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1. The perfect human (1967)

1. The Perfect Human (Danish: Det perfekte menneske) is a cult short film in black and white by Jørgen Leth[1] lasting 13 minutes about a middle class Danish couple performing everyday rituals.[2] The film examines human behavior in a suave, pseudo-scientific way.[3] It depicts well-dressed actors, a man and a woman, both labelled 'the perfect human' in a detached manner, 'functioning' in a blank boundless room, as though they were subjects in a zoo.[3][1] The tone of world-weary detachment is created through a voice-over providing comments on their mundane actions

→ I think this could be a good short film to reference. Looking into what the “perfect” human is in a satirical way. We were talking about the biases that AI can have, and using this storyline to talk about this could be interesting.

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Till Death Do Us Part (2020). Mendick's work portrays the home as a battlefield. Using a variety of surrealistic and exaggerated ceramic elements, the installations reflect on the micro conflicts and dramas that can occur in the domestic sphere.

Domestic spaces have been consistently used as a literary motif to embody the despairs and fault lines of contemporary society—moral, psychological, and economic (Grider, Ann, Goldstein, & Thomas, 2007).

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Traditionally, negative emotions are viewed as intrinsically unpleasant to the extent that they cause unpleasant physiological manifestations. In many cases, horror taps into our primal fears, revealing things we repress in our everyday lives. To be rewarding, an emotional experience must be deep enough. The structure, progression, and focus of horror works are different from those of real life. Their appeal is only enhanced by this. (Bantinaki, 2012).

The second angle comes from nomadic bodies. 'Monstrous bodies', bodies crossing borders, and borders between humans are often depicted in horror fiction. Horror often confronts us with the fear and revulsion of monstrosity at the edges of culture. When boundaries between self and the other are violated, terror dwells here. (Anker, 2014)

On contrary to the “negative” reactions, marginalized, racialized, sexualized, and technological others also serve as living metaphors and referents for alternative symbolic meanings and values. In the dominant subject's view, devalued or monstrous others blur the line between self and others, highlighting the challenge of maintaining manageable differentiation margins. (Braidotti, 2015) Such bodies or individuals can offer a way to survive, create, and evolve through destruction. This destruction lies in defying naive preservation.

It is necessary to break outdated metamorphic habits and the dialectics that underpin them to create affirmative and empowered modes of interaction and representation of the 'others' (Braidotti, 2015). In this regard, genres can furthermore be used as a platform for defying traditional narratives: where and how films should be shown, how they should be shot, what the boundaries between characters and viewers should be, how genres should function, and how narratives should be organized.

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In relation to gothic literature :

Research paper: https://is.muni.cz/th/xdt5b/The_Use_of_Space_in_Gothic_Fiction.pdf (The Use of Space in Gothic Fiction)

The division of space ; where one is a safe / familiar place while the other is not. The home having both those characteristics ‘

“Characters can be divided into mobile ones who are free to move about the plot-space ... and immobile ones who are in fact functions of that space” (Lotman 157). The mobile character is usually the hero or heroine who crosses the boundary and moves from one sphere to another.”

“Gothic characters usually become liminal heroes by leaving behind the world that is known to them, their families and friends or the social norms”

“Windows and doors are the most literal manifestations of the boundary and they are therefore significant symbols in the concept of liminality. Windows and doors are points of entrance and egress; they are the points of transgression from one sphere into another as well as contact points between these two spheres.”

“The door is ambiguous; when locked, it can be perceived as a safety measure but also as an obstacle, it can keep the monsters out but at the same time imprison the heroine, and as Ellis says: “Any enclosed space seemed to me to present this paradox,which links the ‘safe’ sphere of home inseparably to its dark opposite, the Gothic castle” (Ellis x). The ability to hide in an enclosed space is often welcomed but the advantage can quickly turn into trouble.”

“K. A. Nuzum offers an interesting definition of a monster. According to his definition, monsters are liminal physically; they are “often displaying characteristics of more than one species ... They are neither one thing nor the other. Their bodies are chaotic, incapable of complete definition, and, thus, resistant to our complete understanding or control” (Nuzum 207).”

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I personally think that we can use the term "queer" in a very broad sense - especially using it to question societal norms and ways of thinking.

Some examples could be of genre and representation; questioning what genre should and could be and also thinking in terms of what "good representation" is. It could also lead to different modes of friendships and family and queer history culture that we can link back to.

BFFs : The Radical Potential of Female Friendship (Anahit Behrooz)

“This book owes much - if not everything- to the histories of queer radical thought that precede it, to the long and hard work these have done in joyfully expanding our conceptualisations of connection and community. Here my definition of ‘female’, such as it is, is left deliberately broad, encompassing all those who have some experience of socialised femininity or who see within the worlds of the following chapters some kind of correlation to their own lives.”

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Looking at media precedents of space and female identity exploration 

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Looking at media precedents of space and female identity exploration 

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“People living in the walls” Trope (Also known as “Madwomen in the Attic”) https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Madwoman_in_the_Attic

This is when a character with mental problems, and often some physical deformity, is locked away because she will never fit into society, usually either in the attic or in the basement, and often by a Corrupt Hick. The smarter ones will have a secret system of peepholes throughout the house. They also tend to be inbred.

There are two basic plotlines for this type of character:

1. The main character is an outsider, wondering what kind of bizarre secret the Corrupt Hicks are keeping. These characters tend to be Dragon-type enemies with little personality of their own, or they're The Grotesque, sympathetic victims. When done well, this can be an effective scare because it so aptly encapsulates the frightening insularity of the Town with a Dark Secret.

2. The main characters have just moved into a new house, and unbeknownst to them, are being watched by one of these whose caretakers have died. These are scary because of how they personify the fears of buying a new house: that your house has some hideous aspect that you haven't seen, but can see you.

This trope is named for the landmark work of feminist literary criticism by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, referring to Mr. Rochester's wife in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. The analysis indicates that this trope first popularly appeared, in all places, in Victorian women's literature, where depicting some women as crazy people was an easy way to make female villains with whom readers would be unlikely to sympathize. Obviously, this plan was not a complete success.

Subverted by The Adventure of the Paradol Chamber, a Sherlock Holmespastiche written by June Thomson. A woman who has befriended a young nobleman hires Holmes to investigate because she's afraid that his servants have imprisoned him in his own house. As it turns out, not only do the servants have a very good reason for locking him up, the nobleman actually wanted to be imprisoned in the first place, since it's revealed that he suffers from a form of hereditary madness that makes him Axe Crazy whenever it strikes. In one of his moments of sanity, the nobleman decided to have himself locked up to keep from being a danger to anyone. Another subversion comes from The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, that is much along these same lines. A soldier who made friends with another younger soldier in the Boer War hires Holmes when he thinks the younger soldier's parents are keeping him imprisoned on their family estate. It turns out that the younger soldier actually contracted what he thinks is leprosy during his time in South Africa, and the family was actually keeping him at home in secret to treat him without his being locked up in a hospital. The younger soldier, who's actually only suffering from treatable icthyosis, voluntarily went along with this.

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Surrealism / Gothic horror + a subversion of the madwomen in the attic

→ Using the “monster” in gothic literature and the madwomen in the attic trope but subverting them. A first person POV narrative where the main character moves through the house / room trying to escape the monster that lives in the walls (= the madwoman in the attic). A toss and turn occurs- kind of like five nights at freddy’s - where we have to survive until morning. The monster is the manifestation of the abject nature of womanhood - chaotic, nasty, and impossible to define; which is exactly why someone banished them to live on the border. Not outside, not inside. After the viewers have a bit of the experience in a room, they could be given a choice (bandersnatch style) to either hide until this is all over / kill the monster / or “befriend” it. We are not allowed to leave the room. Hiding starts the experience all over again and killing the monster just manifests a new one.

→ reference for ending: The Babadook (The Babadook symbolises grief and trauma. Even with a happy ending ; the monster still lives in the basement, but the main character feeds it worms every once in a while and is able to live with it in some kind of peace.)

Related references: The Babadook (Film; 2014; Jennifer Kent), The People Under the Stairs (Film; 1991; Wes Craven), Meshes of the Afternoon (Film; 1943; Maya Deren), Bandersnatch (Interactive Film; 2018 ; David Slade), SOMA (Game; Thomas Grip; 2015), Five Nights at Freddy’s (Game; Scott Cawthon; 2014)

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https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/surrealism-beyond-borders/exhibition-guide

Surrealism is an expansive, shifting term, but at its core, it is an interrogation of political and social systems, conventions and dominant ideologies. Inherently dynamic, it has travelled and evolved from place to place and time to time — and continues to do so today. Its scope has always been transnational, spreading beyond national borders and defying nationalist definitions, while also addressing specific and local contexts. In a world defined by territorial control — and the consequential ideological constraint, expansionist conflict, and exploitative colonialism — Surrealism has demanded liberation and served artists as a tool in the struggle for political, social and personal freedoms. The exhibition reflects this individualism by avoiding nationalities. Instead, it highlights the centres where Surrealists worked and gathered, recognising shared practices and ideals even as territories and place names changed around them.

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1. SURREALISM BEYOND BORDERS

A telephone receiver morphs into a lobster.
A train rushes from a fireplace.

These are images commonly associated with Surrealism, a revolutionary cultural movement that prioritised the unconscious and dreams, over the familiar and everyday. Sparked in Paris around 1924, Surrealism has inspired and united artists ever since. This exhibition traces its wide, interconnected impact for the first time. It moves away from a Paris-centred viewpoint to shed light on Surrealism's significance around the world from the 1920s to the 1970s. It includes artists who embraced this spirit of revolt and those who shared Surrealist ideas and values but never joined a group. It features some who have intersected with Surrealism at various points - working in parallel, associated loosely or for a short period, or counted in by other Surrealists.

