TRANSLATING KUIR MAGAZINE

The original idea of building up a network of art festivals in different countries delves into
this question. The call has been clear: “This is a research, reflection and creation project
on different translation processes. Workshops promoting thought and discussion involve the
exchange, production and circulation of Kuir / Queer / Cuir art.” This tripling in the way of
enunciating the same sound (kuir) already announces the dislocation of the problem. And also
the hope within it. A common sound, like a song that is not subject to any translation, calls us.
And we answer.
In the 20th century, the concept “queer” brought a certain viability to the discourse of
differences, but also, as has already been largely pointed out in this encounter and during the
infinite discussion on the subject, it was also brought to the limit of the insipid, the normalizable.
Queer, which had been an insult, a fundamnetal insignia of the injury we are born into, now also
appears as something calming and diffusive.
Moreover, what does it mean to recognize yourself as queer here and now? And here is the
core of the reflections: does the answer not change depending on the language from which it
is spoken, on the moment of life and of the century from which it is pronounced, and according
to the concrete situation in which we find that word? Facing a TV interviewer or an aggressor
on the streets, is it the same thing to say “I am queer”? Is it possible to translate or is it urgent
to defend irreversible words? Is the experience of being a lesbian or trans artist in North Ireland
comparable to the experience of gay artists working in the city of Buenos Aires? Is it the same
to be 20 years old and 60 years old inhabiting a body and a humanity that does not coincide
with the standard endorsed by morals and the market? On the other hand, how do you avoid
becoming one of the not just permitted but promoted options on the shelves of that same
market while hatred continues to run its course, entrenching itself in violence and still taking
forms?
TRANSLATING KUIR aims for the zero degree of that impossibility. The first step was the decision
to use a fictitious spelling. The next, the question of whether there is a we-ness that does not
pass over the singularity of individual, local, regional, age group and class experiences. How can
we ensure that singularity is not exhausted in solipsism and, on the contrary, builds networks,
resistance movements and theories of its own?
In the words of the organizers: If your words are my words…which words name us or do
not name us? More and more we have questions. That’s why we invited different people from
different cultures and perspectives to think together. Working internationally as a collective for
over 4 years, we have often met each other in situations in which we had to question ourselves
20