Samuel’s Gay Bar visits HOFPFISTEREI

“Everything that is culturally fascinating and interesting in the world originated in the Black queer demimonde” – Vaginal Davis

Welcome to a gathering with overlaps between performance, poetry, politics and joy. The gay bar and club have always been key fixtures and sites for queer worlding. Whether as brick and mortar establishments, sporadic or reoccurring (like Vaginal Davis’s gay club Sucker, which from 1994 to 1999 took place every Sunday for three to four hours The Virgil in LA) the gay bar has served as a tool and site through which queer otherwises are dreamt up and lived. Samuel’s Gay Bar, like Sucker, very much exists within the lineage of the mobile and gay bars. Established and operating in the Stockholm scene, it has since its inception carved space for Black queer re-existence and joy, albeit on rocky terrain.

Samuel’s Gay Bar visits HOFPFISTEREI. This text-based gathering-in-a-bar-that-is-an-exhibition-that-is-a-library is inspired by and acts very much in the spirit of Vaginal Davis’s multifaceted practice. Expect music, poetry, thoughts (aka lectures) and maybe sighting of a witch or two. Drink in hand, we’ll be privy to contributions by Black queer folks that centre Black queer resistance, re-existence and everything in between. As Davis herself has said: “Everything that is culturally fascinating and interesting in the world originated in the black queer demimonde[…]”.
For this occasion, expect a newly concocted special drink, courtesy of Samuel’s Gay Bar!

With contributions by Ben Camara, Samuel Girma, Mmabatho Thobejane and more tba.

Schedule
18:00 Arrivals + drinks
18:15 Some thoughts: Mmabatho Thobejane on visibility, the margin and the centre in Vaginal Davis’s methodologies.
18:35 drinks + break
18:50 More thoughts: Samuel Girma on James Baldwin
19:10 Text & Poetry Readings

This event is part of the program of activations for the exhibition Vaginal Davis: Hofpfisterei. More information about the exhibition here and about the program here.

This exhibition has been developed in collaboration with Moderna Museet in Stockholm, as part of the exhibition Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product. The museum presents a major retrospective of Vaginal Davis’s work while, in parallel, Index is the locus for research on her text production. Vaginal Davis’s solo exhibition Magnificent Product is initiated by Moderna Museet and extends across several locations in Stockholm: Moderna Museet, Nationalmuseum, Accelerator, Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Tensta konsthall and MDT (Moderna Dansteatern). Each institution highlights a different aspect of Vaginal Davis’s expansive practice.