Gastvortrag von Atlanta Ina Beyer am 8.12.21, um 18.30 Uhr online

Am Mittwoch, den 8. Dezember 2021, von 18.30 bis 20 Uhr hält Dipl. Kult.arb. Atlanta Ina Beyer einen Gastvortrag, der sich mit männlicher Homoerotik, Zensur und uneingestandenem Verlangen beschäftigt. Atlanta Ina Beyer befasst sich mit schwuler männlicher erotischer Kunst in queeren Punk-Zines im Spannungsverhältnis zu gesetzlichen Regelungen zu Obszönität und Zensur im Kanada der 1980er Jahre. Die Frage „What are you looking at?“ dient als Ausgangspunkt, um über die Verstrickungen von Nacktheit, Blickregime und Normen, Regeln und Gesetzen nachzudenken, die Körper, Begehren und die Ausdrucksfähigkeit des Subjekts bestimmen.

Die Veranstaltung im Rahmen der Ausstellung „Der nackte Körper – Eine Frage der Perspektive“ wird organisiert und finanziert von der Hochschule Rhein-Waal. Aufgrund der hohen Inzidenzzahlen im Zusammenhang mit der Corona-Pandemie findet die Veranstaltung nicht in Präsenz im Museum Kurhaus Kleve statt, sondern ausschließlich online. Alle Interessierten können unter folgendem Link daran teilnehmen:

https://hsrw.webex.com/hsrw-de/j.php?MTID=ma12679e14235f9ea89cf4ec6ff2db31b

What are you looking at? Male homoeroticism, censorship, and unacknowledged desires

The Canadian queer punk zine J.D.s played a major role in bringing about the queercore/queer punk movement in the 1980s. However, it is also an hommage to the „beefcake“ magazine Physique Pictorial. The latter was founded by gay photographer Bob Mizer as a supposed bodybuilder magazine in 1951. Navigating obscenity laws and censorship for gay male erotic art, Mizer used this trick to publish photographs of young, athletic, and as nude as possible young men (always depending on changing censorship regulations). The magazine enabled gay men to look at and enjoy the male, nude or almost nude body. 

When the queer zine makers behind J.D.s started their publications, obscenity laws in Canada still played a crucial part in determining what could count as art (and therefore, find a public life), and what was censored as pornography. These regulations were subject to constant contestations. The boundary between art and obscenity/pornography, that gay art has long been forced to navigate, was frequently made a topic of critical inquiry in J.D.s. However, displays of male homoeroticism and nudity in this queer punk zine also served to confront, criticize and undermine hegemonic masculinity in punk and hardcore subcultures. It did so by suggesting queer meanings and relations in this androcentric, dominantly cismale culture.

In my lecture, I want to take you on a journey to these different stations of past queer cultures, art, and critique. The question „What are you looking at?“ will serve as an entry point to reflect on the entanglements of nudity, the gaze, and the norms, rules, and laws that govern bodies, desire, and the enunciability of the subject.

(Atlanta Ina Beyer) 

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