“Our Queer future is a past tense أجسَادٌ مِن عَلَق” is an interdisciplinary promenade performance that explores Queerness and Arab* Identity(s) from a post-migration perspective. While the term “Queerness” doesn’t exist in Arabic, the practice has historical roots predating the global understanding of queerness imposed by Western hegemony, with a monolithic, generalizing model of understanding and approaching sexual and gender diversity. This performance aims to challenge the hegemonic language of queerness by acknowledging and incorporating diverse identities, histories, and languages that existed before its emergence.

The performance will take the audience through a journey between different temporal and spatial dimensions of “queer” existence. :  The journey begins with an exploration an invisible past, incorporating linguistic,social, cultural, and religious elements on erotic, sexual and “non-normative” discourses Drawing inspiration from Ahmad al-Tifashi’s manuscript “نرهة الالباب في ما لا يوجد في كتاب,” an Amazigh writer and anthologist, the performance delves into hidden histories and alternative narratives. The performance then disrupts the present, questioning Western narratives about Arabo* Sexual and gender identities investigating invisible counter archives in cinema history, exploring the representation of queer characters within the context of the present. By examining these narratives, the performance challenges existing Western-centric perspectives and offers alternative viewpoints that highlight the multiplicity of queer experiences in the region, specialy in relation to transnational queer politics. Ultimately, it imagines a utopian future that raises more questions than it provides answers.

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The performance serves as an inquiry into how queerness has inadvertently become a form of colonialism, erasing and homogenizing identities and ways of being that don’t neatly fit under its umbrella term. It highlights the need for taxonomies and terms that encompass and signify collective queer existences within their unique contexts.

Directed and performed : Ahmad Baba
Assistant Director : Mansur Ajang
Cinematography : Mansur Ajang
Editing and Poster Design : Ahmad Baba
Thanks to Michalina Mrozek, Joey Bania, Fadi Saleh and Roman Valenta.
This performance was made possible with the support of AFAC (Arab Fund for Arts and Culture) آفاق الصندوق العربي للثقافة والفنون