Gegen Alternatives — GEGEN BERLIN

Let the man go where he has never been
Feel what he has never fel
Think what he has never though
Be what he has never been
We need to provoque this movement and this crisi
Let’s create astonishing objects

Paul Nougé, René Magritte ou Les images défendues, 1996

Ubi Maior, Minor Cessat.

There would not be any periphery without the centre. There would not be any solar system without the sun. There would not be any electron without the core.
There would not be any underground without the mainstream.
There would not be any alternative without the norm. There is always a double bind between the “over” and the “under”.

It is called identity and it strangles freedom of choice. Identity is as easy as a pre-cooked meal; it does not involve any effort to cook up your own. You are so used to eat it in a constant routine that your ability not just to taste but to invent, is now over. In this impossibility, you do not see that identity is made to ground systems in which the position between you and the power is defined in a constructed structure.

Where the “minor” represents itself as such, it supports and calcifies the power of the “maior”. So you can be against any power you want and this will give you release, the simple feeling of self-perception or a momentary lapse of joy but what really happens is the opposite. You’ll give blood, breathe, strength, identity to your enemy by recognising it.

Acceptance, love, tolerance are the only ways to destroy and annihilate. This logic is valuable not only on a political level, but on a market ground too. What is very easy today, is to define yourself”queer” as being “alternative” to the LGBTI-community.

This not only means giving power to all the oppbrious processes crossing the Western (European) LGBTI-community – such as homonormativity, neoliberism and homonationalism to name a few. It also means bringing you in a position of being controlled, but it even means making you part of the same gentrification model by becoming the shadow of that market system and being conviced that you are engaged in a cause.

You are just making the same game with minor skills, opposing the same model with less appeal. Like a periphery which copies the centre, like a planet shining with a borrowed star light, like an electron in a perpetual orbit because of the core polarisation, you are the slave of your own refusal.

GEGEN does not recognise, as it is not interested in being recognised.
GEGEN does not want to be underground or overground. It wants to be/come ANOTHER GROUND – definitely a playground – by abandoning positions, by betraying expectations, by ironising ideologies, by enjoying archeologies, by producing unexpected traumas and nostalgic geographies of anterior futures.

You’ll never find us where you think we are.
We are not needed.

Concept courtesy of Warbear
Teaser by Boxikus
Artwork by Nina Reisingen

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