An exhibition review of queertopolis. 18-19 May 2022, Sommerblut Festival, Phoenix Sauna, Cologne.
Phoenix Sauna Cologne as a queer utopia
"Desire yourselves!"[1] is the title of the announcement for an art and performance event in the temporary cultural and sauna landscape queertopolis in Cologne. It is an ambitious project that the artists and activists want to dedicate themselves to as part of the annual Sommerblut festival and it fits perfectly into the programme of the alternative cultural project Summer blood. Following the coronavirus lockdowns and the recent festival cancellation due to the pandemic, the organisers quickly proclaimed a "festival of radical love". "Now is the time for new forms of community, encounters and liveliness!" was the passionate, but also slightly threatening message for the two-week programme. The organisers of queertopolis already demonstrated their ambition in their unassuming claim to proclaim a "queer utopia of desire" - mind you, in the Phoenix Sauna, a popular venue among gay men, a place that is exclusively available to men for sex with men outside of the art festival.
Queer diversity as the theme of the exhibition
As far as the content of the art project is concerned, it is no coincidence that "Desire yourselves!" in the event title oscillates between invitation, invitation and command. With their unconventional description of contemporary sexual and body culture, the artists immediately deliver a judgement and mandate in one: "In a public sphere in which heterosexual, monogamous relationships, often led by young, white bodies without disabilities, form the norm, the diversity of physicality, love and desire often remains invisible. We want to change that!"
Whilst the project management by Jakob Heimbach and the artistic direction by Martin Zepter and Elle Fierce, as stated on the festival’s website, suggest an exhibition organised along the lines of the traditional art world, visitors to the exhibition and performances soon get a different impression. A large number of activists and artists are clearly involved in the queertopolis art project, which is down to the organisers’ commitment to involving the various groups across the LGBTIQ spectrum in the planning and design. This is particularly evident in the numerous rooms and booths, each redesigned in their own way; the diverse range of workshops on offer; the meticulously organised awareness team, staffed by a large number of people; and the many different individuals offering performances and discussion spaces.
From a cruising spot to an art space
The gay sauna, which is usually bathed in rather dim lighting and pulsating techno music, presents a completely different picture under the direction of these queer artists. In quite a few places, regular visitors to this cruising spot cannot help but feel that this venue for sexual encounters – typically of a rather anonymous and fleeting nature – is simply being turned on its head: into a compulsively pluralistic oasis of well-being, characterised by safety and control.
In the entrance area of the venue, where bare, tiled corners would normally invite people to have sex in full view of everyone present, there are now soft blankets, a canopy and, to top it all off, a unicorn soft toy.
Instead of the darkness and confusion that are usually deliberately created, colourful lighting and wayfinding aids now dominate.
The booths, which are usually available for sex between two people or in groups, now host small audio-visual exhibitions and, above all, encourage self-reflection.
Awareness rather than atmosphere
In any case, explicit and implicit calls for reflection and self-examination are omnipresent. „Who are you when you’re alone?“, „What is your queer utopia?“, „Meditation and relaxation room“, „Discussion group: Queer and religiosity“… everywhere you go as a visitor, you are always addressed in a friendly manner, but the sheer volume of it all comes across as intrusive and pedagogically prescriptive. As a result, the exhibition unfortunately fails to realise its own potential: rather than maintaining, at least to a sufficient extent, the atmosphere of a space for experiencing sexual tension, shadiness and alienation—at least to a sufficient extent—and making it accessible to a wider audience, queertopolis remains far too clearly focused on ensuring its visitors’ sense of well-being and self-discovery.
This is particularly evident in the safety and awareness programme, which the organisers undoubtedly highlight as the most stringent aspect of the exhibition. Not only were visitors made aware in advance – via email, by being spoken to whilst queuing, by signing a form on entry, through notices, announcements and, finally, by safety officers marked with lights during the event, but, moreover, the „Labyrinth of Passion“ was the only area available for sexual encounters. This was to be understood as „a sex-positive space for hot, tender, consensual interaction, where you are invited to have fun and get closer to one another“; in all other areas, „talking and thinking about sex is welcome, but sexual interaction is not desired“.
