View video interviews here.<\/a><\/p>\n by Todd Lanier Lester<\/p>\n Naming a program \u2018Queer City\u2019 is an occasion to both admit that we don\u2019t define \u2018queer\u2019 or imagine that it means only one thing and to openly ask what a queer urban future might look\/feel like? Jose Esteban Mu\u00f1oz begins his book,\u00a0Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity\u00a0<\/em>(2009), with these words: \u201cQueerness is an aspiration toward the future. To be queer is to imagine better possible futures.\u201d<\/p>\n Queerness is a broad term, one that can certainly be linked to a range of LGBT+ politics and realities, as well as histories, futures and places. For our purposes, \u2018Queer City\u2019 opens a discussion on how we live and work in, share and survive the contemporary city, with S\u00e3o Paulo as our outlook. We are therefore equally interested in acknowledging common ground and understanding counter narratives. In \u201cQueer Ecology: Nature, Sexuality and Heterotopic Alliances<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>Matthew Gandy shares the view of architectural historian Aaron Betsky that the \u201cqueer space is \u2018a space of difference\u2019, an arena of doubt, self-criticism, and \u201cthe possibility of liberation.\u201d<\/p>\n This makes sense for a program that came out of a partnership between\u00a0Lanchonete.org<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Musagetes<\/a>, via its ArtsEverywhere online platform.\u00a0Lanchonete.org is an artist-led cultural platform that gets its name from the ubiquitous lunch counters \u2014 convivial, fluorescent-lit, open-walled, laborious, points of commerce \u2014 that populate almost every street corner. There are approximately 30 people who participate in Lanchonete.org \u2014 artists, architects, urban planners, professors, students, activists, members of the housing movement, gardeners, journalists, etc. \u2014 and it is still growing.\u00a0Musagetes is a Canadian philanthropic organization that works in cities globally to make the arts more central and meaningful in peoples\u2019 lives and their communities. It does this by developing artistic projects and platforms in which to experiment with how the arts relate to and critique the world around us. This website \u2014 ArtsEverywhere.ca \u2014 is one form of Musagetes\u2019 work.<\/p>\n Lanchonete.org and Musagetes relate to French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre\u2019s \u201cRight to the City,\u201d or one that asserts, in his own words, a \u201c . . . demand [for] a transformed and renewed access to urban life.\u201d We want people from all\u00a0walks of life<\/em>\u00a0to feel comfortable participating in Queer City.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how Queer City came to be:<\/p>\n In November 2015, Lanchonete.org and Musagetes planned a weeklong series of activities in collaboration with the 23rd Annual Mix Brasil Festival to provoke an open discussion focused on the relationship between queerness and life in the contemporary city. The idea was to make a program of activities focused on the relationship between queerness and life in the contemporary city, including a film screening, a panel, a walk in the city center, and an open discussion.<\/p>\n Carlos Motta (Colombia) and\u00a0Maya Mikdashi<\/a>\u00a0(Lebanon) screened their short film collaboration,\u00a0Deseos<\/em>, which exposes ways by which medicine, law and religion shape discourses of the gendered body. After the screening, they were joined in a panel discussion by Ezio Rosa, the art-educator and author behind\u00a0Bicha Nag\u00f4<\/a>, who added his\u00a0experiences on living and making work in the periphery of S\u00e3o Paulo. And finally, on Saturday, November 21st, there was\u00a0a walk in the Center of S\u00e3o Paulo<\/a>, led by the actor Paulo Goya and Thiago Carrapatoso (with the participation of the S\u00e3o Paulo Network of Heritage Education [Repep]), with the goal of remembering the queer history of the area through the personal account of a longtime denizen.\u00a0We ended the walk at\u00a0Ponto Aurora<\/a>\u00a0and had an open discussion about the future of the idea. From there, a\u00a0year-long program began to take shape. During\u00a0the\u00a02016 program, we will continue to engage those with whom we share the\u00a0city\u00a0<\/span>\u2014\u00a0queer<\/span>\u00a0people and their allies.<\/p>\n One of the projects within Queer City is called \u201cJanta: Queer Food\/Queer Politics\u201d, a monthly dinner at the home of Paulo Goya, Casar\u00e3o do Belvedere. After leading the walk last November \u2014 and seeing how much interest there is in \u2018remembering\u2019 the city\u2019s queer history together while taking part in its future \u2014 he and Thiago Carrapatoso proposed a regular dinner to do just that.\u00a0En brev<\/em>, the idea of Janta is \u2018being at home\u2019 with a community and enjoying each other\u2019s company over good food . . . and fierce debate! Janta serves as a trampoline for a range of projects of all sizes within the Queer City initiative.<\/p>\n By the end of the program, we believe that using a lens of queerness will have encouraged fruitful discussions and joint interrogation of how we share the city. In fact,\u00a0The Queer City Reader<\/em>, a collaboration with Publication Studio S\u00e3o Paulo and .Aurora will attempt to contextualize these discussions in relation to queer thought from all over the world. The reader will be released in March 2017. Additionally our crossbeam activities help to inform the Queer City initiative and vice versa. These activities include hosting a Haitian photojournalist to document the growing Haitian diaspora community in Brasil; hosting Zimbabwean artist, Lucia Nhamo who received the Bamako Encounters jury prize (awarded to a female artist whose work broadens and\/or challenges perspectives on contemporary African migrations) of a two-month residency to look at older and newer African migrations in Salvador and S\u00e3o Paulo, respectively; hosting Edgar Calel, an indigenous (Mayan) Guatemalan artist in collaboration with\u00a0Lastro Arte<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Cultural Center at\u00a0S\u00e3o Jo\u00e3o Occupation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Source: Residency Unlimited<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"Photo](\"http:\/\/i0.wp.com\/artseverywhere.ca\/artseverywhere\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/MayraAzzi-1618.jpg?resize=640%2C426\")