http:// www.queerzagreb.org
Zagreb, Croatia

Crime, Sexuality and Gender – Queer Zagreb, October 2008.

Queer Zagreb is an international festival which has been taking place in Croatia since 2003 and has been presenting international and local artists, academics and activists to an audience of cca 3000 – 5000 per year. Queer Zagreb festival constructs its programme each year around a certain theme which is presented throughout its programme. So far we have touched such issues as -postsocialist queer identity-, -heteronormativity of childhoods-, -transgression of private into public- and -Balkans queer-. For our 2008 edition the main topic of interest is -Crime, sexuality and gender- to be presented in different forms during the event – visual arts, performance, film and an academic conference.

Crime, sexuality and gender are issues that we would like to explore within the frames of our festival. We are interested in wider definitions of crime (in relation to sexuality and gender) which would go beyond the regular time / geography frame as well as beyond concentration solely on the victims – whose destinies leave them displaced, murdered, raped, tortured, killed.

We would like to initiate an approach which include the conditions that made the crimes possible to happen on personal, social or structural levels. Queer Zagreb is interested in the roots – we want to discover the -gestus of crime-. An important philosophical moment in this approach is raising awareness of social blindness to crime, to tolerating it and being silent about it. In addition, the festival will focus those artistic expressions that relate crime to sexuality and gender as an area still not challenged enough. In this way, Queer Zagreb opens the questions of patriarchy, construction of maleness, gender binarism and other interesting issues of identity in the context of their possible source of crime. This opens many new opportunities of interpretation of crime as political, ideological, economic, etc.

Please send your proposals of participation with detailed information on the work, concepts for future works, participants’ bio and technical details (where applicable) to: zvonimir.dobrovic@gmail.com

or to:
Queer Zagreb
Zvonimir Dobrovic
Programme Director
Ozujska 9
10000 Zagreb
Croatia