As
the history of a subculture, queer history highlights historical gaps. Representations of queer ways of life were, as per
prohibitive Austrian laws, overwhelmingly ignored in film and television well into the 1990s. The abolition of the complete
ban on homosexuality in 1971 was followed by four new paragraphs in the penal code, including a ban on advertising and clubs
that lasted until 1996. This makes ephemeral audiovisual traces of the LGBTQI+ community even more meaningful (from home movies
to club films and activist videos). These films and videos are resources for emancipatory utopias of subjectivity, sociability,
and collectivity. Under the working title of "Rainbow Films," they have served at the Film Museum to consider questions relating
to curating and visual ethics. They form the starting point for the project Vienna Queerstories – a collaboration with the
department of Applied Photography and Time-Based Media at the University of Applied Arts.
While
queer ways of life proliferate today and benefit from more public visibility, they are also confronted by a new wave of homo
and transphobia. In the everyday work of applied photographers producing images, publicly accessible images pose the question
of how queerness, gender, corporeality, and sexual identity can be portrayed outside of cliches. This year, they have once
again looked for possibilities in free, miniature films inspired by glimpses into the collection. (Katharina Müller &
Caroline Heider / Translation: Ted Fendt)
Mit Maximilian Bauer, Nikola Biscan, Elif Gündüz, Jul Marian,
Kia Sciarrone, Anna Skuratovski und Lukas Thüringer.In
the series Artistic Research as Program
