Queer Square Skopje
27/10/2007
By
PR Department of MASSO
On October the 4th, as part of Queer Square Skopje 2007, cultural/art festival, took place "The Naked conference", a project created as a performance/discussion by Sands Murray-Wassink and Elke Krystufek.
This project followed a two day program which consisted of Brazilian documentary queer movies projections at the cultural center Tocka (Skopje) and was proceeded by a lesbian workshop steered by Lepa Mladzenovik, one of the founders of the feminist and lesbian movement in Serbia, and a Love is Love party at the club Papaya, with DJ set of Marco Lenzi (London) and fa number of Macedonian DJs.
The realization of the project was preceded by intense communication and preparations with the artists (Sands Murray-Wassink and Elke Krystufek) during a period of several months.
Unfortunately a few problems and obstacles appeared during the organisational process. Less then a week before the event was supposed to take place, Elke Krystufek cancelled her participation, as a result of personal problems that came out unexpectedly. Thanks to the good will of Sands Murray-Wassink, Suzana MIlevska and the team of MASSO, the whole project was rethought and re-conceptualized, and was decided that the project will take place in different, but similar form.
The form we came out with was structured in three levels: “The dressed conference” – a discussion moderated by Suzana Milevska, with participation of Sands Murray-Wassink (who presented his art concept regarding the body, sexuality and new subject positions his tending to inaogurate), Suzana Milevska (moderator od the conference who presented a brief focused on gender masquarade and the social engagement of contemporary art), Zarko Trajanovski (local expert for democracy, human rights, and sexuality-presentation about the rights of the body) and Slavco Dimitrov (comparative literature theorist, feminist and LGBT activist-presentation titled "Homosexuality and homosexuality" focused on regulatory and discursive mechanisms of the homosexual body); “The naked conference 1” – a short projection of the video with the original Naked conference performed in Vienna, followed with comments of the artist and at the end, “The naked conference ½ “, the performance/discussion.
All of these three structural elements were supposed to take place at the press to exit project space, just as it was arranged with the project space more then a month ago.
Sadly, here we were faced with one more problem that was out of the horizon of everyone’s expectations. The current ambassador of the Swiss embassy had severe remarks regarding the Naked conference, finding it as an inappropriate event for a public space as the project space, situated in the same building as the embassy.
The extraordinary strong faith and will shown by the people working at press to exit project space, and their strong principle regarding the already established cooperation with all of us, was crucial for resolving this gap, and in the end, the solution we all came up to was that the conference will be relocated to the offices of press to exit project space, in Kapistec. It was decided that the “Dressed conference” would take place at the main space of press to exit, while the next two parts, the short video projection and the performance will take place at the off space. This was actually the official program that was realized on the 4th of October. Transportation (cars and taxis) was provided for the audience that came for the “Dressed conference” in order to get easier to the other space which was not greatly familiar to the wider audience .
Regarding the attendance of the event, MASSO is very satisfied, which can also be said for the reactions to the conference/performance.
Beside the news articles that announced the opening of the festival which contained information about the “Naked conference” in general, two articles were published afterwards as well, one interview with Sands Murray-Wassink in the daily newspaper Vest, and one news article in the weekly magazine Globus .
This project was entirely covered by the Swiss Cultural Programme Macedonia.
This project followed a two day program which consisted of Brazilian documentary queer movies projections at the cultural center Tocka (Skopje) and was proceeded by a lesbian workshop steered by Lepa Mladzenovik, one of the founders of the feminist and lesbian movement in Serbia, and a Love is Love party at the club Papaya, with DJ set of Marco Lenzi (London) and fa number of Macedonian DJs.
The realization of the project was preceded by intense communication and preparations with the artists (Sands Murray-Wassink and Elke Krystufek) during a period of several months.
Unfortunately a few problems and obstacles appeared during the organisational process. Less then a week before the event was supposed to take place, Elke Krystufek cancelled her participation, as a result of personal problems that came out unexpectedly. Thanks to the good will of Sands Murray-Wassink, Suzana MIlevska and the team of MASSO, the whole project was rethought and re-conceptualized, and was decided that the project will take place in different, but similar form.
The form we came out with was structured in three levels: “The dressed conference” – a discussion moderated by Suzana Milevska, with participation of Sands Murray-Wassink (who presented his art concept regarding the body, sexuality and new subject positions his tending to inaogurate), Suzana Milevska (moderator od the conference who presented a brief focused on gender masquarade and the social engagement of contemporary art), Zarko Trajanovski (local expert for democracy, human rights, and sexuality-presentation about the rights of the body) and Slavco Dimitrov (comparative literature theorist, feminist and LGBT activist-presentation titled "Homosexuality and homosexuality" focused on regulatory and discursive mechanisms of the homosexual body); “The naked conference 1” – a short projection of the video with the original Naked conference performed in Vienna, followed with comments of the artist and at the end, “The naked conference ½ “, the performance/discussion.
All of these three structural elements were supposed to take place at the press to exit project space, just as it was arranged with the project space more then a month ago.
Sadly, here we were faced with one more problem that was out of the horizon of everyone’s expectations. The current ambassador of the Swiss embassy had severe remarks regarding the Naked conference, finding it as an inappropriate event for a public space as the project space, situated in the same building as the embassy.
The extraordinary strong faith and will shown by the people working at press to exit project space, and their strong principle regarding the already established cooperation with all of us, was crucial for resolving this gap, and in the end, the solution we all came up to was that the conference will be relocated to the offices of press to exit project space, in Kapistec. It was decided that the “Dressed conference” would take place at the main space of press to exit, while the next two parts, the short video projection and the performance will take place at the off space. This was actually the official program that was realized on the 4th of October. Transportation (cars and taxis) was provided for the audience that came for the “Dressed conference” in order to get easier to the other space which was not greatly familiar to the wider audience .
Regarding the attendance of the event, MASSO is very satisfied, which can also be said for the reactions to the conference/performance.
Beside the news articles that announced the opening of the festival which contained information about the “Naked conference” in general, two articles were published afterwards as well, one interview with Sands Murray-Wassink in the daily newspaper Vest, and one news article in the weekly magazine Globus .
This project was entirely covered by the Swiss Cultural Programme Macedonia.
