Shutdown Program #5
Antonio Centeno Ortiz and Raúl de la Morena, Yes, We Fuck!
Crip Magazine #3
VIDEO + MAGAZINE
Context: Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead: Politics of Life
The exhibition Politics of LifeActually, the Dead Are Not Dead. Politics of Life is dedicated to life: understood beyond the alleged binary oppositions of subject and object, human and animal, health and illness, life and death. At the centre is the fragility and vulnerability of life, not as something that we need to overcome, but from where we can rethink society, politics and emancipation.
Among the works in the exhibition is the video Yes, We Fuck! by Antonio Centeno Ortiz and Raúl de la Morena (2015, 59'). Yes, We Fuck! is one of the most beautiful and touching films about sexuality and at the same time a strong political statement, demanding the right to sex and physical closeness for everyone, including those who were already locked up before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The film deals with the sexual and political desire of people with functional, mental or intellectual diversity and their fight not to be treated like children. It talks about post-porn workshops, sexual assistance as a profession and vocation, the recognition of one’s body as both desiring and desirable, and of political imaginaries and narratives.
In his contribution to the second Parliament of Bodies at Bergen Assembly 2019, which was re-printed in the Crip Magazine #3 Centeno says:
„ … what is the use of putting ramps in every nightclub if no one wants to dance with us? We have to understand that we are facing a general situation of discrimination and oppression … [The] biased, stereotyping, and polarizing cultural representation of functional diversity also incorporates a permanently infantilizing and asexualizing gaze. And of course, if we are seen as children, then we will be treated as such. An idea is constructed around us that our families are responsible for us and that this dependency is natural. That is why it is necessary to sexualize functional diversity, in order to repoliticize it. The more we become visible as sexed and sexual beings, as desiring and desirable bodies, the more difficult it will be to keep treating us like children, and if we are not children, then it is not natural for us to depend on our families."
- Crip Magazin #3, 2019, Cover
- Crip Magazin #3, 2019, p. 6-7, Julia B., Nicole voec, Reflections on Critiques of Normalcy
- Crip Magazin #3, 2019, p. 12-13, Romily Alice Walden
- Crip Magazin #3, 2019, p. 46-47, Rania Hofer, The Future Is Accessible (46), Iris Kopera (47)
- Crip Magazin #3, 2019, p. 52-53, Walter Ego (52)
- Crip Magazin #3, 2019, p. 56, Shannon Finnegan
Founded by the artist and academic Eva Egermann, the Crip Magazine explores forms of representation opposing the conditions of normality/abnormality. Crip Magazine #3 was produced as part of Bergen Assembly 2019. The magazine brings together artistic and textual contributions from different contexts by functionally and intellectually diverse authors. The cover shows the photo of a performance by the artist Lorenza Böttner, which Egermann took in 2019 at the Württembergischer Kunstverein. The performance dealt with the figure of Venus of Milo. In the editorial of Crip Magazine #3 Egermann writes:
"In discourses on disability aesthetics, representations of Venus de Milo became a topic: Tobin Siebers and Lennard Davis have written about it, and artists like Alison Lapper and Mary Duffy (e.g., in her photographic series Cutting the Ties that Bind) have referred to depictions of Venus de Milo in their artistic work. Interestingly, this reference also appears in the oeuvre of Lorenza Böttner … The Venus tradition is founded in the idea of mutilation, fragmented bodies, decapitation, and amputation. As Kaja Silverman points out, referencing images of the body in film, society creates a 'protective shield' that insulates it against the possibility of mutilation, fragmentation, and castration (Silverman, 14). We bring back the limbs through our imagination. A phenomenon not unlike the experience of a phantom limb, as Lennard Davis writes, referencing psychoanalytic theory. But the 'real' body, the observer’s body, is in fact always already a 'fragmented' one. 'We all—first and foremost—have fragmented bodies. It is in tracing our tactical and self constructing (deluding) journeys away from that originary self that we come to conceive and construct that phantom goddess of wholeness, normalcy, and unity—the nude' (Davis, 141). '(Queer-)crip perspectives can help to keep our attention on disruptive, inappropriate, composing bodies—bodies that invoke the future horizon beyond straight composition' (McRuer, 155)."
Crip Magazine #3
Eds.: Eva Egermann, Iris Dressler
56 pages, English
Coproduced by Bergen Assembly 2019, "Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead"
and in collaboration with DISTA
With contributions by:
Julia B. / Nicole voec, C.R.E.M.E. Collective, Cyborg Disko Werkstatt, Iris Dressler, Eva Egermann, Walter Ego, Valérie Favre, Shannon Finnegan, Jonah Garde, Raina Hofer, Ianina Ilitcheva, Jakob Jakobsen, Iris Kopera, Jemina Lindholm, Eliah Lüthi, Antonio Centeno Ortiz, Philmarie, Paul B. Preciado, Volker Schönwiese, Sunaura Taylor, Utopieklub (Eva Egermann & Linda Bilda), Romily Alice Walden