Surrealism is an expansive, shifting term, but at its core, it is an interrogation of political and social systems, conventions and dominant ideologies. Inherently dynamic, it has travelled and evolved from place to place and time to time - and continues to do so today. Its scope has always been transnational, spreading beyond national borders and defying nationalist definitions, while also addressing specific and local contexts. In a world defined by territorial control - and the consequential ideological constraint, expansionist conflict, and exploitative colonialism - Surrealism has demanded liberation and served artists as a tool in the struggle for political, social and personal freedoms. The exhibition reflects this individualism by avoiding nationalities. Instead, it highlights the centres where Surrealists worked and gathered, recognising shared practices and ideals even as territories and place names changed around them.

The artworks assembled here reveal some, but certainly not all, of the many routes into and through Surrealism. Artworks are grouped in broad areas of Surrealist activity, presenting collective interests and networks shared by artists across regions at points of convergence, relay and exchange. They also demonstrate individual challenges witnessed in the pursuit of independence from colonialism, as well as the experience of exile and displacement caused by international conflict. Combining broad themes and detailed points of focus across its sections, the exhibition is neither singular in narrative nor linear in chronology. Instead, it challenges conventional accounts that centre Surrealism in Europe, presenting an interrelated network of activity - one that makes visible many lives, locations, and encounters linked through the freedom and possibility offered by Surrealism.

2. POETIC OBJECTS

Making Surrealist objects can be a powerful way to subvert the everyday. As well as challenging the traditional look of sculpture, the works shown here reinvest everyday objects with what Parisian poet André Breton, author of the 1924 Manifeste du surréalisme (Manifesto of Surrealism), called a 'derangement of the senses.' Often made with unconventional, found or discarded materials such as bones, shells or leather scraps, these assemblages produced by artists connected to Surrealism, draw their impact from the imaginative spark lit by the joining of otherwise unrelated elements. For some, this was typified by a phrase from the 19th-century Montevideo poet Isidore Ducasse (the self-styled Comte de Lautréamont), 'as beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table'.

Wolfgang Paalen described Surrealist objects as 'time-bombs of the conscience,' while Salvador Dalí called them 'absolutely useless from a practical and rational point of view and created wholly for the purpose of materialising in a fetishistic way, with maximum tangible reality, ideas and fantasies of a delirious character.' In their materials and manufacture, objects such as those shown here by Eileen Agar and Joyce Mansour could produce unexpected responses. At their most powerful, poetic objects escape any single interpretation.

THE UNCANNY IN THE EVERYDAY

'The only thing that fanatically attracts me,' wrote Jindřich Štyrský in Prague in 1935, 'is searching for surreality hidden in everyday objects.' This reflects Surrealism's relationship with the 'uncanny' - a familiar sight made disconcerting and strange by the unexpected.

Alerted by psychiatrist Sigmund Freud's writing on the uncanny, Surrealist artists have tapped into the rich vein of strangeness embedded in the ordinary world. Photography proved particularly well suited to the project of recording these accidental coincidences, repetitions, and hazards of daily life. Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Dora Maar captured surprising objects and scenes encountered through chance. Others, including Raoul Ubac and Limb Eung-sik, manipulated
or staged images to convey a sense of the uncanny.

With its potential to reveal hidden truths, the uncanny is well suited to satire and political subversion. To this end, photographic strategies of 'defamiliarisation' have been employed to subvert reality and present everyday scenes in strange or uncanny ways. This is seen in works shown here by artists working in Belgrade, Bucharest, Lisbon, Mexico City, Nagoya, Prague and Seoul, guaranteeing an ongoing questioning of power and society, even in the face of dire threats.

3. THE WORK OF DREAMS

Surrealism has questioned - and sometimes attempted to overthrow - the strongholds of consciousness and control. Dreams are critical to this end because, like hallucinations and delusions, many have believed that they can reveal the workings of the unconscious mind. In some works on show here, fantastical juxtapositions or nightmarish subjects capture the sense of the ordinary made unfamiliar. Surrealist artists in various locations have seized this potential for liberation. They seek the inspiration of dreams to break from limitations imposed by societal customs, or to bring the self, community, or work of art beyond the reach of waking reality.

Sigmund Freud's widely translated book, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) provided an early, vital stimulus for many artists' approaches to Surrealism. Through case studies of his patients, Freud believed that dreamsexposed emotions otherwise repressed by social convention. Max Ernst 's painting, for example, draws upon such an experience: a 'fever vision' in which he saw forms appear in the graining of wood panelling.

REVOLUTION, FIRST AND ALWAYS

Revolution is a central idea for Surrealism, as it offers the possibility for transformation and liberation. Since its conception, Surrealism has challenged predominant systems of power and privilege, division and exclusion, and has been emboldened by a growing chorus of voices. Alongside the cultural and sociopolitical forces that determined its own evolving history over the last century, Surrealism has presented a model for political engagement and agitation for artists, many of whom have been arrested for 'subversive' behaviour.

While Surrealists have expressed revolutionary ideas in poetic and artistic terms, some, including those assembled here, have also generated collective actions. They have condemned imperialism, racism, authoritarianism, fascism, capitalism, greed, militarism, and other forms of power and control. From student, civil rights and antiwar protests, to the decolonisation movement, Surrealism has served as a tool, but not a formula. As Léopold Senghor, Surrealist poet, first president of Senegal and cofounder of the Black consciousness movement Négritude explained in 1960: 'We accepted Surrealism as a means, but not as an end, as an ally, and not as a master'.

4. CONVERGENCE POINT: THE BUREAU DE RECHERCHES SURRÉALISTES, PARIS

On 11 October 1924, the Paris Surrealists opened the Bureau de recherches surréalistes (Bureau of Surrealist Research). The poet Antonin Artaud, who functioned as its director, called it an 'agency of communication'. Established as a gathering place, the Bureau aimed to 'reclassify life'. Members assembled an archive of materials relating to the Surrealist revolution. They collected dream narratives, documented trouvailles (finds) and chance occurrences, and prepared projects such as a 'glossary of the marvellous'. It was decorated to surprise visitors - with a plaster cast of a woman's body hanging from the ceiling and Giorgio de Chirico's Le Rêve de Tobie (The Dream of Tobias) on a wall.

The Bureau served a range of public functions. These included receiving visitors, circulating collective pamphlets and group publications, or papillons ('butterflies'), responding to press enquiries and issuing the group's first journal, La Révolution surréaliste. In this way, it was a point of convergence as much as a crossroads for circulation. Newcomers interested in Surrealism visited to learn about, contribute to, and even join the movement. Members fielded questions, stimulated by their exchange of ideas and talent for publicity. Subscribers from all points - whether Adelaide, Bucharest, Prague or Rio de Janeiro - made contact and shared their own news of Surrealist activities

5. THE WORLD IN THE TIME OF THE SURREALISTS

The drawing captioned Le Monde au temps des surréalistes (The World in the Time of the Surrealists), published in 1929 (and enlarged for our exhibition entrance), reimagines the world. Challenging geopolitical conventions that use maps as a tool to define territories, the Surrealists' growing anti-imperialist sentiments are demonstrated by placing the Pacific islands at the centre. They also give prominence to (Soviet) Russia, and erase the colonising powers of Europe, Japan, and the United States.

While embracing anti-colonial politics, Surrealists in Europe mistakenly perceived an affinity with art made by Indigenous peoples of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. This fantasy of shared ideas and perspectives is visible in early Surrealist collections, journals, and exhibitions. Objects made by Indigenous peoples were included in the 1936 exhibition of 'Surrealist objects' in Paris. These works, included for their perceived aesthetic value within a European context, were stripped of place, maker and their original meaning. This exposes how, even in valuing the art of Indigenous peoples and deploring the systems of colonialism, Surrealists remained entangled within a colonial attitude of cultural appropriation.

6. COLLECTIVE IDENTITIES

Surrealism depends upon a collective body of participants, often working together in response to political or social concerns. This unity acknowledges that working collaboratively is often more powerful than as an individual in isolation. Viewed across time and place, this quality has been manifested in group exhibitions and demonstrations, cowritten manifestos and declarations, and broadly shared and circulated artistic, political and social values.

Collaborative pursuits could release what Simone Breton, an early participant in Surrealism in Paris, called 'images unimaginable by one mind alone.' Examples of such generative activities include seánce-like explorations of trances by Breton and her colleagues, questionnaires published in the Belgrade Surrealist Circle's journal, and the Chicago Surrealists' spoken-word poetry performed with musicians. This collectivity has been expressed through art making, especially evident in the multiple cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) drawings gathered in this room. These are made by one participant drawing a form and, after folding the paper, passing it on so that only the ends can be seen by a second person who continues the work and passes it on again. Group production fosters proximity and intimacy, but it can also connect and make visible diasporic and transnational communities.

7. CONVERGENCE POINT: HAITI, MARTINIQUE, CUBA

Caribbean islands have been both places of convergence and relay for Surrealism. Many manifestations originated on the islands in multiple and concurrent waves. In Martinique, Surrealism took root in 1932, when a group of students, including writer and theorist René Ménil, produced the single-issue journal Légitime défense (Self-Defence) from Paris. It aligned with the Black self-affirmation movement of Négritude, while also attacking French colonialism. Ménil - as well as poets Aimé and Suzanne Césaire - carried Surrealism to Fort-de-France. Their journal, Tropiques, launched in April 1941 and over its four years of publication, promoted Surrealism as a critical tool to cast off colonial dependence and assert Martinique's own cultural identity.

