Wien. Berlin air wafts through Vienna. Up to now, events presenting a range of queer gestures in various disciplines and formats such as film, performance, music, lectures and concerts have been rare in Vienna. The two new directors of the brut Koproduktionshaus in the Künstlerhaus in Vienna, Haiko Pfost and Thomas Frank (who both worked for a long time in Berlin theatres) remedied this lack with the series of events entitled »Lust am Verrat. Stellungswechsel im Feminismus, Performance and Film« (Joy in Betrayal. Changes of position in feminism, performance and film) that they conceived in collaboration with Andrea B. Braidt from the Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Studies and the magazine »fiber – werkstoff für feminismus and popkultur« (music section). As the title suggests, the focus is on pleasurable betrayal within the feminist discourse that refers affirmatively to the sex wars of the 1980s, the PorNo debate and the different politics of identity espoused by queer theory and feminist theory.
The centrepiece of the series was the production »Orlanding the Dominant«, for which the performance group SV Damenkraft (Katrina Daschner, Sabine Marte, Gini Müller, Christina Nemec) joined forces with the musician Gustav and a member of the boy band Sissy Boyz. The invitation card, designed somewhat in the manner of Russian constructivism, announced a »queer burlesque«; however, it took some time for the audience in the concert house, prettily furnished with small tables and chairs, to become accustomed to this form of theatre, unusual in these parts, and start to take the active role it demands. Virginia Woolf’s character of »Orlando«, who changes sex several times in the course of the story – seen as a classic of English modernity and of gender studies – served loosely as a model for the performers, who focused on giving the piece a theatrical, affective accent and bringing it up to date with the times. The cleverly thought-out stage design and sexy outfits by the designer duo fabrics_interseason (Wally Salner, Johanes Schweiger) did a great deal to underline the strength and stage presence of the individual performers, whose ensemble singing in this revue piece met with great enthusiasm from the audience.
Stefanie Seibold and Tara Casey’s performance »I am not half the man I used to be« drew more on discursive history, specifically a text by Mary Ann Doane on »The Woman’s Film of the 1940s« written in the 1980s. The recitation of segments from Doane’s study of the (im)possibility of a female gaze is combined with an adapted excerpt from the film »The Killing of Sister George« (1968) by Robert Aldrich showing a sequence in a lesbian bar. The emphasis on and comparison of two important historical documents prove to be very coherent and productive from a historical point of view; however, less dichotomous approaches would be desirable for the representation of a female, self-determined lesbian gaze.
Christiane Erharter and Sonja Eismann delivered a very concise and entertaining sound lecture, while Hito Steyerl was represented by her complex video »Lovely Andrea«, produced for documenta 12. On the tracks of a bondage photograph that Steyerl had made of herself while she was a student in Japan in 1987, the video also creates an interwoven mixture of porn industry, art discourse, politics and punk and pop culture, which includes both footage of torture in the Abu Ghraib prison and the censored trailer for »Spiderman«, in which a helicopter originally became entangled in a web strung between the towers of the World Trade Center.
The lectures continued this playful confrontation with sex work, queer representation and the porn industry. In a historical overview, Volker Woltersdorff devoted his attention to the »sissy«, a feminised (male) figure that is the object of disparagement both from the heterosexual and the (mostly male) homosexual side. While Annette Brauerhoch concentrated on the recoding of and different receptive approaches to the porn classic »Deep Throat«, Katja Widerspahn devoted her complete attention to gay pornography. »Jerking Off Easily. What women like about gay pornography« was the eyecatching title of her lecture, in which she tried to constructively establish this often despised genre as an object for feminist research. Because this form of pornography contains just as few – or just as many – emancipatory aspects as heterosexual porn, however, only a few individual productions will be likely to require greater attention in future with regard to quality, apart from the sexual practice shown.
Julius Deutschbauer and Maya Degirmendzic also attempted a shift of context in their »Das Hose-Rock-Block Seminar« by simply reversing the traditional dress code and, among other things, discussing and reproducing historical depictions of hermaphrodites. Things that were simply put-on, unconsidered or boring in this context were, for example, opened up to a refreshingly unconventional reading in the context of a series on the dominance of men in the established art industry. Queer feminism’s shifts in position thus also extend to the cheerful pop, popular and party culture, whose playful facets are made productive and whose political potential also delivers much in the way of strategic material. Conversation, dancing, making music, celebrating, cultivating and building up networks – the social space remains the place for action and communication. However, as the Brüll sisters showed in their Manifeste Bar, being in a permanent good mood can be tiring. Severeness and sobriety, attributes traditionally associated with feminism, thus remain more productive and effective communication strategies.
Translated by Timothy Jones