B-Visible: Intro

B-Visible: A 72-hour queer laboratory

Queer? The word refers to a mixture of activism and the formation of theories concerning sexuality and gender that arose in the United States in the late eighties, when the AIDS issue brought the oppression of sexual minorities to a head. Queer can best be approached as a series of strategies that oppose the conventional hetero-normative pattern that defines and marks sex, sexuality and gender, rather than as a delineated theory or attitude. What queer theory and queer practice actually deconstruct is all naturalist or essentialist claims that are based on this pattern and lead to exclusion. Queer questions and transgresses this oppositional thinking by constantly reformulating itself as an unstable and indefinable identity construction in its various social, cultural and political contexts.

Performativity and visibility. So queer is not so much a category, a definition or an object of study, but an approach or strategy that is 'performative'. It executes something, opens up a range of possibilities, a critical potential. Acting queer in a particular socio-cultural setting means tinkering with the patterns of expectation associated with it and with the visibility it allows. B-Visible is intended to operate on this boundary of the visible, of act and potency, of appearance and disappearance. B-Visible means 'to come out and show them', restlessly and repeatedly, and thereby examines the process of 'coming out' and 'showing' what becomes visible and what does not. Or where visibility is marked as a political item and where this marking is itself political.

Performance. B-Visible links the issue outlined back to performance as an area of interest, but not conceived purely as an artistic discipline, rather in the broad sense of the word. In addition to the performing arts, art, video, photography, literature and so forth also appear, all of them art forms concerned with 'performance'. In this way, B-Visible is a multi-disciplinary project that occupies a position between artistic practice and theory: an examination of various queer strategies of visibility. In accordance with the performative dynamic of queer, the intention does not end with the content: is it possible to have something like a queer approach to the highly institutionalised world of the performing arts and arts centres? This is an important question. And conversely, despite its theoretical principles, the event is emphatically not taking place in an academic context, because that too is queer: finding a different setting and a broader audience to tell this story, because only there can its political aspect be meaningful.

Laboratory. The concrete form we propose as an answer to these rather complex questions is the laboratory, as an inversion of or counterpart to the usual programming of performances at eight o'clock in the evening. B-Visible will carry on for 72 hours, three full days and nights, from midnight to midnight. As a laboratory, where no 'finished' performances will be shown, only workshops, talks, discussions, laboratories, try-outs, acts, observations, installations, parties and a little eating and sleeping in between. It is not the product but the process we shall foster, with study and work, with space for collaboration, space to come face to face with one's own and each other's working methods. Diverse queer acts may encounter each other, not only by their simultaneity, but more by affecting, infecting and questioning each other, at the risk of restlessness. The arts centre and also art itself are made visible in a different way.

Public. B-Visible is not just a workspace for an enclosed colony of artists and theorists. Reflections on visibility only become meaningful when they can be shared with a public and an outside world. In order to make this different type of visibility of art communicative, the event will be widely open to participation, and not only for spectators. There are for instance several workshops, presentations and discussions linked with the research projects, etc. The admission charge is also being kept markedly low so as not to generate any false expectations - after all, the last thing being offered is a spectacle.

Programme. A 72-hour programme of at least 25 projects has been meticulously compiled so that B-Visible as a whole can provide insights and the distinct parts be accessible. Two formal principles were maintained during its compilation: nine 'production assignments' were given to artists and theorists to develop a project on well-defined themes connected to queer, visibility and performance. In addition, a 'call for studies' was sent out as it often is for symposia and periodicals, to make the project known to a broader circle and also to open it up to artists and theorists who might otherwise only with difficulty become involved in such a project. About fifteen projects were selected from the many reactions, and they have been developed in consultation with the curators.

The curators

Kattrin Deufert (Germany 1973) is performer and theoretician. She was trained in Theatre-, Film- and Media-studies in Frankfurt, London and Brussels. In 2001 she received her doctoral degree at the FU Berlin with the thesis 'John Cage's Theatre of Presence'. Her artistic work includes performances with John Cage scores, experimental radio contributions for the 'Hessische Rundfunk' (Frankfurt) and music theatre-projects with Heiner Goebbels, Reinhild Hoffmann and Manfred H. Wenninger. Deufert is co-founder of the 'Diskursive Poliklinik' (Berlin) and of 'Frankfurter Küche (FK)'. She published on dance and mixed media performances.

Jeroen Peeters (Belgium 1976) is critic, dramaturg and curator. He was educated in art history and philosophy in Leuven. He has been working as a dance critic for the Flemish daily newspaper Financieel-Economische Tijd (September 1999-May 2001). Between February and November 2001 he worked as dramaturg for the international arts centre Tanzquartier Wien (Vienna). He publishes on contemporary dance, improvised music and aesthetics in various magazines and books. He is co-founder and editor of Sarma, on line platform for international criticism on dance and performing arts.

Thomas Plischke (Germany 1971) studied at PARTS (Brussels) and is since his graduation in 1998 working as choreographer and video artist. He created among other things the soloworks Fleur (anemone), L'Homme A SORTIR AVEC son corps, and Demgegenüber Boniertheit. In April 1999 he founded the collective BDC with Alice Chauchat, Hendrik Laevens and Martin Nachbar. They created Events for Television (again), Affects, Affects/Rework and (re)SORT, which all toured internationally. Invited by the Goethe Institute Rio de Janeiro Plischke lived and worked in a local slum of Rio de Janeiro and designed the performance score nao se pode falar for the Cia.Etnica De Dança. He is co-founder of Frankfurter Küche (FK).

Frankfurter Küche (FK). In autumn 2001 Kattrin Deufert, Pirkko Husemann and Thomas Plischke founded the 'Frankfurter Küche (FK)', a small independant production label to develop projects on "performance as critical practice of theory" and "theory as critical practice of performance." The first pseudopilotprojects of FK were the performance in progress Postpolitical (Co)incidencies or how to knit your own private political body and the videowork AESS (Nov 2000 - Sept 2001). www.frankfurterkueche.de

Vooruit arts centre. Vooruit is an arts centre based in Ghent (Belgium) that aims to be a unique place in Flanders as centre for performing arts and music. The house presents a contemporary and revamping programme, always seeking to combine quality with accessibility to a broad audience, especially young people. A recently renovated historic building gives space to several performance spaces, studios and a bar. Being the biggest arts centre in Flanders, Vooruit is striving for an equilibrium between artistic and social surplus value on the one hand and economical rendability on the other hand. Programme head of dance is the young theatre scientist Barbara Raes, who initiated the project B-Visible by inviting Frankfurter Küche as external curator. www.vooruit.be