This working group is interested in exploring queer “intimate geographies.” What are the spaces that can be mapped through intimacy, how do we map cartographies based on desire, refuge and local/community practices? The idea of cartography is a great metaphor to analyze body and erotic practices—among others—because the body can be a territory for social struggles, and is in a continued process of transformation. How can we think and make towards the creation of a ‘queer utopic space,’ a wildness which evolves alongside a continually renewing present; or, the production of multiplicities through fabulation in performance, installation, text-based and conceptual practice? Can identity/practices be a place, a state, or stance?
We are interested in the practices and bodies that (de)structure and decolonialize both hetero and homonormative spaces and identities. How do bodies and practices create ruptures in normative logics and structures? Can we find refuge in “queer utopic spaces?” Or in indigenous practices and knowledge? In “deviant” pleasures and places? How do we find these alternate routes? How do we map them in our artistic and scholarly work? Our working group aims to analyze social-artistic-erotic practices that construct different ways of understanding bodies, places and identities.