queer stories goes expo

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About a month ago, I was invited to present some of the finished artwork as part of an installation at Waves Vienna. It's an annual music showcase festival and conference — and yes, its focus is on music — however, they had a meta theme this year, which was "How to overcome unconscious bias". This is where queer stories came in.

In this issue, I'm going to show you some of the presented artwork and other media I used in the installation.

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queer stories at Waves

At my art installation, I wanted to show some of the finished artwork without revealing too much. How would that make sense, though, if I showed only extracts of the stories without any context? I decided to look at the themes that emerged from the stories and chose six of them, creating so-called "chapters":

The people
Youth
Coming out
Acceptance
The struggle
The reasons

For every chapter, I presented one page of the four existing stories surrounding the text (see pic below). People could read the text for more context and then look at the pictures or the other way round. You get the gist.

In the picture above you can see a QR-code next to the text. As it was an international music conference, I recorded all of the text in the pictures in English so non-native German speakers could understand the meaning as well. That took some work but I do love recording!😊 Here's the recording for Chapter 1. (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)

I thought it was also important to provide some guidance for people visiting the installation, such as an explanation of what the letters in LGBTQIA+ stand for. You'd be surprised how few people are familiar with these.

I usually immerse myself in art through various media. My process doesn't always start with a paintbrush; often a few lines turn out to be a song and only then gain expression on a canvas or on paper. I discovered my own queerness by writing lyrics and turning them into songs with my band, ERNST (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). This is why I chose to add a few of my lyrics to the installation. Here's one of them, feel free to scan the code to listen to it on Spotify.

It would exceed the frame of this newsletter to show you all of the chapters including the artwork. This is why I decided to present you with Chapter 5. I hope you'll enjoy! Also, you can check out my Instagram account (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) for more pictures and videos of the installation.

You can listen to the English audio here (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

I want to thank Paulina Parvanov (Raspberry Soda Agency (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)) and Waves Vienna (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) for inviting me to hold the installation; and all participants and friends who dropped by to look at the artwork. This is just the beginning.

Upcoming

I will be featured in Alexander Galler's (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)project "Discovering - Diversity. Similarity. Equality." I met him first at Waves Vienna, where he was an official photographer and we got talking. He loved the concept of my project and as there are similarities between our two projects, we thought we'd combine forces and help each other out. He interviewed me about my thoughts on diversity, similarity and equality which was amazing for me to delve into. queer stories will also be featured on his website which I'm excited about!