Program:

17:00 – 17:45 “Our Queer Is Uncomfortably Political” — performance by Viktoryia Hrabennikava, Oleksandr Halishchuk, Varvara Sudnik and Arina Bozhok
17:45 – 20:00 “cry.alone.die — a game of everyday horror of rainbow capitalism” game presentation
18:30 – 20:00 Discussion, Q&A session and collective zine reading with KVIR LAB participants

About the project:

KVIR LAB: a space for reflections and queer-expression

“Live, Laugh, Love” zine is the result of the collective work of KVIR LAB participants, a creative laboratory organized by the STUS collective. The lab aimed to define queer culture for people from Belarus and Ukraine and examine how shared experiences shape individual identities.

We invited members of the queer community from Belarus and Ukraine, currently living in Poland, to collaboratively create a publication, explore queer identity, and artistically respond to the context of war and repression. This resulted in a group of eight exceptionally talented individuals. For a few months we were meeting up, discussing, and exploring different aspects of queerness while filling the programme with workshops and lectures by Taras Gembik, Viktoryia Hrabennikava and Mitia Ermalovich-Dashynski.

The creative journey of KVIR LAB was fragile, emotional, and deeply activist, leaving us with the sense that there is still much more to express. Throughout the lab, we cultivated a safer space that fostered bonds and mutual support. As a result, this publication is not only a tangible outcome of our collective effort but also a testament to the process that brought us together. We invite you to see a bit of our identities’ world — the thoughts, the feelings and the reflections of us as a group and as individuals.

The zine is interactive — let’s queer together!

Lab participants:

Rin Anishchanka @heydelotii
Sviataslaū Kruk
Varvara Sudnik
danya?/ @janklin.jr
Arina Bozhok @poskosie
Darya Isakovich @daiinache_
Lizaveta Stecko @_stcko
Viktoryia Hrabennikava @v.f.ranz

Our queer is uncomfortably political

Our queer is uncomfortably political is a collective performance by Viktoryia Hrabennikava, Varvara Sudnik, Oleksandr Halishchuk and Arina Bozhok.

Performance is based on real life events, scandals, gossip and professional dialogues of the art field.

During the performance visitors should expect a reading session of email chains, as well as other written and verbal forms of communication and showing the behind-the-scenes -  that will tell the stories of paid and unpaid artistic labour in the face of eurocentrism and bureaucracy. Authors collected their personal experiences and turned it into a fictional collage text.

Performance was created by a group of queer artists, curators and cultural workers from Ukraine and Belarus. Their main common point is the intersection of queer and “Eastern” identities that do not fit perfectly into an idea of “Eastern European exotic tales” expected from them by Western cultural institutions.

cry.alone.die a game of everyday horror of rainbow capitalism

It’s a project of collective frustration and hatred towards queer-washing, fake solidarity, and rainbow capitalism. It’s an emo product made while our identities are being turned into a one. We are not buying it.

internet definition:

“Rainbow capitalism (also called pink capitalism  or gay capitalism) is the involvement of capitalism, corporate capitalism, and consumerism in appropriating and profiting from the LGBT movement”

“It is a practice where a company presents itself as gay-friendly and progressive to downplay its negative behavior. There’s a concerning rise in Rainbow Capitalism, corporations boost ‘queer friendly policies’ during Pride Month on the occasion for profit.”

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_capitalism

We don’t want to be accepted and integrated into the system, that’s not even close to being enough. We don’t want to be a friendly gay (as joyful) cover for an unethical corporate machine. We don’t want to be turned into profit while our needs are ignored. And the needs of people who are less privileged than us. Those who even have not enough privileges to have voices, to make art statements on the topic.

We want an exploitative system revealed and rebuilt. We don’t like it here.

We want queer liberation, not gay assimilation!

But also…We do buy it. We need to and sometimes we even want to.

Therefore the protagonist of the cry.alone.die is stuck between fighting an exploitative system and the need to play by its rules.

So let’s play. And we’ll see for how long you’ll be able to stay alive.

language of the event: English, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Polish.
graphics: Arina Bozhok