Surrealism did not travel intact but flowed, fragmented and was transformed. The focus on freedom found channels through the writings of Clément Magloire Saint-Aude in Haiti, and of Juan Breá and Mary Low in Cuba. Some connected with travellers, including exiles escaping the war in Europe. These included Eugenio Granell, who settled in the Dominican Republic in 1939. Two years later, Aimé and Suzanne Césaire encountered André Breton and Wifredo Lam, who were held by the authorities in Martinique. Their friendship strengthened the link between Tropiques and Surrealist activities in Cuba, Mexico and the US.

EUGENIO GRANELL, TRAVELLER

As a Spanish Republican, Trotskyist and a Surrealist, Eugenio Granell went into political exile following the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and the defeat of the Spanish Republic. In 1939 Granell escaped to the Dominican Republic. During his six years there, he worked as a symphony violinist, held his first exhibition, and with a group of poets, launched the Surrealist journal La poesía sorprendida (Poetry Surprised) in 1943. André Breton and Wifredo Lam also visited the island, resulting in lifelong friendships.

Under the increasingly authoritarian regime, Granell's radical politics became untenable. Relocating to Guatemala in 1946, he connected with artists and intellectuals including the painter Carlos Mérida and the poet Luis Cardoza y Aragón. Arguing with and, ultimately, threatened by Stalinists, Granell then fled to Puerto Rico, where he remained until 1957. There he spurred a new interest in Surrealism, particularly among the university students who formed the Mirador Azul (Blue Lookout) group. Granell remained an energetic proponent of Surrealism, seeing in it 'freedom for art - and as a consequence, freedom for mankind'.

8. TED JOANS, TRAVELLER

Poet, musician, and artist Ted Joans's identity was shaped by travel and dislocation. To travel was to discard what he saw as the constraints of nationality, language, and culture. He left the US twice in rejection of its systematic racism: once in the early 1960s, and again, about 30 years later, following the murder by police officers of Amadou Diallo, a young Black man in the Bronx.

Joans formally engaged with the Surrealists after a chance meeting with André Breton in Paris. His saying 'Jazz is my religion, Surrealism is my point of view' reflects the fluidity of his lifestyle as he moved through North and Central America, North and West Africa, and Europe.

While travel allowed freedom, it also provided community, as represented in Long Distance, a more than nine-metre long collaborative cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse) drawing that the artist began in 1976. It would move with Joans, growing with each invited contribution. Produced over 30 years (two beyond Joans's own life), between 132 participants, Long Distance extends the Surrealist idea of collaborative authorship to the people connected through Joans's travels.

9. BEYOND REASON

In Western Europe, modern political and intellectual thought was structured by the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that promoted science, empirical knowledge and reason as the hallmarks of society. This attitude complemented the ideology of European imperial expansion and emphasised the importance of categorising and collecting knowledge. For Surrealists and their sympathisers, especially in Europe and North America, rejecting this oppressive rationalism meant liberating the mind from outdated modes of thought and behaviour. Surrealist artists have sought to challenge 'order' by using visually precise techniques to create irrational images. This could be through extreme contrasts of form and scale, or by embedding apparently illustrative images in compositions that are anything but rational.

This aspect of Surrealism has been interpreted by artists in different ways. In Japan in the late 1920s and early 1930s, some artists - confronted with economic and political pressures, and the criticism of Surrealism as merely escapist - sought to distinguish their approach, identifying ' rishi (reason) as its only weapon'. In deflecting this politically-motivated attention, driven by the state's shift to authoritarian militarism, they proposed 'an even higher form of Surrealism - a new Surrealism which is Scientific Surrealism'. Various forms of Surrealism in Japan both celebrated and interrogated modern technologies, science, and reason in order to question the meaning of art, conventional ways of thinking, and cultural norms.

BODIES OF DESIRE

May my desires be fulfilled on the fertile soil
Of your body without shame.

These lines from Surrealist poet Joyce Mansour's Cris (Cries, 1953) offer a counterbalance to traditional narratives about Surrealism, sexuality, and desire. The exploration of the unconscious has long presented Surrealist artists with a means to challenge forms of repression and exclusion dictated by prevailing social conventions. The most wellknown examples have been those-such as Alberto Giacometti's The Cage and Hans Bellmer's manipulated photographs - that reflect the complicated desires of heterosexual men and their gaze upon the female body.

The subject of desire is a recurrent theme in art associated with Surrealism and it has also encompassed more fluid identifications of gender and sexuality. For example, Lionel Wendt's intimate studies of nudes explore the fluidity of desire, while Claude Cahun 's defiant performance of selfidentity also challenges fixed notions of gender. These images question traditional notions of privilege and power, while also acting as representations of the artists' desires and fantasies.

10. CONVERGENCE POINT: CAIRO

In the months before the outbreak of the Second World War, with European nationalism on the rise, Surrealists in Cairo came together to form a vocal resistance. The group issued a manifesto in December 1938 written by Georges Henein with 37 signatories. Its' title, Yahya al-fann al-munhatt / Vive l'art dégénéré (Long Live Degenerate Art), references the Nazis's denunciation of modernist art as 'degenerate' and in conflict with their fascist ideology.

The group of artists and writers known as al-Fann wa-lHurriyya / Art et Liberté (Art and Liberty), used both the Arabic and French terms for 'free art' as the framework for their Surrealist practice. Strongly critical of conservatism and the ongoing colonial British presence in Egypt, they aligned themselves with 'revolutionary, independent' art liberated from state interference, traditional values, and dominant ideologies. In this they responded to ideas articulated in the 1938 manifesto Pour un art revolutionnaire (Towards a Revolutionary Art). Drafted by André Breton and Leon Trotsky at the Mexico City home of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, it called for an international front in defence of artistic freedom. While a part of this international community, and in communication with the global network of Surrealists, the Cairo group was also of its place, expressing local concerns and incorporating Egyptian motifs and symbols into their work.

CONVERGENCE POINT: MEXICO CITY

In Mexico City, as in other locations, taking up Surrealism meant grappling with the dual forces of internationalism and nationalism. Mexican Muralism and Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José Clemente Orozco's grand narrative murals had taken on an official government role since the Mexican Revolution (1910-20). During the 1930s, however, the poets and artists of Los Contemporáneos (The Contemporaries), including María Izquierdo, distanced themselves from muralism and, along with Frida Kahlo, forged connections with Surrealism.

With its open-door policy, Mexico was a welcoming home to those fleeing totalitarian Europe. Including the political revolutionary Leon Trotsky (exiled from the Soviet Union), the circles around Kahlo and Rivera were internationalist, and it was through their encouragement that many Surrealists arrived in Mexico City. Further attention came with the work of poet César Moro, who organised the 1940 Exposición internacional del surrealismo.

A core community of Surrealist artists who came together in Mexico City were women. In the particular case of Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington, their friendship involved the study of Mexico's Indigenous cultures and archaeological sites. Influenced by occult and alchemical sources, these artists also infused Surrealism with feminism, magic, and natural forces.

11. ALTERNATIVE ORDERS

While exploring dreams and summoning the unconscious to upset the status quo, Surrealism has also depended on forms of knowledge, patterns of belief, and ways of life outside urbanised modernity. These 'alternative orders', located through the research and practice of each individual artist, have the power to challenge established systems and spark the potential for acts of liberation.

Surrealist enquiry has benefitted from retrieving or uncovering the past, sometimes merging several unrelated traditions or positioning itself between them. For example, Kitawaki Noboru drew upon both the Taoist (ancient Chinese religion and philosophy) book of the I Ching, and German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's book on the theory of colour. For some, like Kurt Seligmann, the search has extended to magic and alchemy. While Yüksel Arslan focused on the complete dismissal of existing forms as a way to produce his own work through a unique combination of materials. Through the power of fragmentation and juxtaposition, artists drawn to Surrealism across different places and times, have found ways to operate in new multidimensional spaces between cultures and eras.

AUTOMATISM

Surrealist automatism represents - much like the harnessing of dreams - a way to free the mind and challenge the rationalism of the modern world. Unconscious creation, like doodling, has been a catalyst for an array of artists working in related processes of improvisation. For example, a dynamic group of poets and artists in 1940s Aleppo embraced automatic techniques. As poet Urkhan Muyassar explained, they sought to free the 'mysterious moments' of human creativity from a 'superimposed' reasoning in order to reach repressed thoughts, or 'what lies behind reality'.

Automatism has generated many inventive practices beyond line drawing. These range from Asger Jorn's use of painters' tools to scratch away the surface of a work to Oscar Domínguez's surprise compositions made through decalcomania, a technique in which two painted surfaces are pressed together and then pulled apart. As seen in the works shown here, automatism can capture the unguarded process of thought, bypassing the selectiveness and control of the conscious mind.
Surrealism Beyond Borders is on at Tate Modern 24 February - 29 August 2022

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1. SURREALISM BEYOND BORDERS A telephone receiver morphs into a lobster.A train rushes from a fireplace. These are images commonly associated with Surrealism, a revolutionary cultural movement that prioritised the unconscious and dreams, over the familiar and everyday. Sparked in Paris around 1924, Surrealism has inspired and united artists ever since.

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Sculpture:

-cement

-plaster

-jesmonite

-silk

-pearls

-silicon

-metal/wood

-casting

Jewellery & metal:

-metal - silversmithing, copper & bronze

-wax

-hot glass

-multi-media

-daily objects

-printmaking - silk screen, lino cut

Digital direction:

-Screen play writing

-Film & theatre

-Set model design

-2D animation - frame by fram

-Video editing

Photography:

-Merging analog & digital processes

-The nude / the body

-Surreal/otherworldly landscapes

-Installation - deconstructing the photograph

-Painting / classical art

-Tactile processes (alternative print)

-Digital print (playing with scale)

-Use of tape and red lines / red fabric

Visual Communication:

-Illustration (watercolor, gouache, acrylic, collage, digital)

-Visual Narrative

-2D animation (frame by frame, motion graphic)

-mixed media

-Installation design

-Publication (Indesign)

-Sewing, embroidery

-Sculpting (paper clay, Sculpey)

-Experimental writing

-silk screen, lino cut & riso printing

Fashion:

-Jewellery - silver, sculptural

-Sculpture

-Film & photography

-Exploring space between human body & garments

-Fabric researching

-Sewing

-Visual design, print & textile design

-Video editing

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Let me set the scene. I'm 15, a sophomore in high school, and I've just been assigned to read Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery." I look at the title: boring. I see when it was published (1948?!): my hopes for a good read are low. I begin reading, expecting a droning story about a Lotto-esque sweepstakes, some commentary on luck and money and maybe the Great Depression-

I am terribly, deliciously wrong.

