CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Kajinic, Sanja |
|---|---|
| Title | Subversive Visuality Between Art and Activism: Post-Yugoslav Negotiations of Queer Art |
| Summary | In this project, I study the processes of negotiation of meanings of queerness in art works, visuality and space of post-Yugoslav queer festivals. The thesis researches how LGBT/queer art festivals (and in particular the Queer Zagreb Festival in Croatia) used queer visuality in the post-Yugoslav region from 2003 till 2012. This research engages with discussions in the fields of feminist visual studies, cultural studies, queer theory, festival studies, and (queer) anthropology to ask about the influence of visual representation on social changes. Methodologically, my dissertation combines the ethnography of the Queer Zagreb Festival with interview analysis, and close-reading of written and visual Festival materials. Furthermore, my analysis is informed by the concerns of feminist intersectionality and queer approaches to ethnography. I show that while the visuality of the Queer Zagreb Festival aimed for a radical queering of the Croatian public discourses of art and politics, it was framed through the programming of the Festival as the time-space where high art and avant-garde influences meet popular culture. I argue that the practices of regional negotiation of queerness oscillate between the strategies of queering belonging and visuality (of queering the region, art works and identities), and the strategies of creating queer visual representation (of choosing to produce queer/lesbian/gay region, art works and identities). Approaching negotiation as both material and discursive, I explore the ways in which, in particular, the Zagreb festival community negotiates regional queerness through travelling, experiencing festival time-space, and understanding art. I suggest that the post-Yugoslav queer festivals (despite significant differences in artistic and political goals among them) are all engaged in practices of claiming the public space for the display of art works that question sexual and gender normativity. I argue that the opening up of festival chronotopes to non-normative visuality creates temporary free festival spaces of queer sociability. The significance of my project for a broader audience lies in my suggestion that the subversive lesbian and gay and/or queer representations can be read as an index of larger changes in post-socialist sexual and gender hierarchies. |
| Supervisor | Barat, Erzsebet |
| Department | Gender Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/kajinic_sanja.pdf |
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