When a gay sauna becomes a place of relaxation
The exhibition’s well-intentioned but, unfortunately, markedly overemphasised „awareness“ concept, on the other hand, raises a number of critical questions regarding the event’s implications in terms of gender: Do the organisers regard a gay sauna – or even the self-proclaimed queer utopia – as a fundamentally dangerous proposition? What notions of sexuality are at play here? And are the ‘FLINTA people’[2] – who are given such prominence in the exhibition space – understood, above all, as being in need of protection and care?
Awareness, control and the question of desire
Nevertheless, focusing solely on harsh criticism of the exhibition’s central theme – which prioritises attitudes and education over ambivalence and disorientation – does not do justice to the successful aspects of *queertopolis*. The sexual education sessions on the upper floor of the sauna were not only visibly popular during the exhibition, but undoubtedly represent an exciting addition to the standard offering of a sex sauna. Why not give visitors who are interested the opportunity to gain accessible and practical insights into, for example, bondage practices or sex toys?
Gay saunas could certainly take inspiration from this. The interview, conducted by queer artists with an AIDS survivor and the founder of the gay Phoenix Sauna in one of the art cubicles, also blends pleasantly and elegantly into the artistic programme, particularly because the interviewers see themselves as listeners. The joy and humour generated by the (sometimes unsettling) cross-gender encounters in the sauna rooms are also clearly palpable in the atmosphere time and again, and for brief moments actually allow a more relaxed – and thus freer – relationship between the genders to flourish.
Whether the heterogeneity so fervently championed by queer activists, and the strenuous insistence on desire free from exclusion (or the experience of it) but devoid of sexual passion and adventurousness, is truly so beneficial is another matter entirely. As is well known, sex parties with a queer-feminist ethos rarely lack awareness of diversity or concepts for maintaining boundaries, but they often lack the very reason for the event itself: sex. What is striking about the „queertopolis“ event at the Phoenix Sauna, which celebrates plurality, is that the ‘queer utopia’ tends, in turn, to appeal to a homogeneous group; after all, it is primarily women and queer people of younger and middle age, with an obvious affinity for the symbolism and gestures of queer-feminist subculture, who frequent the venue.
However, the initiative also achieved something that the vast majority of sexuality-affirming and subcultural events almost always fail to provide: making the event accessible to people with disabilities, which was ensured on both days of the event through measures such as sign language interpretation and sighted guides. Unlike many other spaces deliberately designed to be more accessible, the services on offer in this case were actually taken up by attendees.
What Queertopolis has achieved at the Phoenix Sauna
Another artistic highlight of the exhibition is the performance by the Leipzig-based artist and dancer Elle Fierce: Remarkably billed as a „consensus performance“, this interactive piece embraced moments of ambiguity, confrontation and boundary-pushing – elements that were otherwise largely neglected in the exhibition as a whole. Fierce set up a small room – normally used for anonymous group sex and, above all, fisting – under video surveillance and lay down naked in a sling, wearing a black motorbike helmet. The artist did not need to do much more than that; the visually and semantically powerful performative setting immediately plunged the space and its visitors into an atmosphere of tension and overwhelm, particularly through the evoked failure to socially categorise the situation.
Anyone who entered the performance consented to being filmed and to the use of their own image, but was also allowed to wear a black motorbike helmet. It was precisely these helmets that disrupted communication through gaze and speech, thereby creating a situation characteristic of cruising. Furthermore, the motionless artist did not react to any of the touches or attempts at contact. Here, the dynamics of surrender, appropriation and exploitation were revealed in an extremely striking manner, in all their ambivalence and fragility, hovering between pleasure and danger, yet without – as in much of the rest of the exhibition – leading to explanation or moralising.
What remains of the queer utopia?
It is only at this point that the exhibition finally raises questions of artistic and queer-political significance in a more profound and tangible way: What does the presence of the Other trigger in me? And what have I (not) done? And can this even be articulated and resolved within sexual communication?
[1]Taken from the facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1573825809749586/1573825816416252/?active_tab=about
[2] In this queer-feminist context, FLINTA stands for the conceptual summarisation of non-cis-male gender identities and self-concepts which, in addition to women, explicitly refer to lesbians, inter, non-binary, trans and so-called agender people.
