After the hour long plane ride into Copenhagen with Mel (a person I met at the airport and recognized from around) we got a train into town. I picked up a guild to the city since it had a city map on it and for fun was looking through it on the way into to the Central Station and in the events and things to do was… Queer Festival! I was a bit shocked and was feeling unclear as to what to expect from the event, but when I got to the space I instantly recognized tons of folks from Queeruption Barcelona and felt right at home.
The fest was in a big stone building the organizers had rented with money they had gotten from a grant from the Copenhagen City Arts Council. It was a part of a whole square with other venues/spaces connected to it and there were triangular benches in the middle of the square along with a stage with kiddy pools on it and a large tent where people were lounging. On the side on the main building was a tent set up also with a kitchen space that was open and where people could go get tea and coffee and make sandwiches and help cook meals (with suggested donation). When I walked in the space there was a room on the left with a rug and couches and three huge pictures on the wall, to the right was the main performance space/stage (where later there was a huge amount of lights and sound equipment loaded in), up some stairs from the stage there was a bar and some chairs, down the hall behind the living room was bathrooms and a storage room. On the next floor up (1st/2nd floor) there was an amazing gallery space with an info booth with rad zine/program guides. I think that total there were 5 gallery rooms with pictures from tons of events and sculptures and exhibits by different trans women, documents of performance, drag queen costume patter designs, a chair made of stuffed socks, found art and graffiti, and so forth. There was also a dress up room which was a very helpful and a well used part of the festival through out the week. Lastly, in the stairway between the gallery and the attick was a computer station with free internet and the attick was where some people were sleeping, storing their bags, and later in the week was turned into a dungon. The basement was kind of a lot of rooms full of electrical boxes and amps but serves also as the ‘dress room’ and had a shower for the lovely squatting kids who needed to bathe.
The first day I hung out in the courtyard and caught up with old friends, listening to DJs and some performances. Mel and I ended up staying at a flat down the street with this woman named Sara who was really super nice. I stayed up and talked to Sara some- she is a painter and we mainly talked about the fest and Danish Culture. I think the main thing I remember about her was this dish she made for me the last night I slept there. It was a traditional Danish dish to have when it’s hot and you make it with sort of hard sweet biscuits broken up in a bowl with buttermilk and lemon juice in it poured on top. It was really nice- a kind of combination of cereal and cheese cake batter! I stayed there for two days until the other performer in Mels group came to take my place, then making my way to the squat where other folks from the fest were staying, called ‘The Youth House.’ It’s really the only squat in Copenhagen and apparently there have been fights over it for years between the punk kids and the city government. It’s a really amazing space that was about 5 miles Northwest of the main festival space. The basement had a industrial sized kitchen and the main floor had a huge hang out space and the bathrooms (which I have to say made everyone a bit sick with the smell of piss). We all were sleeping on the next floor up in a huge old ballroom that was all painted black with a large banner of a first punching through an swastika handing on the stage. There was also a banner for K Town Festival (a hardcore/punk fest that had happened a week or so before Queer Festival in that space). I slept on a gym mat next to the windows, other folks slept on the bleachers, the stage, balcony and other parts of the ballroom. I usually went to bed sometime between 3am and 8am and we were usually woken up by people moving cabels in the space or someone having band practice/playing drums around 11 or 12. There were city bikes in Copenhagen that were mainly I guess for tourists- you would put in a 20 Kroner coin and then the bike would release and you could ride it around for however long (but not be able to lock it) and then when it was returned you would get the $ back. I saw quite a few bikes out though that were missing the coins, so I guess some people had figured out how to get them out and just take the bikes (it’s a same system for shopping carts they have in germany). You could also rent a bike with a deposite or pay for the bus (20 kr. A trip) or take a taxi with 4 people (20 kr. Each).
The second day I was there, Wednesday, I ended up doing kitchen crew with a bunch of kids from Australia/London, Denmark and Sweden and the went to sit in the audience of the live broadcasting of Queer Tv-Tv, a queer tv show on Copenhagens public access station where they were interviewing people about Queer geography and queer architecture (for example talking about the genders of different spaces and buildings and non-heterosexual structures). In the evening I performed as Sr. La Muse in my shower curtain naked costume and blond wig. I went a watched the corpses bride in the movie tent and waited for Sara to go home, which ended up happening around 3am.
