QUEER
What is Queer, a new word in the Georgian lexicon? Often it is seen as a colloquial name or synonym for LGBT + community, often we find it used as synonymous with gay in our parts. These are narrow definitions, as Queerness is more than a just collective name. It is a struggle, an aggressive opposition to stability, and a "normality" built on traditional ideas.
What does Queerness mean to us? The waving the pride flag once a year? Integration into the socio-economic system that seeks to destroy us? The enrollment into capitalist, heteronormative, and militarist institutions with rainbow flags? Is this the limit of our desires and dreams? In a space where the representation politics seeks to dominate the issue by imitating the West and their love for Rainbow capitalism, only offering us the illusion of equality, so understanding all of this becomes even more significant.
Representation and visibility are limited combat weapons, resulting only with assimilation. Our goal is not to be a supplement to cisheteronormativity, to become acceptable to the same systems, and to become part of the oppressors instead of eliminating oppression.
While the discussions of visibility take a lot of our time and resources, conditions of the most vulnerable and oppressed among us; Transgender people, sex workers, ethnic minorities, and others, are deteriorating. We don't need representation politics that does not focus on systemic oppression and is limited to only affirming our humanity to a system for which we are outside acceptability, the system which will never accept us and won't let society accept us. We do not need visibility if it doesn't bring access to hormone therapy for transgender people if it doesn't give housing and security for young, queer people cast away by their families. We do not need these forms of acceptance that only give us superficial equality and do not change the oppressive system. The right to marriage cannot be a priority when the most vulnerable among us are starving and have no access to medical care. Queerness - is not a colorful version of the cis-hetero patriarchal family with its enforced monogamy, and we should not allow it to become that. Instead of trying to demand a small space from the society in which we will be forced to contort ourselves to meet their demands and sacrifice those of us most unacceptable to them - we must abandon this struggle for this illusory equality. Because the world still won't accept us, and this in return means that the world itself is unacceptable, it must be destroyed in its foundation and rebuilt from scratch. Every May queer struggle shifts to the forefront; everyone suddenly remembers our existence. Those who use the hate against us try to accumulate the political capital for next year. And those who try to gain favor and benefits by support. This support mostly disappears without a trace at the end of May. In this theatrical fuss, the voices of queer people are the faintest. We believe that Art can be a form of resistance against the system, especially when the culture around us strengthens the system. So, for the next two months, the Fungus platform will focus on works created by queer artists with the theme of queer experiences.
Stray Slut
Luca Bitchikashvili Dance as an Escape Queerness has always been a part of our reality, old and new world. But it was never fully understood. That's why the battle between tradition and my inner world has been emotionally and physically draining. Dancing is my way of coping with all this madness, to express what society tries to take away from me – imagining new realities and deconstructing current ones.
Nia Gvatua
Lament
The branches in front of my window are pointing North
Up, where no one lives, though unknown life blossoms
I raise my hands and my fingers reach no thing,
Clouds refuse to hold me, they go right through.
Stuck to the ground, glued
No means to live up in the blue
I am glued to Earth, counting my breaths.
Inhaling hope, eyes arrowed at the sky
Exhaling doubt,
Celestial life was not one of the chapters
In the book of life handed to us.
Willing so fiercely to be the rain above,
To touch the touchless, caress the trees.
I was not born to stumble on the static, moveless grass.
Trees are pointing North
Heading North as they show me
Which way to go
Bare lament is what I feel as I imagine
I am incapable of going beyond
Beyond what I see
Beyond what my eyes can capture
What is there in the foggy kingdom ruling above?
What is hidden in the tranquility of sequenced translucent clouds?
I would die to know,
I would love to feel
I would like to let it in
That world…It seems so distant
But feels so mine at the same time.
I am ready to face the North
Ready to embody the pole of mystic silence,
So exhausted of stumping on the south,
Of being below
The branches before my window are pointing North
They seem unnerved, so calm and fragile, yet firmly strong
Thin air flows between them, but can not intrude their calm,
Only to move them slightly, staying untouched
They are looking up, facing North…
Moon
With a starless obscure sky as my umbrella
I am feeling lost, as usual.
The Moon stares at me
Standing in stoic solitude
No hesitation or doubt,
Standing in the air.
The clouds might hover, might move around
In restless ambiguity
Confusion.
Confusion was never a trait innate
For the Moon.
The Moon is certain. She knows no worry.
No insecurities.
Botherless she stares at you with her wholesomeness
With her entirety
Bold entirety that makes you feel so partial
So half a life
A spec.
A fluctuating miniature spec
Knowing you you can never lose your identity
As you have never had it in the first place
She does. The Moon. And it is no subject to loss.
Is unobtainable by other.
Can not be embodied by frightened else.
Even when she seems half, she is whole.
She is full. On her own, but filled
With all there is, that ever was, that ever will be.
Observing us in a timeless, ferocious manner
That seems so cruel, yet incredible beautiful. Everlasting.
As she is. as she always will be.
Oh, envy. Unmeasurable envy I feel towards her.
Feeling worthless. All I have is a worthless wander.
Pointless search for mercy.
So unfortunate, being designed to hunt for that which is unhunted
For why can we solely be spectators of what is,
Not much we can alter
Not a thing we can leave here.
Mere desperation this causes
Leaves us feeling deplete, lack
But hopeful at the same time
That one day i will be like her, the moon
And not be so fucking scared of what I am
David Apakidze Tkashmapha Once upon a time, There was Tkashmapha, the dryad of the forest. And every hunter longed for her. Divine veracity personified, Once a forest dweller, Now holed up in a cellar, Animals above and beyond. The bestower of curses, Feared and lusted after, The petrifier of men, who Dare betray the sacred union of the flesh. Now stiff & feeble, covered in subterranean moss, Debasing herself in chase of the primal calling. Spirit reduced to flesh, burdened with survival, By the hour, specials for an extra fee. Once upon a time, There was Ochikochi, the satyr, Coated in fur, buck-chested, Goat-legged guardian of all beasts. The wrath of hunters, The avenger of wild things, The stalker and pursuer of Tkashmapha. Now, his violence has turned to means, A regular, callin on Tkashmapa, Each time donning a different face.
Roman/Ramona Valynkin ‘PARTNERS in CRIME’. As an Immigrant photographer, who came to Tbilisi from Saint-Petersburg, I’m crafting my personal interpretation on the complicacy of relationships between the Visitor and the Local in the context of the evolving queer culture in post-Soviet Georgia. This is my witty, complex and sophisticated visual reflection around the idea that no matter what our nationality is, We are all ‘PARTNERS in CRIME’.
Salome Zhvania In the patriarchal and capitalist society where emotions are assumed feminine and thus, a bad thing that needs to be suppressed, neglected, or deleted when they are something to be ashamed of, and everything needs to be rationalized and not felt, expressing emotions can become an act of rebellion. I try to express emotions that do not fit the heteronormativity and go beyond the limits through sexuality, love, self-perception, and connection with our own bodies. I want to show how emotions flow in the labyrinth of heart and mind, scratching the surface from the inside. I want the viewer to have the emotion of melancholic harmony, a feeling where grief, awkwardness, and hope strangely intertwine with each other.
Dzito Zaalishvili