In this workshop, we will start at the beginning of how people have come to see sex and gender in Europe. To understand what queer actually means, we will start with a brief outline on the situated histories of queerness in Europe and how categories like heterosexual and transgender were created? We will look at how the gender binary came to be seen as the epitome of civilization that only rich, mentally sane white people could achieve; learning that to understand what queer means, one also needs to understand intersectionality as a framework to looking at the world.
We will then move into looking at what does having this knowledge mean for daily practice. How does the gender binary create language and the other way around? How can an institution and the people in it become more inclusive towards gender non- conforming and trans/ non- binary individuals? Since modern times, art has always been a place where a certain experimentation with gender and sex was possible- think Prince for instance- so what does that mean for an art school? We will discuss how deconstructing these ideas is an important part of creating boundary crushing art.