New Audience Formation through Queer Cross-Genre Performances

As a kid, my only audience was my family, and now I make art, that especially my family wouldn't understand.

The "New Audience Formation through Queer Cross-Genre Performances" lab brings together a diverse group of queer artists from various disciplines, exploring how audience formation might look if institutional and independent spaces were to turn towards queer practices, themes and structures.

How audiences can be diversified and what this change could mean sociopolitical? The visibility of queer artists in conservative, patriarchal performance venues could bring about a change that could extend to other areas. For example, the lab has engaged with performance practices that combine drag and contemporary dance with classical opera (e.g., Rusalka at the Stuttgart State Opera or DRAG & DRUM at Ballhaus Ost). It examines how an audience is newly formed there and how an exchange between different social strata could be promoted.

Through speculative workshops, lectures, and by attending a drag show, the artists of the lab have repeatedly addressed the questions of how queer artistic practices can diversify the audience and break societal norms. The diversity of the group, in particular, stood out as a central element of diversification. In an open studio, the public had the opportunity to attend the discussions. Additionally, a podcast and the publication of a zine will be produced.

Tunay Altay, Frida Giulia Franceschini, The House of Blænk, Heinrich Horwitz, Judy LaDivina, Ariel Nil Levy, Sarah Saviet, Kinga Ötvös, Valerie Renay, Shlomi Moto Wagner, Rosa Wernecke & Tomer Zirkilevich