Il gradiente come metafora di una nuova idea di mondo

Qui non ci sono dress-code e non ci sono barriere: solo sfumature. E qui, per dirla tutta, le cose sono ‘same same, but different’.

Se davvero siamo nel tempo in cui i codici dell’estetica di genere si confondono gli uni negli altri, forse il primo pixel del linguaggio queer sta tutto nelle progressioni cromatiche che superano dicotomie e polarizzazioni.

Il gradiente come metafora di una nuova idea di mondo, più libero e poroso di quello in cui viviamo, schiacciato, quando non raso al suolo, dalle contrapposizioni.

Nella dimensione queer tutto è movimento, trasformazione, cambiamento, come ben ci ha raccontato la filosofa femminista Chiara Bottici.

Si tratta di concetti semplici che purtroppo trovano ancora sacche di resistenza nella società contemporanea, retta da principi uomocratici e donnisti: solo la cultura può agire sul piano educativo, scivolare lungo i canali dell’empatia e scardinare luoghi comuni sempre più castranti per chi vive in condizioni di discriminazione e marginalità.

The power of visual culture in the construction of alternative narratives

'Ultraqueer', the website on which the bios of Antonia Freisburger, Dorotea are shown Tocco, Ludovica Anzaldi — artists, performer photographers who have tried with their own creative sensitivity to restore the complexity of the female universe to the world — is a digital space where a multitude of non-majority representations and different narratives are told to exist freely.

The purpose of the page is to introduce new written works and new images that can replace the phallocentric and anthropocentric ones, which have obsessed us for centuries and on which the foundation of our identities is still based.

“In the struggles of political and identity affirmation, we must not underestimate the power that visual culture and narration exercise in the processes of reconfiguration of social structures,” states Carlo S. Battisti.

Artistic practices to celebrate identities, all of them

The curator of 'Queer Pandèmia - artistic contaminations of another kind' - the project presented last year in Milan by TWM Factory - remains a point of arrival and departure at the same time for the gender revolution.

“Because it recounted practices, apparently foreign and frightening, through which LGBTQIA+ subjectivities conquer a space of representation in society,” reiterates Battisti.

The event was the opportunity to artistically reappropriate all those narratives - from illness to the monstrous - with which the 'different' are usually pointed out.

"A successful experiment that allowed us to reflect on artistic practices as a tool for reappropriating spaces and celebrating all identities, in particular those marginalized, excluded or feared". In some way the theme of the spatial dimension returns, demonstrating that urban planning and architecture are central disciplines in the fight for rights and against marginalization.

An atlas of queer places

'Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQ+ Places and Stories', the book presented at the last edition of ArchWeek by Nina Bassoli, curator of architecture and urban regeneration at Triennale Milano, precisely through spaces spoke of the fragility and happiness of many.

Read also: Nina Bassoli, what happened to the design that 'teaches the mark'?

“Queer people have always found a way to exist and be together, and there will always be a need for queer spaces,” underlined the architect referring to the synopsis of the book.

In this illustrated volume, Adam Nathaniel Furman and Joshua Mardell have described life in an independent bookshop in Glasgow, in an ice cream parlor in Havana (an unforgettable filming location for Strawberry & Chocolate) and in a ruined cathedral in Managua: places of everyday life occupied by the underground LGBTQIA+ community.

Looking to the future, the book guides us to the definition of new spaces in which queer lives could not only transit, but also pause to take root. When prejudices will be totally overcome.