For those unfamiliar with Jackson's seminal short story, "The Lottery," it's about a community that, every year, chooses one person through a lottery system to be stoned to death. That year's victim is wife and mother Tessie Hutchinson, who protests the lottery's unfairness up until that first stone strikes. Its themes are echoed in more recent media, from Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games to dystopian film series The Purge. It's a wild ride masquerading as a simple tale about a farming town's summer traditions, a seemingly innocuous story that morphs to horror only in its final lines.

To say I was foaming at the mouth after reading "The Lottery" would be dramatic - but not inaccurate. Though I'd loved horror my whole life, starting with the Goosebumps books in kindergarten, I'd never seen a scary story told quite like this. Jackson's work was my first foray into domestic horror, and it opened the floodgates. And as I continued reading the genre, as I devoured Jackson's oeuvre and branched out to other authors, as I got older and came to understand my sexuality, I realized, wait a second - domestic horror is gay as hell.

Domestic horror, the way I'm thinking about it, has a broader definition than simply "horror of the home and family." It's about unsettled mundanity: everyday, routine events in a world marked by patriarchy and heteronormativity that are laced with a building unease that gives way to ultimate creepiness. We're talking "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Jane Eyre. (We're not actually talking about those works today, but both are also very queer. I'm certainly not the first person to say so, but I will talk to you about it at length if you let me.)

Going back to Jackson, she's pretty much the queen of this genre. The Haunting of Hill House, her thrice-adapted haunted mansion novel, immediately comes to mind. A classic set-up: Four characters meet at the decaying Hill House to participate in an occult scholar's ghost hunt, and paranormal events begin to consume their lives. The two most important characters, in my opinion, are artist Theodora, who has a "friend with whom she shares an apartment" (read: girlfriend), and reserved, misanthropic Eleanor. The two are drawn together throughout the novel, experiencing various ghostly encounters and a lot of sexual tension. Though the women never have a big kiss or other explicitly gay moment (and it's sometimes implied that Eleanor is attracted to one or the other men in the novel) there's no doubt to how their interactions are coded. There's a moment in the middle of the novel, for example, when Eleanor is lying in Theodora's bed (!!!!!) and watching the other woman paint her nails. When Theodora paints Eleanor's own toe nails, Eleanor freaks out, feeling "wicked" and dirty and too visible. Panicking about your sexuality much?

If you are so inclined, you could even read this book as Eleanor's queer awakening, as she grows attached to Hill House despite its dangers. Yes, the story ends with her sort of kind of losing her mind, forced to leave the house, and driving her car into a tree, which we must assume ends in her death, and of course we love our lesbians alive and kicking. But consider that The Haunting of Hill House was published in 1959. Being gay or being a woman left you with pretty bleak prospects in the 50s; being both was even harder. Perhaps Jackson was commenting on what she perceived to be an impossibility for such a queer relationship to exist in the real world, or in this case, outside of a dark and twisted haunted house. We know that Jackson herself was in a largely unhappy marriage with a cheating misogynist, so maybe she herself wished for a Theodora to sweep her off her feet, but was continually faced with the alleged impropriety of such desires.

One small win for the gays, though: Mike Flanagan's 2018 TV adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House, set in contemporary times, gives queer women a moment in the spotlight. Though it takes major liberties with the plot, like making Eleanor and Theodora sisters, the series does portray Theodora as the raging lesbian we queer Jackson readers knew she was all along.

Jackson's focus on women in terrifying situations is a throughline in all of her work, and while the queerness of her characters is not always immediately obvious, it's definitely there. Take her final work, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, an eerie whodunnit about two sisters with dead parents that one of them may or may not have poisoned. When their male cousin shows up to help them out, the women ultimately reject his presence and find strength in each other. Not explicitly gay, because, like, sisters, but queer in the sense of women refusing a man's guidance and striking out on their own. Then there's Hangsaman, which follows Natalie Waite, freshman at a historical women's college, as she enters a perilous limbo between a fling with her married professor and a quickly intensifying friendship with fellow student Tony. While it's not a traditional horror text - no ghosts or monsters, no slashers or sadists - Hangsaman is unrelentingly eerie. Natalie and Tony's relationship snowballs into increasingly dangerous encounters, culminating in a familiar situation for many queer girls: an epic and catastrophic friend breakup. Once again, we see a tortured and complicated woman unwilling, or perhaps unable, to accept her queerness.

We get it! I hear you yelling at your screen. Shirley Jackson writes tragic gay horror! And as much as I think that can never be emphasized enough, I'm not just here to point out every gay moment in Jackson's body of work. But I do want to continue thinking about domestic horror, and specifically, the inherent, inescapable queerness of the genre.

So let's talk about Rebecca. I first encountered Daphne du Maurier's 1938 classic gothic novel through its 1940 Alfred Hitchcock adaptation of the same name and immediately had to get my hands on the book. Nevermind that I was a relentless horror kid with a penchant for eerie women; this story was bewitching for its exploration of jealousy and grief, as the narrator - an unnamed new wife to a widower whose beautiful first wife died in a sailing accident - contends with the haunting memory of her husband's dead spouse, Rebecca, and the hatred of Rebecca's housekeeper and childhood nanny, Mrs. Danvers.

There's a lot to say about queerness in this novel, not least that du Maurier herself was both confirmed bisexual and possibly trans, having said multiple times throughout her life that she felt like a boy on the inside, a "half-breed" caught between genders. Her own life is something of a queer domestic story, as she played the role of dutiful spouse while falling in love with her publisher's wife, who made her feel like "a boy of eighteen again." Similarly, the narrator of Rebecca refers to herself as "a sort of boy" and develops a fascination with the deceased titular character, daydreaming about the other woman's body and possessions. Mrs. Danvers, too, has long been read as a lesbian, her love for Rebecca veering into romantic obsession. But perhaps the queerest character in the novel is the one who doesn't exist in its present: Rebecca herself. Later in the novel, it's revealed that Rebecca's death wasn't an accident, that her husband, Maxim, had caused the boat wreck that killed her. Why? Because Rebecca's role as dignified lady of the house had been a sham, he said. She played the part, but was all the while pursuing pleasure in the city with any number of suitors. Maxim describes her as a woman incapable of love, a woman who was "not even normal." If that's not coded language, I don't know what is. It certainly wouldn't be a leap to assume that Rebecca was described in this way because some of the subjects of her affection were also women.

Repeated in these older domestic horror novels is the idea that queer women are incompatible with a fully lived life, not because they don't deserve to exist but because the world of the novels, and of mid-20th century society, couldn't fathom a reality with them in it. And it's not just stories of the mid-1900s; contemporary authors are still struggling with this dynamic. I'm thinking about Carmen Maria Machado's short story that started my obsession with her fiction: "The Husband Stitch." Its plot is based on "The Green Ribbon," the equally creepy story from Alvin Schwartz's book for young readers In a Dark, Dark Room and my personal obsession as a child that, now that I think about it, might have catalyzed my love for horror. In both stories, the main character has a green ribbon around her neck that her husband longs to untie. When he finally does, her head falls off. Machado expands the tale to include other women, all of whom have ribbons tied around some part of their body, and turns a spare spooky story into a haunting meditation on the violating asks (sometimes demands) that men make of the women they're intimate with and the stories we tell about those women.

An interesting thing about this story, especially amidst the very gay collection it's part of, is that it's really quite straight: Machado once described it as "a horror story of heterosexuality." The narrator enjoys sex with her husband; she genuinely finds him nice. Apart from a briefly mentioned fascination with another woman from her art class, which isn't explicitly romantic and which she openly shares with her husband, it's harder to pinpoint sapphic attraction in Machado's story than in Jackson's or du Maurier's. But the queerness of "The Husband Stich," like those novels, once again lies in its main character's fragile grasp on life outside of the domestic norms of husband, wife, and child and her attempts to exist beyond them. She spends her married life trying to keep her husband away from her ribbon, only for him to eventually betray her wishes. The patriarchal, heteronormative haze of her society prevents her from keeping anything for herself, just as Eleanor can't continue a life outside of Hill House, Natalie cannot stay sane in a friendship with Tony, and Rebecca cannot fulfill her "abnormal" desires.

Another woman suffering from the confines of domesticity is Ogechi in Lesley Nneka Arimah's short story "Who Will Greet You at Home." I think this story is gorgeous, and it's different from the others I've introduced because of its distinct absence of male characters. Instead, the world Arimah invites us into is full of women who, in order to have a child, must create baby-shaped creatures out of found objects, have them blessed by their mothers, and keep them alive for a full year before they transform into real human babies. It's queer in the autonomy of its women, but also, in my opinion, because it explores gender and what it means to be feminine. We find main character Ogechi in the throes of babymaking, scorned by her community for her insistence on making a daughter out of soft, fragile materials. "Bring me a child with edges," her mother tells her, destroying Ogechi's attempts made from cotton and paper. When Ogechi makes a child from scraps of hair, something she's always been warned not to do, its insatiable hunger leads her to a harrowing decision. Here, again, is a story about a woman's desire, this time for a "pretty and tender" child, and about her child's desire for, well, human flesh. Both wants are stymied, but this time there are no men involved, no all-consuming patriarchy. Instead, Ogechi, a woman formed from "pedestrian items," is struggling against her society's insistence that she make a sturdy child that can handle a difficult life. This, she thinks, is at odds with her want for a child that is "worthy of love," which, in her estimation, is one built delicately, from feminine materials. A body like hers, rougher and removed from femininity, will not receive care in the same way, even in a world seemingly absent of gender roles. In the space between the child she hopes for and the one she eventually makes out of clay is Ogechi's reckoning with gender, femininity, and her own perceived lack of loveliness. (You can also read this story as a subtle but effective commentary on class, but that's for another essay).

