A queer September

A series of queer happenings has begun at the State Gallery of Contemporary Art – SPEL in Nicosia and will continue to take it over as Sessions organises events that will fill the autumn agenda. Theatre and dance performances, screenings, workshops, talks, concerts, parties, weekly meetings and discussions will take place until the end of the year showcasing a wide range of projects that honour the multiplicity of interpretation and engagement.

Eight events will take place at the gallery this month, in parallel to the Cerebral Gym curated by Loizos Olympios which is an anti-collection of queer printed matter, engaging with archival and publishing practices.

On Friday, the 4^th edition of the LGBTQIA+ film festival Queer Wave will begin with an opening ceremony at SPEL. The opening event at 9pm is directed by Evita Ioannou and choreographed by Belinda Papavasilio and is a queer reimagining of iconic cinema moments. The festival will then screen an eclectic selection of recent Cypriot and international works, alongside gems of queer cinema, until September 17. Across the 10 days of the festival, over 20 screenings, discussion panels and parallel events featuring local artists and DJs will take place.

For the closing of Queer Wave 2023 and after the open-air screenings on the roof, a music and song night will take place at SPEL where Cypriot performers and artists will present a storytelling of Cypriot cultural indulgence interspersed with classics from bouzoukia and meyhanes.

On September 23, Cerebral Gym will present the second version of Loulles, a play on homosexuality in Cyprus in the 1990s, before decriminalisation and Pride, seen through the public discourse on mass media, as well as the personal lives of gay men. Directed by Diomedes Koufteros, the play includes a subjective collage of images from the 90s with verbatim personal testimonies, cringe archive material, sharp monologues, Eurovision drag and memory warps.

The next event by Cerebral Gym is a workshop by Marina Georgiou titled Archival Futures on September 27. “At this workshop,” say organisers, “we will be co-creating the language and tools for an alternate Cypriot archive rooted in colloquial intersectional queer and feminist values. Drawing from concepts of refusal, embodiment, naughtiness, time travel and the erotic, we will map out our archival future. Participants are encouraged to bring an archival object from their own collection for sharing with the group.”

On September 29, Panayiotis Michael and Christina Lambrou will host an open discussion reflecting on SPEL’s role as a state-run exhibition space, as it appears and disappears through Sessions. Marina Georgiou will return on September 30 for another workshop titled Wik’ed Bitches and Queers. The workshop will attempt to change the dominant narrative by editing Wikipedia pages with anti-heroic queer and feminist histories. No previous experience is needed to join, simply attending with a laptop is enough.

Finally, on September 30, the Open House Festival by Dance House Lemesos and Sessions will present the dance performance Atlas da Boca by Gaya de Medeiros. The 8.30pm performance explores two trans bodies through the mouth. As a symbol, the mouth becomes the interface between the public and the private, between the erotic and the political, and between silence and the word that lasts. Questioning the ‘words-gestures’, this piece delves into the moments in which the mouth hardens, letting the words come out roaring.

Sessions

A series of queer events, discussions and workshops. Throughout September. State Gallery of Contemporary Art – SPEL, Nicosia. Facebook page@sesssssions. Tel: 22-479600