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a proposal for DAAD

Study Schol arship for Vi sual Artists


Scott Val entine
Appl ication no. A1181720
1 Nov. 2011









East and West German Histories on Homosexuality


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My work interrogates the social, political and voyeuristic realities existing
simultaneously in todays world. I find their interconnection to digital technologies and the
capacities of human memory unique but relying on their collective useeach subscribes to a
conceptual existence rather than marked physical space. These threads run through my
work, taking form in photographic, video, and performative works.

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Cities are immense landscapes of interwoven public and personal histories.
Governing late-liberal political and economic rationales have imposed a bifurcated world
consisting of opposing truths on the social history of space and its inhabitants. As a topic:
the history, placement in the urban landscape and the taxonomies of homosexuality (both
female and male) becomes a unique point of entry into the social history of Germany.
I look to draw congruencies between the history of homosexuality and public spaces
in Berlin, combining: historical, psychological, artistic and urban topics. With the support of
DAAD, I will further my studies in German queer diasporas, language and the history of
homosexual identity. No greater city has bared witness to the physical division of space like
Berlin has resulting from the construction of die Mauer in 1961. in turn psychological borders
developed in regard to race and sexual identity. My plan is produce ephemeral interventions
circumscribing the old boundaries of die Mauer. I only hope to activate a conversation
regarding borders we construct socially and physically. By using the physical landscape as an
allegory, I address history and cultural amnesia of homosexuality.
The subsequent use of blockades, become a pivotal role in this project. Die Mauer
plays a key character in reshaping and intersecting homosexual territories. Die Mauers
existence (1961-1989), however, did not block a parallel socitial structure and political
resolve towards homosexuals; both states continuing to criminalize (mostly) men, under
Paragraph 175.
1
The division between East and West has only eroded but as Historians,
Robert Beachys essay The German Invention of Homosexuality, and Irgrid Sharps The
Sexual Unification of Germany, have suggested, there has been a lapse in telling a parallel
story of diverging homosexual histories.
In its present state, die Mauers dilapidated presence possesses a charged symbolic
duality of triumph and loss. Along die Mauer are several documented deaths of homosexuals
or those thought to be dolly-boys.
2
Despite wide social acceptance within some echelons of
society, homosexuality is still a deeply disputed identity minority. I plan to re-construct
transparent and passable areas of die Mauer, capitalizing on the pre/post-Cold War Era of
idealized masculinity the Fascist state imposed unto German men. Meanwhile, addressing
the Socialist Masculine semblance leftover in modern Germany.
3
Source materials exhibited
consist of photographs and videos I hope to find within the German National Archives.
These images will adhere to three distinct categories: military, urban architecture, and
entertainment venues of known queer activity.


1
Evans, Jennifer V..Decriminalization, Seduction and Unnatural Desire in East Germany, Feminists Studies 36, no.3
(Fall 2010), 557.
2
Ibid, 571.
3
Minning, Heidi, Who is the I in I Love You? The Negotiation of Gay and Lesbian Identities in Former east Berlin, Germany,
The Anthropology of east Europe review, 18, 2(2000).
Queer women were thought to be invisible within society.
4
Despite their elevated nature
within the states opinion, homosexual women were among the most prolific writers active
during this period of division. Including womens voices takes on a very literal meaning as
well as a semiological role as woman being a voice of truth. I will audio record sections of
seminal works by lesbian writers to be played over the videos, photographic and
performative works of military activities. Each side of the reconstructed wall allows for
projections. Projections from both sides are visual cues addressing a respective history of
homosexuality. Their combination on one surface and interaction with one another collapses
a myopic viewpoint of existing separately. As an ephemeral monument, this space becomes
what Historian Jeffrey Weeks eludes to when discussing sexualitys history, [as] a symbolic
battlegrounda surrogate medium through which other intractable battles [can] be fought.
5

Ephemeral Topographies bridge the physical and virtual by using die Mauers lack of
presence, personal experience as a homosexual with collective emotions, to raise questions
about how sociality, urban design, subjectivity, virtual spaces and territorial scales interact. I
seek to analyze the linkages and disconnections between the individual and larger, scaler
contexts. This actualization critiques perceptual and experiential alienation in mass society.
The spectaularization of lived experience and the individual as passive spectator remain
current preoccupations. Public Presence plays a critical role in a division of sexes between
hetero and homosexual bodies. These interventions lie at the intersection of sentiments of
doom and sentiments of hope for a different future. An affective and effective psychological
boundary becomes permeable, activated by the now physical presence of queer men and
women in the public arena.

4
Frank, Udo and Stakelbeck, Falk. From Perversion to Sexual Identity: Concepts of homosexuality and its treatment in Germany.
in Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy, 7:1-2, 25.
5
Weeks, Jeffrey. Sexuality and its Discontents: Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities (1985:London, 1993), 74.