I want to look at one more work together: queer and nonbinary author Sarah Gailey's 2021 novel, The Echo Wife. To summarize briefly, narrator and clone scientist Evelyn Caldwell discovers that her husband Nathan is cheating her with Martine, a replica wife made of Evelyn's own DNA - except more obedient, subservient, and willing to give him a child, which, critically, Evelyn is not. When Martine defies her coding and kills Nathan, the two women are brought together to keep his death a secret by creating a clone of their own. It's more sci-fi thriller than horror, but very much creepy and decidedly domestic, as Evelyn helps Martine play house to keep up appearances. Already, Martine being a clone of Evelyn carries echoes of queer replication - lesbians who look alike and queers that dress the same - but there is also Evelyn's fascination with Martine's physicality as a mirror image of her own. The pair never have a romantic or sexual relationship, though it's interesting to think about the ethical implications of that - Would it be autoeroticism? Incest? - but at the end of the novel, they do run away to Evelyn's childhood house, where the three of them (Evelyn, Martine, and Martine's baby, Violet) become a sort of family unit, hidden from prying eyes. Gailey's novel is deeply queer from start to finish, if not because of explicit relationships then for Evelyn's refusal of motherhood, Martine's murder of her partner and creator, and most of all the distorted domestic partnership the two women form in order to keep each other safe.

Now that I've spent a nice long time literarily analyzing the queerness of several works of domestic horror, I have to say I'm not just trying to convince you that these individual novels and stories are gay but wish to point out a pattern in the genre. What it all boils down to is that domestic horror is queer whether or not its plot or characters show explicit queerness. It's queer, inherently, because of the subject matter it grapples with. The women of this genre yearn for something beyond the confines of home and heterosexual family, and what is more queer than wanting what society says you cannot have? The terrifying parts of these stories are not the women themselves but what their worlds, our world, have defined as a normal life. Traditional domesticity is exposed for the repressive, sometimes dangerous sham we queer people have long known it to be; the characters, regardless of their on-page sexuality, defy the mold just like we do, and often suffer for it just like we have. But more than anything, domestic horror reinforces the idea that the ideal life for queer people, and likely for all people, is incompatible with so-called normal home and family structures. In order to achieve the lives the women in these stories (and some of their authors) cannot, we must reimagine our world, build another in its place whose focus is our collective liberation.

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A Queer Woman's Place Is in the Horror Story

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Artist: Mike Nelson

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/art-exhibitions/mike-nelson-extinction-beckons

Artist: Anselm Kiefer

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'Anselm Kiefer - Finnegans Wake' is a passage in which his work rushes past us into the future - where we can say, with Joyce, 'Here comes everybody'.

- Brian Dillon, 2023

In 'Anselm Kiefer - Finnegans Wake', the artist's new paintings, sculptures and installations respond to (that is, struggle with and transform) James Joyce's novel of 1939. Kiefer first read the Irish writer as a young man, devouring Ulysses (1922) and embarking on a slow and spiralling relationship with the later, more exacting, Finnegans Wake. It is a book of circles and echoes, more or less overt or secret; its riverine movement begins in the midst of things, and turns back on itself on the final page. The novel seems to contain all words, all thoughts, all histories. Likewise, the works Kiefer assembles here, bristle with motifs and materials seen elsewhere in his art. There are fields of rubble and wire, skeletal sunflowers, the DNA helix, the ouroboros snake that eats its own tail. Concrete, copper, glass vitrines, unreadable books made of lead, Joycean inscriptions everywhere. It is as if language itself has become a material, a sculptural medium.

Finnegans Wake is sometimes spoken of as though it were a literary monument or ruin - radical but unread. But gaze at, or read aloud, a single page (perhaps even a single sentence, or word) and you will find it contains a profusion of puns, references and invocations. Up to 70 languages are present, and numerous cultures: among them Egyptian, Irish, Norse, Islamic. All intermingled: 'Jewgreek is greekjew', as Joyce puts it in Ulysses. Kiefer's work has always been nourished by a multitude of written sources: poetic, philosophical, religious, scientific. 'They are like buoys in the sea. I swim to them, from one to the other.' Norse mythology, German metaphysics, the poetry of Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann: such disparate writings cohabit in the space or time of the work. With Joyce, Kiefer invokes a writer who weaves the past and future of language into a single work. As if time itself does not exist, as if Joyce had been influenced by Kiefer.

'Anselm Kiefer - Finnegans Wake' completes a trilogy of exhibitions at White Cube Bermondsey, London. In 2016, 'Walhalla' presented sculpture and paintings that summon the heavenly hall of Norse myth and its complex afterlife in art, music and literature. In 'Superstrings, Runes, The Norns, Gordian Knot' (2019), Kiefer's sculpture and paintings, with their darkly sinuous forms and writhing materials, brought together Greek mythology, ancient forms of writing and the speculations of string theory. The new exhibition, whose literary source only seems to be singular and contained, is the most ambitious of the three. Here, as in Kiefer's studio complex where works from several decades remain ready to be finished, we may encounter many turns of thought and phrase, many painterly or sculptural adventures, that have exercised Kiefer in the past. 'Anselm Kiefer - Finnegans Wake' is a passage in which his work rushes past us into the future - where we can say, with Joyce, 'Here comes everybody'.

- Brian Dillon, 2023

Anselm Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen, Germany in 1945 and has lived and worked in France since 1993. He has exhibited widely, including solo shows at the Palazzo Ducale, Venice (2022); Musée Franz Marc, Kochel, Germany (2020); Couvent de la Tourette, Lyon, France (2019); Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2019); The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg (2017); Albertina Museum, Vienna (2016); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2014); Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel (2011); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2011); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (2010); Grand Palais, Paris (2007); Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (2007); SFMOMA, San Francisco, California (2006); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2005); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1998); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (1991); and MoMA, New York (1987).

In 2019 Kiefer was awarded the prestigious Prize for Understanding and Tolerance by the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and in 2017 he was awarded the J. Paul Getty Medal. In 2007 Kiefer became the first artist since Georges Braque 50 years earlier to be commissioned to install a permanent work at the Louvre, Paris. In 2009 he created an opera, Am Anfang, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Opéra National de Paris. In November 2020, Anselm Kiefer unveiled a permanent installation comprised of six vitrines at the Panthéon in Paris. Together with a composition by the French contemporary composer Pascal Dusapin, it forms an ensemble of new works commissioned by President Emmanuel Macron. This marks the first time since 1924 that such a commission has been effectuated for the Panthéon.

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Echoing the oscillating quality of time that comes to bear on James Joyce's literary masterpiece, Kiefer's world sustains a constant cycle of death, regeneration and redemption.

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M. Butterfly(1993)

How to define Feminine and Masculine by appearances and behaviors?

Who defines that? What forms those fixed rules/stereotypes?

Can we break the stereotypes? By how?

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What's better in spooky season than a great haunted house story? Queer haunted house stories, of course. This list of 10 queer haunted house books includes YA titles, brand spankin' new queer and trans horror novels, a few underappreciated tales from the 90s and 2000s, plus the haunted house book known as the best ever written. Let's get gay and scared!

The Upstairs House tackles the horrors of new motherhood a la "The Yellow Wallpaper," focusing on the protagonist Megan's postpartum descent into madness. Not only is she physically, mentally, and emotionally ravaged from childbirth and looking after her baby alone while her husband travels for work, her unfinished PhD thesis on mid-century children's literature haunts her. Which makes the sudden appearance of Margaret Wise Brown - author of the classic Goodnight, Moon and one of many queer children's authors who flourished in the 40s, 50s, and 60s - a truly fitting ghost. Soon Margaret's lover, actress and socialite Michael Strange, also appears in the room upstairs which doesn't exist. Megan finds herself in the middle of a horrifying paranormal power struggle, not sure of what is real or not.

In this blend of horror and romance, Emily is an unemployed English professor and scholar who is offered a dream proposal: to live, work, and study in Gnarled Hollow, an estate that used to belong to one of the authors she studies. Her favorite writer's home, of course, is rumored to be haunted. Emily doesn't believe in that nonsense, until she moves into the house and finds herself losing large chunks of time, rooms going missing, and doors slamming on their own. When researchers from other disciplines join Emily - including a gorgeous art historian named Juniper - they too are frightened by a mysterious, malevolent presence in the house. Scared but undeterred, Emily and Juniper attempt to discover if there truly is a ghost haunting Gnarled Hollow and why.

This historical novel set in 1930s England sits at the crossroads of gothic and horror. I have to credit twitter user @gothicsreview for selling me on this book by saying it has "a lot of homoerotically drinking crème de menthe." What else do you need to know?? Okay, here's more: in 1939, 30-year-old Hetty is tasked with the moving and caretaking of the mammals normally held in a natural history museum for the duration of the war. After transporting them to Lockwood Manor, Hetty has to contend with grumpy Lord Lockwood who has only reluctantly offered his estate. His alluring but strange daughter, Lucy, however, is a welcome distraction. But when the animals start to go missing and Hetty suspects something lurking around the house in the dark, Hetty wonders if the local rumours about Lockwood being cursed and haunted are true.