Thursday there was the pussycafe hosted by Pia from the Kings of Berlin outside in a tent where people ate chocolate vanilla pussy shaped cake, took candid shots of their pussies as rock stars with glasses on and made pussy art. That day there were also public performance pieces by Miss Fish from Dunst falling into a fountain in the main square and an impov Soap opera, more workshops on queer geography, and another Queer Tv-Tv show. I went with my new friends from Amsterdam, Bastiaan and Krista (User), back to the squat on bikes (with all my bags on my back!) and then we got ready and head over to the women/trans play party that was happening that night. It was at a Womens Community Center (which I found out later was specifically there because some people were pushing for the space to be more sex positive). The space had a smoking room/hang out area on the second floor, the main play space on the third floor and more bathrooms on the 4th floor. The play space had a kind of mesh that reminded me of a military boot camp hanging from the walls to make up different spaces. There were some couples/groups going for it already when we got there, others spending time behind the bar, folks leading other around on leashes and then there was a larger group of folks from the fest who I was with. We ended up playing spin the bottle since people were not really initiating anything and then we played spin the bottle with people shouting out what scene to do next like doctor nurse (which is my new favorite game ever and one of the most entertaining things I have done in a long time). Not much else really happened, people walking around topless, restling (where I kinda fucked up my knees) and lots of talking and just getting to know folks more. Some other people of course took advantage of the opportunity and space a lot more, but over all it pretty chill.
After trying to sleep some at the squat I headed over to the main space for Queer Festival again and had breakfast and showered and checked e-mail. It was then Friday and I believe that’s the day I went out on the queer bike tour of Copenhagen where they had barrowed a bunch of bikes and people were all dressed up and we went around to see the palace and different government buildings and the little mermaid statue (which apparently has been decapitated about 3 times or more). I helped out a bit more with kitchen crew and also went to the drag workshop by the kings of berlin, where Kris Ko helped me do powder shading techniques on my chest, put on a silver dress that was way too small, some clips in my hair and a pink skirt with the back open, make-up and finally a golden picture frame as a necklass. This super punky Danish girl I met while working in the kitchen was wearing a pink Barbie shirt and I ended up helping her spiff up her outfit also with a pink mini-skirt and belt, high heel mock snake skin books and we ripped open the shirt more to have it open on the side and then some make-up. She became ‘Barbie’ from that point on (with another make over the next day as well). That evening Team Plastique played (Berlin/Australia) plus others. That night I caught a cab home with some London kids at around 5am back to the squat.
Saturday night was the biggest party for the fest, happening in a venue down the street. I signed up for ‘general help’ and hung out backstage with the kings on berlin and dunst kids, telling stories about breathing out of my eye. I got some footage of the Dunst performance for Travel Queeries and saw other amazing performances by the Kings of Berlin and Ocean, which looked great, especially in that large of a space. The night lasted for a long time, there was fun to be had on the dance floor and in the bathrooms, people going back and forth between inside and outside and when all the booze was sold, the clean up crew started to do their work and the party moved to the main space where I heard it went until 1pm the next day! I got a cab home again with the London kids at around 7am, we looked for a breakfast spot with no luck and finally found our way to our beds. Sunday was the beginning of our recovery, people wondering around after too much drinking and looking for food. It was a cloudy day and we ended up inside around candles telling stories with a woman with some kind of mental illness yelling about people having too many legs and such. I ended up singing some jazz songs and talking about breathing through my eye again, feeling a bit off with angsiety by the end of the day for all the emotional confusion one can get from being around so many good lucking gays, ending it all with hugs and a nice walk back to the squat with Barbie and friends. The next day there was laundry to be done, internet to be checked, breakfast to be had with another US as we talked about making another anarchist queer gathering in the US and about our experiences as traveler and with the festival. Cleaning up the space was dominated mostly by people going through all the left overs of the dress up room and putting on as much as they could and then packing it back into bags again. The rest of the queers at the squat made a huge dinner and everyone left over from the fest came over for dinner as we got drunk on red cherry wine in the back yard while rosy played us the violin and sam yelled at me for mixing up the names for noodles and pasta. The next day, Tuesday, I hung out in town a bit with rosy and peter and caught my flight finally to London where I found my way to Sherrys house in Brixton and awaited the arrival of Margaritte and the beginnings of production for Travel Queeries Europa 2006!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment