Queerstory

Güney Tekin
Istanbul, Turkey
Supervisor: Serena Raucci
05/2022 - 04/2023

Hello. I am Sidar, a trans masculine nonbinary activist from Turkey. I am participating in the European Solidarity Corps Program at Sonntags-Club and will be carrying out an oral history project called “Queerstory” with migrant queers in Berlin.

Oral history practices focus on bringing the experiences of disadvanted communities into the light to understand the past and the present more accurately. By collecting the memories of queer migrants, therefore, my project can allow us to create our own queer archieve that is against the mainstream white cisheterosexist one. This way, the project will empower myself and the queer migrant community in Berlin through the alternative history-making and writing practices.

For the project, I will conduct oral history interviews with the participants. I also want to organize workshops in which participants can express themselves through art. These workshops will accompany the interviews and help the participants to express themselves in different ways as they wish.

In general, the project will focus on the following questions:

• What are the ways we deal with discrimination, lgbtia+phobia, or racism?
• How do we express ourselves in art, literature, and on the street?
• How do we create environments of solidarity?

At the end of the project, I will organize an exhibition/presentation at Sonntags-Club. There, the various experiences of migrant queers can be heard and seen through different forms such as written interviews, voice recordings, videos, theater plays, photos, paintings, collages and so on.