This classic 1959 novel is often cited as the best haunted house story of all time, but it is also hella gay, in case you didn't know. Jackson's lean but muscular writing employs perfect restraint; the text itself never falls one way or the other on the side of the horrors of Hill House being "real" or merely in the minds of its inhabitants. The premise - four strangers gather at a house known to be haunted in order to search for paranormal activity - is self-consciously contrived. Theodora, one of the investigators, has agreed to stay at a house in middle of nowhere with strangers because of a terrible fight with her roommate *cough lover *cough. She immediately forms an intense emotional bond with Eleanor, the other woman in the house. Don't even get me started about the spinster who previously owned Hill House is every woman who's ever lived in this place gay?

In narrative layer upon layer, Kiernan crafts a deeply haunting and mysterious tale about Sarah, a caustic 40-year-old writer who has left Atlanta in the wake of her girlfriend's death by suicide. She moves to an old house in rural Rhode Island, where an ancient decrepit oak tree grows in a desolate corner of the property. Inside the house's spooky basement, Sarah finds an unfinished manuscript written by the previous tenant detailing the history of the tree and its connections to local myth, numerous accidents, and even murder. As the tree starts to take over Sarah's imagination, she begins writing a new history of it. But she is not prepared for what her research unearths.

A queer retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," Kingfisher's novel will be a big hit with fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic, with its gothic horror vibes and terrifying fungi. The tale begins in 1890 when a soldier named Alex is called to their old childhood friend Madeline when she is dying. Madeline resides at her family's ancestral house in rural Ruritania. What Alex finds there is not only their ill, sleepwalking friend, but her disturbed brother, nightmarish fungal growths galore, seemingly possessed wildlife, and a dark lake that seems alive. Alex is used to fighting in the army, but this is a whole other type of battlefield. Can Alex, along with the help of a doctor and a mycologist, discover what the secrets of the House of Usher are before it consumes all of its inhabitants?

In this YA horror story (with a side of queer romance), Helen has been left with a burdensome inheritance: her family's large ancestral home, extensive grounds, and substantial fortune. The only catch? She has to live at Harrowstone Hall for a full year, never leaving, in order to inherit. If she is to fulfill her deceased uncle's request and survive the year at Harrow, she must dig back into her childhood and unravel her family's secrets. Helen has no idea why she and her mother moved away from Harrow when she was a child and why they don't speak to any of their extended family. But she does remember Harrow; it has been haunting since she left. Now that she has arrived, her life has become a waking nightmare. The house is built as if to deliberately make you get lost, some strange creature is digging holes in the ground's forest floor, and she has been inexplicably sick for weeks.

In Oyeyemi's melancholy and deeply uneasy novel, the house in question is haunted in the same ways its inhabitants are, and is just as alive. A character unto itself, the Silver family house sits off the cliffs of Dover and likes to keep the women of the family for itself; it's that kind of monster. Twins named Miranda and Eliot live in the house with their father. All three mourn the death of Lily, the matriarch of the family and the twins' mother. Miranda - the novel's queer character - is especially attuned to the Silver women from beyond the grave who are a part of the house now. Soon her connection with the otherworldly starts to override her place in the mundane world, where her brother and father watch helpless as she slips away. Oyeyemi's writing is fairy-tale-like in its timelessness and the novel's shifting point of views - including one that belongs to the house itself - are a roaring success.

This horrifying haunted house story with plenty of blood and guts takes to task British fascism and TERFs, as well as exploring contemporary trans lives in the UK. The story begins three years after friends and/or exes Alice, Hannah, and Ila spent a terrifying night in an abandoned house. Alice has been sleepwalking through life ever since, haunted by memories. But when Ila asks her to return to the house, she knows what she must do. As Alice and Ila prepare to face what they've already experienced there and fresh horrors upon returning, Hannah - whom neither of them has seen since the fateful night - has been taken prisoner by the house. Faced with the burdens of both supernatural and real life horrors such as trauma, violence, and social injustice, Alice and Ila struggle to rescue Hannah and to keep themselves intact, physically and psychologically.

A group of old friends who used to go ghost hunting together in their youth in Malaysia gather as adults for a wedding celebration in a Heian-era haunted mansion in Japan. They're not thrown for a loop when they discover the place is haunted; in fact, it was the selling point for the bride-to-be. The story of the ancient house goes like this: centuries ago, a woman whose fiancé died on his way to their wedding had herself buried alive in the house to await the arrival of his ghost. Every year since then, another young woman has been buried in the house's walls to keep her company. How nightmarish can this wedding get when the attendants are there looking for ghosts? Like a living hell, it turns out. Featuring bisexual representation!

Which queer haunted house book are you excited to read this spooky season? Do you have any others to recommend?

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Queer literature with the theme of a house

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Queer literature with the theme of a house

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Tell Me I'm Worthless - Alison Rumfitt

'Is a vital work of trans fiction that confronts both supernatural and real-world horrors as it examines the devastating effects of trauma and the way fascism makes us destroy ourselves and each other.'

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An Installation & Space that we curate and is inspired by and references queer gothic horror (haunted houses in gothic literature)

Explore ideas within this concept

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Surrealist cinema and space / the home

Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon

https://medium.com/@mrinskine/an-amateur-attempt-at-psychoanalyzing-maya-derens-meshes-of-the-afternoon-cbca39b75fea

“Meshes of the Afternoon, in texture, is trance like, its fabric spiraling in structure. The protagonist, played by Maya Deren herself, goes through the process of picking up a flower dropped by a disembodied god-like hand, goes running after a nun like figure clad in black, gives up and goes to her house four times over. Each time she enters the mundane domestic space of her house and sees it unkempt. But unlike a replay, here a montage of reality is made, with the four women- same but different- not only existing in the house at the same time but also interacting with each other.” “The mind has a tendency [called the Repetition Compulsion] to repeat traumatic events in order to deal with them. This can take the form of dreams, storytelling or even hallucinations .” This would explain the surreal elements of the film.

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Queer literature with the theme of a house

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Queer literature with the theme of a house

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The house is used as a metaphor throughout the book to express an abusive relationship between two queer women.

A chapter in the book Carmen also writes about the gaps in representation - where are the accounts of queer domestic abuse in media/history/culture?

'The dream house' is a place of metaphor, representing how easily a place filled with the promise of domestic bliss can transform into a prison.

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1. Being open minded - allowing for experimentation and not necessarily focussing on the outcome

2. Use this as an experience to learn and share skills with each other

3. Building a queer community

4. Look at this project as the starting point for collaborations/exhibitions etc that will go beyond AcrossRCA

5. Boundaries/communication - communicate, but within the boundaries of the course structure (e.g only on timetabled days)

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It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror

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It Came From the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror

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“Horror opened me up to new possibilities for survival … I saw power in freakery and transgression and wondered if it could be mine.”

The relationship between horror films and the LGBTQ+ community? It’s complicated. Haunted houses, forbidden desires and the monstrous can have striking resonance for those who’ve been marginalised. But the genre’s murky history of an alarmingly heterosexual male gaze, queer-coded villains and sometimes blatant homophobia, is impossible to overlook. There is tension here, and there are as many queer readings of horror films as there are queer people.

Edited by Joe Vallese, and with contributions by writers including Kirsty Logan and Carmen Maria Machado, the essays in It Came from the Closet bring the particulars of the writers’ own experiences, whether in relation to gender, sexuality, or both, to their unique interpretations of horror films from Jaws to Jennifer’s Body.

Exploring a multitude of queer experiences from first kisses and coming out to transition and parenthood, this is a varied and accessible collection that leans into the fun of horror while taking its cultural impact and reciprocal relationship to the LGBTQ+ community seriously.

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Carmilla is an 1872 Gothic novella by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu and one of the early works of vampire fiction, predating Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) by 25 years. First published as a serial in The Dark Blue (1871–72),[1][2] the story is narrated by a young woman preyed upon by a female vampire named Carmilla, later revealed to be Mircalla, Countess Karnstein. The character is a prototypical example of the lesbian vampire, expressing romantic desires toward the protagonist. The story is often anthologised, and has been adapted many times in film and other media.

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Creating a performance/ritual/interactive experience with film projection on performer/participants.

Discussing about the queer body&gender identity and emotions/psychology behind.

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"The most original, incredible things you're likely to see" The Guardian
TRANSFIGURATION

Performance created in 1998, performed more than 300 times in 25 different countries.
A painter and sculptor's unfulfilled longing to breathe life into his creation. In a gesture of desperation he sculpts clay onto his head, burying himself in the material, eradicating his identity and becoming a living work of art. Yet the material blinds him and he is forced to look inward, into the very depths of himself. In a fascinating performance Sagazan shifts identities on stage, from man to animal and from animal to various hybrid creatures. He pierces, obliterates and unravels the layers on his face in a frenzied search for new essence and form. In this regard, he has stated : "I am flabbergasted to see to what degree people think it's normal, or even trite, to be alive". In Transfiguration, he gives new meaning to the notion of life, offering a captivating, disturbing and stirring glimpse into an alternative selfhood utterly unconstrained by inhibition.

Duration : 50 min
Director and performer : Olivier de Sagazan
2024
NEXT DATES

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"The most original, incredible things you're likely to see" The Guardian TRANSFIGURATION Performance created in 1998, performed more than 300 t

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1. Attending Drag shows

2. Interviewing people from queer activities and on streets

3. Collecting some objects from people’s story or from relevant scenes or places

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大喜哥 — a Chinese trans female’s miserable life

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大喜哥 — a Chinese trans female’s miserable life

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Comparing to another famous Chinese trans celebrity — Dancer JinXing, Peiling Liu lives in rural area and is never been treated as a normal man or woman. He is reckoned as a weirdo, a freak, while there’re still man fetishized him.

