Sprint4_Week8#The Common: The idea of Queer Common on Day2

One way of addressing the question of how to live together is through what we may or may not have in common. Thinking about the common and the in-common, hence, becomes a way of asking how we might find ways of building and sustaining social relations, not through economic transactions, but by establishing relationships to ownership and context in everyday life, through action, labor, and in duration. (Céline Condorelli)

Our topic: Queer Common

Activity:

What already exists for this aspect of the commons (relevant data, facts, literature, practitioners, projects, organisations etc)

1/ I’ve found a website about the LGBTQ+, and it is a LGBTQIA Resource Center which is to provide an open, safe, inclusive space and community that is committed to challenging sexism, cissexism/trans oppression/transmisogyny, heterosexism, monosexism, and allosexism. The LGBTQIA+ Resource Center values and honors that we are complex, multifaceted, and whole individuals. The LGBTQIA+ Resource Center is a dynamic, responsive and collaborative organization that serves UC Davis and the surrounding region by providing a growing spectrum of programs, resources, outreach and advocacy. In my opinion, it sounds like a digital common.

2/ A website named Stonewall is also a digital common for the LGBTQ+, many people who self-identify as queer share their real lives on the site and organise offline events and appeals to resist TRANSFORM’s treatment.

3/ A bot on instagram named Queer_Hub, with hundreds of followers, people who self-identify as cool will contribute their personal information to this account and find like-minded friends.

4/ Outright, is the only global LGBTIQ organisation with advisory status and a permanent presence at UN Headquarters, where we advocate for the human rights and equality of LGBTIQ people, serve as the secretariat of the UN LGBTI Caucus and act as a watchdog government for all 193 worlds.

5/ A physical common, which was named Queering the Burton in York, York Museums Trust (YMT), specifically York Art Gallery (YAG) and York LGBT Forum have formed a partnership, the Queering Group, which aims to expand the stories told in the YAG collection, leading to greater inclusion and social justice/equality for the LGBTQ+ community. At the Queer Museum with Matt Smith event, audiences will draw on two of his exhibitions – Queering the Museum at Birmingham Museum and Losing Venus at the Pitt Rivers Museum – and this session will explore how Matt interrogates and subverts museum exhibitions to bring queer and LGBTQI+ life to light and question whether the museum space is a good place to queer.

6/ Queer circle, the organisation Queercircle has secured a permanent home in London in Greenwich, opening in June 2022. A physical common. Run by founder Ashley Joiner, LGBTQ+ charity Queercircle works at the intersection of arts, culture and social action, and has been running workshops and events with artists, curators, writers and community organisers since 2016. There is a main gallery space, reading room, library and project space to help Queercircle run community-focused exhibition commissions, collaborative artist residencies and year-long learning and engagement opportunities. They plan to schedule three seasons per year, each of which will include exhibitions of LGBTQ+ contemporary artists, archival exhibitions and participatory residencies.

The strengths, limitations and possibilities of what you find;

2/ Strength: The content of queer is more popular in the perspective of the social commons, and there are more materials, websites and observational communities to read, so there are more abundant materials for reference; in addition, our group’s research is based on the Chinese context, we are all Chinese, and we know more about the Chinese queer context and political state, so we are able to analyse the content of Chinese queer common in conjunction with existing materials.

Limitations: In China, queer still does not have its own political discourse, and it is difficult for us to conduct research from an “open and honest” perspective, so we have created a digital and physical public space. In addition, the development of queer in China has popular limitations, so the pace of development is slower compared to Western countries, and we need to review previous theories before conducting comparative studies.