Workshop: Eccentric Subject
«[...] The cartographer of minority sexual identities acts as a detective of the invisible, halfway between the secret policeman and the seer capable of bringing to light geographies hitherto hidden under the dominant map."
Paul Preciado, 2008
For a long time, lesbian identity was practically invisible. Hardly associated with images or imagery, when it was, it redounded to stereotypes created by heterosexual male gazes. In public space, lesbians were especially invisible, dematerialized or transparent bodies, which hardly had their own places or cartographies. The occupation and appropriation of the city's space by an identity is essential for it to construct itself as a political and social subject, and thus create visual and historical genealogies for future generations. But the fact that lesbian bodies in urban space have had little or no visibility does not mean that they have not existed.
How is lesbian identity inscribed and (self-)represented in urban space as it abandons its dematerialized condition? How can its visibility today generate new aesthetic, photographic and political imaginaries for the present and the future?
After the end of the dictatorships in the Iberian Peninsula, the lesbian body, uncomfortable and disruptive, that eccentric subject, emerged from the invisibility to which it had been subjected and generated new images and urban experiences. In this workshop, with the help of some films from the Hamaca archive and materials from the Centro de Documentación de Caladona, we will reflect on the dematerialized condition of the lesbian body and its first representations and inscriptions in public space in the last decades of the twentieth century. We will focus on the possibilities that these representations open up about lesbian identity and the space of cities.
To whom it is addressed:
To artistxs and anyone interested in cinematic creation or reflection and/or who use the image as a tool for expression and relationship with the world.
The workshop will be non-mixed. By this we mean that it is aimed at anyone who identifies as or around the lesbian body, as a woman, as trans, queer... except only those who identify as cis men.
Date and time: January 23rd and 25th from 18:00 to 21:00h
Place: 1st session at La Capella (C/ Hospital 56, Barcelona), 2nd session at Caladona Documentation Center (C/ Ripoll 25, Barcelona).
Price: free with previous inscription
Catarina Botelho
Visual artist and researcher. He is interested in the relationships between spaces, places, architectures, and their uses and experiences that challenge the productivist logic of urban space. In recent years she has been developing projects and researching the relationship of the lesbian body with the urban space in the Iberian Peninsula. He has exhibited in places such as the Museu de Arte, Arquitectura e Tecnologia (Lisboa, 2021), the Fundación FotoColectania (Barcelona, 2020), Sesc Pinheiros (São Paulo, 2015), Villa Iris of la Fundación Botín (Santander, 2014), Elba Benitez in Kvadrat (Madrid, 2012), the Centre de Cultura SaNostra (Palma de Mallorca, 2009), the Casa de Serralves - Fundação de Serralves (Porto, 2007) or La Casa Encendida (Madrid, 2005). In recent years he has received scholarships from the Fundación "la Caixa" (2018), the Fundación Gulbenkian (2018), the Ayuntamiento de Barcelona (2021) and the la Generalitat de Catalunya (2022). She has a degree in Fine Arts from the FBA University of Lisbon, in 2018 she completed the independent studies program (PEI) at MACBA and in 2022 she completed the MUECA - Máster de Estudios Culturales y Artes Visuales (Perspectiva Feminista/Queer-Cuir) of Universidad Miquel Hernández.
This workshop belongs to the #HamacaAprende > con_artistas | 4 cartas de amor and is a collaboration between Hamaca and La Capella that is part of the Concèntric program.