Supervisor: Mgr. et MgA. Darina Alster, Ph.D.

Queer culture has been suppressed for centuries, not only socially, politically, religiously, by dictators, during colonisation, ideologically, by the AIDS epidemic, but also in the art world. Like the queer community itself, its culture has always been on the margins, yet paradoxically its influence is historically evident across the entire artistic spectrum. Perhaps precisely because it was illegal and ostracized for most of its history, queer culture became one of the few natural carriers of something primordial. It carried original culture and rituals, always transforming them into contemporary forms as a response to and mirror of society, which I will attempt to prove in my dissertation.

Queer Collective Memorial (hereinafter QCM) will serve as a place to shift traditional approaches to death, both as a subject of study and philosophical reflection, and as a phenomenon that can be expressed in artistic work or mourning practices. Here, the term ‘queer’ has many meanings. It refers to the exploration and narration of death, dying and mourning in the context of queer relationships and communities, where the subjects involved/studied/interviewed and the relationships in which they are involved are considered ‘queer’. At the same time, the term ‘queer’ can also function as a concept referring to processes of transgressing and subverting normativity and restrictive conventions. In other words, ‘queer’ becomes both a process and a methodology that is applicable and transcends a focus on gender and sexuality as its exclusive concerns. Collective memorial is meant to be a departure from the classic memorial to an individual – a hero, assuming that individualism is already dead – or a memorial to the so-called nuclear family (Ch. Eisenstein, 2013, p. 346), or even a group memorial based on an event (victims of war, epidemics, riots, etc.) or socio-social status, and becomes a living collective memorial to the so-called cosmic family.

MgA. Martin Kámen,

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Dissertation: Queer Collective Memorial

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