The social status infects the respect that the queer individuals’ living situation. Trynna investigate those low-income/young(age under 20) trans people.

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大喜哥，真名刘佩麟，作为 青岛一住户因男扮女装而暴红网络。大喜哥的爆红，源于一段新闻视频，出自青岛一电视台名为《 生活在线 》的节目。新闻本身没什么看点，就是讲一老式居民大院一楼起火。奇怪的是，受访居民都不为受害者痛惜，反而轮番指责其经常燃木烧饭取暖，污染又不安全。

大喜哥

2010年，流浪在 宁波街头的" 犀利哥"因怪异的混搭穿着引爆网络，并引发争议。近日，微博上又一个类似人物横空出世，人称"大喜哥"。他的暴红源于一段新闻视频：青岛某老式居民大院一楼起火，所有受访居民轮番指责该住户经常燃木头烧饭取暖，污染又不安全，该住户"中年男性，平时男扮女装，靠捡废品为生。"此人就是"大喜哥"，因为他男性化沧桑的脸配上俗艳的女人装扮，被网友惊呼为"奇葩"。 [1]

新闻中，大喜哥看着烧毁的房子，茫然无助地重复着"我灭了火才走的"这句话。我不知道这有什么好笑的，可是众多网友因为他怪异的装扮"笑断十二指肠"。如果哪天，你我也沦落到屋毁家亡的地步，你是否笑得出？ [1]

默默无闻卑微活着的"大喜哥"就这样莫名暴红网络。关注他的网友可能只是出于好玩，可这对捡废品为生的"大喜哥"来说，一点都不"喜"，他的生活就是烟熏火燎与满面尘灰。其间辛酸，谁人能懂？ [1]

"这是怎么回事呢，我想问的不仅仅是火灾"主持人最后这句诘问，被网友认为大有深意，觉得潜台词也许是针对大喜哥不伦不类的扮相吧？可是我倒希望，主持人是读懂了大喜哥背负的辛酸，是在悲天悯人。 [1]

小人物的生存之艰被娱乐化了，也许这些网友没有恶意，只是无聊地借着"大喜哥"俗艳的穿着宣泄情绪。可细探究，这次和"犀利哥"事件一样，都是以最底层的弱势者作为戏谑对象，当中隐藏的价值观让人不安。这样的娱乐糖衣层出不穷地出现，本身就说明问题，至少一些人是习惯嘲笑或恶搞比自己更弱小的人，因为这样很安全。 [1]

当年的"犀利哥"" 妖娆哥"" 长裙哥"" 贤淑哥"在一些好心人帮助下，最后回到了家乡。那么，可怜的"大喜哥"，在受尽戏谑而走红后，他的悲情生活能否因此得到一些改善不用捡来的 柴木生火做饭了？ [1]

1月14日， 潍县路19号的一场大火，把他的房子烧成了废墟。电视新闻里，他踉踉跄跄地跑进镜头，感慨着这场大火的意外。那一身男扮女装的行头，吸引了全国网友的注意力。数万次的转发中，"妖孽"、"奇葩"等词不断出现。56岁的大喜哥火了。就是因为那身装束，有人叫他阿姨，有人叫他花姑娘，也有人叫他大喜哥，几乎所有人都不知道他的真名叫刘佩麟。 [2]

距青岛百年 老街中山路十几米远的潍县路19号，是一处老院落。和 老城区的很多老房子一样，这里的房子年久失修，火灾隐患也高。大喜哥住在院子入口右边一米宽的小胡同深处，顺着湿漉漉的石路走进去，霉味越发浓重。 [2]

"请进请进"，听到有人来了，大喜哥从屋子里探出头来，热情招呼着。红色外套，黑色长裙，外加一双黑色雪地靴，大喜哥依旧是 电视镜头上的那副装扮。稍有不同的，或许是粗粗的辫子上多戴了几朵红花，抹了粉的脸蛋上新添了或绿或蓝的几道"眼线"。 [2]

"屋顶都烧没了，社区又给我安排了旁边这个房子先住着。"一边说着，大喜哥一边邀请记者进门。他微侧着身子，表示让客人先进，颇有绅士风度。也许是怕别人嫌脏，大喜哥搬来屋子里唯一的一个凳子时，还没忘了在上面铺张报纸。 [2]

锅碗瓢盆，纸箱子，捡来的各种化妆品......在这个只有10平方米的屋子里，摆放着他从那场大火中"抢救"出来的家当。指着桌子上那台收音机，大喜哥说，这是他唯一一台家用电器。 [2]

2012年正月刚出，大喜哥以"向债主请求原谅"为愿望参加 山东电视台的大型节目《 请你原谅我 》，节目中真情流露，赢得了在座观众和诸位嘉宾的支持、理解。

在本次节目录制中，被称作网络奇葩的"大喜哥"在主持人的邀请下换下女儿装，十几年来首次以男性装束面向世界，并通过镜头亲口对十年债主说了"对不起"。 [3]

虽然是刚搬进去的"新家"，但条件并不比原来的好多少。不仅墙皮脱落，屋顶还有阳光洒进来 。"安得广厦千万间，大庇天下寒士俱欢颜"，瞅瞅自己的房子，大喜哥流利地说出了这一句诗。 [4]

"肚子里还是有一些墨水的，不过上到高一就不上了。"说起这些，大喜哥还有些小得意。大喜哥爱读书爱看报，无论是在桌子上还是在床头，都放着一摞摞书。"《红岩》、《 青春之歌》、《 青春万岁》......"大喜哥列举着曾经读过的书，最后感慨说，现在的书不如以前好看了。 [4]

这场突如其来的大火让大喜哥损失惨重，"起码有一千块钱"。不过，最让他心疼的还是那一堆记了几十年的日记。看到房子被烧，大喜哥还不忘去"抢救"那些小本本。"每当我在垃圾箱里看到有没用过的本子，就如获至宝，把他们收集起来记日记。"大喜哥说，如今他的日记已经记了有近400本，不过多数已经被烧了。 [4]

大喜哥很关心时事，常年订着报纸。他经常把对新闻事件的感悟写到自己的日记里，"读了那天的半岛报，被一则通栏标题所震惊。南京一男子取了20万元，被人枪击身亡 。临近年关，罪犯不考虑后果吗？" [4]

大喜哥爱漂亮，不到 10平方米的房子里有三面镜子。当然，这都是捡来的。对于脸上的夸张妆容，大喜哥觉得是因为自己学艺不精。搬家后，大喜哥在那块缺了一小半的椭圆镜子上，写下了一行小字：新的一天开始了，加油！最后的那个叹号，他小心翼翼描了又描。大喜哥说，每天照镜子看到这行字，都能给自己鼓劲儿。 [4]

虽然声称自己的头发一周能洗上一次，大喜哥的头发还是打了很多结。说起这些，大喜哥更愿意将原因归结为自己的洗发水不好。"56岁了没有白头发，说明我心态很不错。" [4]

说到自己谋生的方式，大喜哥用了"拾荒"两个字。每天9时出门，一路走到团岛，中午11时回家，下午在家看看报纸，写写日记，收拾收拾东西。 中山路街道办事处给他办理了低保，每月能领420元，冬天还有800元取暖费，过节也有福利，加上拾荒的收入，大喜哥每个月能有1000元的收入，"日子过得还可以"。 [4]

在日记里，大喜哥写道，"现在过着上无片瓦下无立锥之地的生活。幸亏有政府的照顾，否则自己真也就成了名副其实的乞丐。" [4]

"我的本名叫刘培麟。"大喜哥称，虽然生活很落魄，但之前有过很风光的日子。他三岁时，被养母在车站上捡回刘家。他养父的祖上是 青州人，日本侵华后从青州跑到青岛，"那时养父还娶了两个妻子"。解放后，养父还与人合伙开了一个缝纫厂。养父死后，大喜哥继承了他在沂水路2号的一套老别墅。1999年，为了给养母治病，大喜哥将别墅以不到10万元的价格卖掉。"如果不是万般无奈，真不会卖掉别墅，如今每次经过那里，见了都伤心。" [4]

大喜哥1992年从市南区服装十九厂下岗。之后报名参加了汽车培训班，也卖过报纸，1997年，他开始了拾荒生涯。按照大喜哥的说法，在他小时候，养母就喜欢把他打扮成一个女孩子，他也逐渐喜欢上了女孩的装扮。等到慢慢长大，这个"爱好"被养母强行改了过来 。而之所以重新男扮女装，大喜哥说是因为婚姻受到挫折，"看破了红尘"。 [4]

大喜哥说，在他在服装厂工作的时候，经历了他人生中唯一的一段婚姻。经过朋友介绍，他认识了一个中年女子。"女人智力有些问题，还带着一个女孩，但我不嫌弃，本想和她厮守终身，不过相处了一年多，双方因为种种原因不欢而散。"自此之后，大喜哥就穿上了一身女装。 [4]

刘佩麟的新家

【编者按 】在采访大喜哥刘佩麟之前，很担心他就是个穿女装、涂胭脂的"疯汉"，根本无法交流，但聊得越深，就越觉得这种想法其实是一种偏见。谈起这次穿回男装，刘佩麟很"无奈"，原本的房租负担不起，要住进"新家"就必须换回男装。刘佩麟说，他是真心喜欢女装，觉得女装"柔软、漂亮"，但周围的人接受不了。时至今日，我们接受了变性人金星，但因为贫穷，刘佩麟无法完成这种变身，要活下去他就必须变回"正常"。 [5]

在等电梯时，刘佩麟随口吟出了晏殊的《浣溪沙》，旁的话没说，似乎这几天的境遇，这句词就能全概括了。

说到刘佩麟，相信大家对这个名字并不熟悉，但要提起"大喜哥"，可能很多青岛人都能对上号。2012年，一次火灾现场报道，刘佩麟女装入镜迅速引起网友们的关注。而最近，"大喜哥"换回男装的新闻，再次让他走进了人们的视野。

