Workshop dates: 3/15-3/18 (see below for details) Exhibition opening: Saturday, March 24, 2007, 8-11pm

Is there certain logic to queer geography?

The aim for this workshop at the Lui Velazquez Artist Space is to collectively think through models that can change, recover, appropriate or even occupy public spaces for queer social purposes.

Queer space is often historically seen as a powerless structure that exists parallel to streets, sculptures, parks, public toilets, beaches, etc. and time-to-time gets appropriated socially into the realm of queer meanings. The hegemony of global economy has lately more frequently changed social structures in society and has resulted in the filtering of social uses in the public space. This workshop wants to examine these so-called "queer oasis," and their special significance, and to look into the role of gender relations by the different circulation of users of inhabitation. This clash between perceptions of space, David Harvey writes, happens between the micro-scale of the body and the personal and the macro-scale of the global political economy. The question is do we have to overcome the powerlessness and become our own architects of living to sustain a queer culture in an increasing global sterilization of space?

The workshop will take place as a participatory laboratory where we will find new secret ways of (re)thinking and formulating queer experiences into the public space. Is there certain logic to queer space in Tijuana? What effect does the border between Mexico and the US effect queers' social behavior? We will make field trips, and talk about individual experiences, and the inherited social and historical spaces that were important for us for the formation of counter-public places. We will start by collectively mapping Queer Tijuana based on the social exchange of the collective knowledge between the participants; visiting some of those desired locations; and recovering and re-inscribing new and auto-organized ways of engaging the city.

The outcome of this process is to be documented and shown at the Lui Velazquez Artist Space and in near future will be publicized together with materials from a prior Queer Geography Workshop held in Copenhagen, Denmark.

* possibility for continued workshops if necessary

Saturday, 3/24, 8-11pm - opening and presentation

The workshop will be held in English and there will be participants that can help with Spanish translating. We encourage everyone to join. If you have any questions please write to Lasse Lau, queer@lasselau.dk

Supported in part by The Danish Arts Council.

www.luivelazquez.org

New Street is a series of drawings I am currently producing dealing with expression of social despair and counter expressions. The drawings are in the process of dissolving, and aim to have something as fragile as written on a blackboard. The simplicity of the message comes useful by erasing all the overloads of commercial signs in the urban void. Somehow the images from the street point towards the possibility of a new order.

The images of Palais de Tokyo were produced in a provocation to the museums lack of social engagement in the latest student protest to the CPE law and the class uprising in the French Banlieues. Palais de Tokyo that has been affiliated with the term Relational Aesthetic theorized into an art context written by one of its former curators Nicolas Bourriaud. The term claims political agency by artist building communities and social platforms but doesn't walk the distance to question the social order. What political difference does it make that exclusive viewers of a museum or gallery get to socialize together when the reality outside the windows are literary decomposing? The aim of the posters is to face the museum with their social and democratic responsibility! You are welcome to download the posters.

Download Poster A3 (PDF - 2.4MB)

Download Poster A3 (PDF - 764KB)

From Ben Van Berkel to Vito Acconci - they have all translated the impossible Moebius strip all from houses into benches. Many of these projects have primly produced new aesthetic forms without any significant new meanings. It recycles a symbol of the impossible task - to plan the unknown of the others. To provoke these attempts to translate the Moebius strip -- I have scanned the strip with minimal translation and re-named the image "Urban Planning". I herby hope to provoke the discussion on how surplus of structures/ personal monuments of architecture often with very little reason are imposed on people -- especially in public spaces.

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