When We Play

Since 2009, I have explored the question: What can queer kink and sex styles look or be like? What personal narratives do they carry? Can they serve as tools for transgressing gender, for disrupting heteronormativity? To which cultural meanings do they refer—especially in relation to class/ification and race/ification? Styles are codes. They are maps of meaning, as Stuart Hall put it. They function as signs of forbidden identity and as sources of value. For me, there is a kind of lust in identifying styles, even bodies, as queer. And yet, I remain acutely aware of how precarious this is. Within this tension this body of work unfolds.

My seventeen questions have been answered in recorded audio interviews with WomenLesbianBiQueerTrans+ kinksters, as well as through visual re/presentations and the stories embedded in them. I have re/configured and developed the material under different aspects and in different formats – lecture performance, workshop, talk, debate – and it has been presented at City University Hong Kong (Hong Kong, China), Rdeče Zore (Ljubliana, Slovenia), Vereinigung Bildender Künstler:innen Österreich (Wien), Internationale FrauenLesbenTransInter BDSM Osterkonferenz (Berlin), Taxispalais Kunsthalle Tirol (Innsbruck, Austria), and Parking Space (Wien).

Video Documentation Dresscode. What Dresscode?! (Stills), Hong Kong 2009: Vinko Nino Jaeger