刘佩麟的新家是中山路发达大厦的一间标间，好心人免费给他住的。记者找到刘佩麟时，他刚刚接受完电视台的采访，他说算上我们，这已经是他两天来接受的第四次采访了。

一张双人床、一台电视，刘佩麟的新家比记者想象中要整洁，茶几上放着早晨吃剩下的包子，和俄国作家列夫托尔斯的《复活》。

刘佩麟招呼着记者坐下，笑着说："没事儿的时候，随便翻翻，我不爱看现在那些年轻人的那些谈情说爱的书，我最爱看的就是老舍和巴金。"几天来媒体不断采访，没有让刘佩麟感到疲惫，面对记者，刘佩麟讲出了这几年当"网红"的心酸。

刘佩麟说，自己这次主动向别人求助，主要是眼前这道坎实在是过不去了。今年3月份，60岁的刘佩麟办理了退休手续，每个月能领到1350块的退休金，这原本是件好事，但却成了刘佩麟烦恼的开始。

"原本的房子是街道帮着租的，每个月还有600块的低保，加上我卖废品赚个几块钱，每天几个馒头还吃得上。"刘佩麟告诉 青岛新闻网 记者，几年前自己的事情曝光后，中山路街道给他租了房子，每个月800块的房租，都是街道帮忙付上的，但自己退休之后，低保没有了，房租也要自己承担，原本收支平衡的日子，一下子打破了。

记者算了笔帐，刘佩麟现在的退休金是1350块，如果自己负担房租的话，相当于退休后比退休前每个月还要少收入50块，尽管对普通人来说，50块就是两顿外卖钱，但就是这50块，把刘佩麟逼到了绝境。

"钱都还账了，一分都没剩下。"刘佩麟的故事大家多少都了解，年轻的时候母亲得了肺癌，刘佩麟先是卖房，后来又借了不少外债，这么多年，一直靠着卖废品慢慢还债。

刘佩麟和他之前的女装照片

"那电话你是不知道，骂的要多难听就有多难听。"刘佩麟说，自己本想跟原来的房东沟通下，缓他几个月，结果对方不同意，每天电话催、上门赶，万般无奈之下，大喜哥想起了几年前那些要帮助他的人。

"很多电话都打不通了，但有一个姓赵的老板，接了我的电话，要帮助我。"刘佩麟说，自己上电视之后，日子好过了一阵，但几个月过后，也就平静了，他还是每天外出去拾废品，啃馒头过日子，但这个赵老板还记得他，并且愿意给他个住处。

发达大厦的保洁赵师傅记得，大喜哥刘佩麟刚刚来了没多久，他们物业的投诉电话就"炸了"。

"很多人来找，都说被大喜哥这一身女装给吓着了，都要让他搬走。"赵师傅说。要么穿着女装流落街头，要么剪了辫子换回男装，权衡利弊之后，刘佩麟选择了后者。"衣服就是一层皮，扒了就扒了吧。"刘佩麟说这句话的时候，语气多少有些无奈。

"我穿了16年的女装，从来没有犯过法，也从来没有害过人。"听得出来，对于现在这个结果，刘佩麟多少有些不甘心。

网上关于刘佩麟的传说有很多，像"大喜哥是个同性恋，有个哑巴同志爱人；大喜哥是受了刺激才开始喜欢穿女装的......"而刘佩麟自己说，这些传闻都不对，他穿女装就是因为自己当时想变成个女人，也确实觉得女装好看，现在岁数大了，变性的心思也淡了。

刘佩麟说："你看，女装的设计就让人觉得很柔软，尤其是出汗之后，贴在身上特别舒服。"

即便是换回男装之后，刘佩麟的手上还套着一个女式塑料手镯，那是几年前他收废品时捡来的，他的两只耳朵上都扎有耳洞，但许多年前跟别人打架，耳洞早已被扯成了一个触目惊心的豁口。

搬来发达大厦之后，刘佩麟原本积攒的"破烂"全部被处理掉了，包括他的女装，但细心的刘佩麟还是留了一件相对中性的花棉袄给自己，以后还有没有机会穿出门，他也不知道。

因为新房子没地方做饭，刘佩麟每天的两顿饭都是买些包子、馒头这类现成的。"这里算是过渡吧，岁数大了，以后我想找一个自己的窝。"刘佩麟说，他没有把现在的房子当家，这里的环境虽然好，但束缚太多，不自由。

刘佩麟："换不回去啦，头发的都剪了，平头穿裙子能好看么？"

其实，刘佩麟不是个没文化的人，他是青岛二中71届的学生，换回男装这几天里，他接到了不少过去老同学的电话，他说没想到这么多人都还记着他，要是自己还穿着女装留着长发，估计也没人愿意来找他。

但刘佩麟私下里告诉记者，他还是觉得自己以前穿女装的时候"俊"。

几次搬家，刘佩麟最大的遗憾就是丢了自己很多年积攒下来的日记，和一张穿着婚纱在天主教堂门口的照片，谈到未来，刘佩麟说自己想找一个看门的工作，能多赚点钱，早点住上自己的"窝"。 [5]

这社会有点冷，我还住在贫民窟，请不要对我嘲笑，我需要个微笑，真不奢求拥抱！

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大喜哥，真名刘佩麟，作为青岛一住户因男扮女装而暴红网络。大喜哥的爆红，源于一段新闻视频，出自青岛一电视台名为《生活在线》的节目。新闻本身没什么看点，就是讲一老式居民大院一楼起火。奇怪的是，受访居民都不为受害者痛惜，反而轮番指责其经常燃木烧饭取暖，污染又不安全。

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Rage room/Anger room - “Haunted house that you are not the haunted one”

As horror has been used as the room for transgression and the suppressed rage, we could create a haunted that allow audience to express their felling, angst and sadness. Basically, a comfortable space to be angry.

It could be set up in the way that the audience is the monster and we could create a story or narrative that guild them while participating in the space.

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Workshop with the group members and prototyping

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Workshop with the group members and prototyping

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Using the materials that you think are suitable, could you visualize what you think a queer/monstrous body is?

Which movie monster do you relate to the most?

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6 collages printed on top of each other to build a haunted house

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Donald Rodney’s In the House of My Father (1997)

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Donald Rodney’s In the House of My Father (1997)

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We can do our inner group interview on 11th December, more interviews can be followed up on 22nd January

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What’s the first experience that made you feel you were othered?

Do you see the relationship between queerness and monster?    -If say no, why?

Any relationship between queerness with horror?

If you feel you are othered, did you adjust yourself to fit into in the contemporary society.

What (materials or objects) do you think associate with queerness

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Interviewed by: Emma

Interviewee: Dong

1. In fact I knew I was gay when I was very young, about 7 or 8 years old, and there were nights when I would wrap the duvet around my chest and imagine that I was a princess in an evening gown waiting for a prince to kiss me, just like in a fairy tale.

2. of course not! I think every sexual orientation is normal, it's not a choice of one's own and it's a result of natural causes, I don't think homosexuality can be like a monster. The fact that homosexuality exists in beings as small as fruit flies is more proof that homosexuality and any sexual orientation is normal and justified, and should not be "monstered"!

3. Not at all! The Queer community chooses to live a special lifestyle, and for me, although I wouldn't choose to be mates with a queer, I appreciate their unique definition and opinion of beauty. It's not scary to me at all, and it's even inspiring and helpful to my art and aesthetics to a certain extent.

4. I don't intentionally try to fit in with society, those who can accept it will always keep their understanding and respect for you, and those who can't won't change their opinion of you because of it.

5. I think Lycoris radiata is the most suitable flower for queer, it has a kind of unique and let people respect the beauty, flaunt the unique appearance and stamens interpretation of their attitude towards beauty and understanding. The fact that the flowers and leaves do not appear at the same time also proves that they are different from other flowers.

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Interviewed by Lou:

Interviewee: flowery

how to defined you are others？

Q2:Actually, I can't see the relationship between the two, because it's kind of funny here, and I don't think they can equate each other. If you regard a natural behavior or phenomenon as a “freak”or monster, the first thing to start from this perspective is "Monster. "

Q3:All I can say is that it has nothing to do with it. I can't imagine what it has to do with horror.

Q4: If one day I feel that I’ve become someone else, there may be a stage of early adaptation, but it is not possible to adapt to the society in the views of others, but more like a state of searching for myself, and will not be forced to adjust for the sake of the so-called social laws. And I also believe that from a certain point of view, contemporary society can accommodate these.

Q5： For me, I think it's underwear or stockings, which to some extent helped me get to know myself and move towards who I am now.

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What’s the first experience that made you feel you were othered?

The first time I started to dress differently in the high school, I would choose more colorful and feminine outfit or garment. People around me started to keep to distance with me and refused to talk to me. I was also called by offensive nickname.

Do you see the relationship between queerness and monster?    -If say no, why?

Yes, maybe not as strong as monster, however, the way how people look at or think about you is similar with how people look a monster. They think you are different and don't belong the same place as them. They think you are wired and not following the social norms.

Any relationship between queerness with horror?

Yes, the scary and strange feeling or emotion that people towards to you due to the unknowness. The horror feelings that I need to explain myslef and the ignorant feedback received.

If you feel you are othered, did you adjust yourself to fit into in the contemporary society.

I did, as we can not live fully independently in this society. The process that I was looking for myself or figuring out who am I was vulnerable. Sometimes I have to make comprimise and change myself to fit into. Luckily I'm adjusting myself less and less.

What (materials or objects) do you think associate with queerness

As a male queer, I would think the materials related with strong masculinity (construction or building materials : concrete, metal, nails etc) and feminility (stockings, high heels, soft fabric, sewing, make up etc)