:: Festival Documentation ::
:: 21.12.21 :: ACUD Theater :: SlovoKult :: literARTour 2020 Berlin
Text collage for the Biennial SlovoKult :: literARTour 2020 :: Berlin
Divided into three languages :: DE :: MK :: EN with artworks by Dijna Tomik Radevska and Michaela Strumberger :: in the festival anthology 2020 ::
:: Here you read the first part of the text, that is not in the anthology ::
English translation by :: Nadia Crocker ::
:: Also in German ::
A brief flicker in the eyes; a touch that seems to mean something.
Like when I was on the roof terrace of a large publishing house, with a view over the glittering skyline.
Microwaves of a feverish enthusiasm: something different. Something new. Awaited for so long. At last. I was struck by this twinkle in many pairs of eyes, its refraction in the glass facades –
Like now by your clean-shaven arms, your passionate over-performance of femininity, your ultra-soft ultra-marine hair, your perfume wafting through the hallway.
Then: orderly retreat. I can see it in your gaze, which changes according to the light, which slides off me. As if my body had no hooks, no rungs to grasp onto.
The email came a week later: We can only make promises when the text becomes more legible.
I sat there, for weeks, sanding it down, smoothing it over here and there, without knowing what legible actually means (legible for whom?), trying to see my words through the eyes of someone, let’s say: the big Other.
The rejection came, weeks later, without comment.
Now I’m sitting here again, asking myself – what is legible, for what, for whom, all while on your balcony a guy with a bald head and beard often stands smoking.
*
Since the release of Testo Junkie, ten, five, two years have passed. The controlled poisoning has eaten its way through Spanish, French, English, and finally into German – both a disease and its cure at the same time.
For three years now, the issue of the Feminist Press has sat in my bookcase. It managed the transfer from Spanish, into French, into English. But only recently has the virus found a new host. The fault lies with a few zines from Belgium. In one of them, a young trans man discusses a book about testosterone, which – according to his review- doesn’t contain a single phrase that addresses the perspective of trans people.
Have you read Testo Junkie? I want to ask him. And then I remember, that I still haven’t read it myself.
So the reason for taking the book off the shelf now is a soupçon of a crush on M., who I once saw at the Zine Fest in Berlin, pretty much at the beginning of his transition. Tall, slim, black skinny jeans, short blond hair, thick glasses. No beard as yet.
I’m surprised by this crush, because I’m generally attracted to feminine or androgynous people. Feminine, androgynous – whatever one might imagine.
So what is it about M.?
The dandyish, I say impromptu to a mutual friend.
She nods and laughs.
When I look at M., I see free-floating attributes that, like bees or butterflies, settle on his body for a moment or longer:[1] softness, vulnerability, warmth. Here, on and in M., they have lost their typically female connotation. Perhaps because M., consciously or unconsciously, has such perfect command of the codes of a twink, a geek, and of a sissyboy aesthetic, that they do not doubt his gender identity for a second.
[1] Or it’s also possible that they eat themselves out from within to the surface, where they throw volatile bubbles.
:: The last part of the text you will find in the festival-anthology :: SlovoKult :: literARTour 2020 ::