works in progress that might find a space within our lab for knowledge exchange, activist practices, creative workshops, artistic consults, and the possibility of creating a dialogue between the public and the arts.

This call seeks to attract two main publics:
– We seek artists, organizers, event curators, and associations willing to work as tutors, supervisors, and art consultants, and willing to learn and participate in the creative underground and/or assist with works in progress;
– cinematographers, documentary filmmakers, visual, figurative, and performative artists with already well-defined projects; those seeking supervision, consultations, and creative collaborations; and artists interested in presenting site-specific work tied to the themes of Queer Infection 2017.

In particular (but no exclusively) we request contributions that address the following:
– How might performative language and study shape cultural behaviors and contribute to practices of active citizenship and respect for diversity?
– How might the embodied performer allow us to understand his/her/their role in the creation of an “other” imaginary which is different from the cultural contexts and social paradigms to which we are accustomed?
– Disability and desire: a reclaiming of otherly-abled bodies.
– Femininity/Masculinity, as social constructions shaped by mediatic representation that are regularly imposed on our bodies. These contributions can come in the form of: video art, performative art,
installations, shorts, documentaries, feature length films, works in progress, readings, tutoring, poetry, and live music.

Please note: we will try to provide free accommodation in Rome, according to availability, for those artists who need one.

Eros and sexuality continue to be areas heavily imbued with a social stigma that condemns those who do not conform to rigid stereotypes stemming from dominant cultural imaginaries. We are particularly interested in talking about eroticism, sexuality, Fem, Trans, Sex Workers, feminism, desire, and fantasies; we seek to do this by addressing different points of view and personal aesthetics, and rejecting the homogenization that our various contexts impose on us.

You are invited to send your artistic proposals along with any technical production guidelines, and your availability for collaboration to genderoticafestival@gmail.com by August 15, 2017.

A REMEMBRACE OF DIANE TORR

One of the three days of the festival will be primarily dedicated to paying tribute to an international pioneer of queer and drag culture, who prematurely passed away four months ago. Diane Torr [10 November 1948 – 31 May 2017] was the father of the Drag Kings. Her workshops and her inspiring charisma influenced and left their mark all over the world, and paved the way for new experiences capable of changing our social understandings. We lived that change which has given rise to new energies and contaminations.

We invite performers and artists working on the art of Drag, those who knew her and those who wanted to, to join us on this day of celebration and remembrance for Diane. Rest in Power.

Send your proposals to: genderoticafestival@gmail.com