Installation with two-channel video (projection and LED), 18 min., 2022

Choreography/perfromance: Harry Alexander, Julie Cunningham, Werner Hirsch, Nach, Joy Alpuerto Ritter, Aaliyah Thanisha. Gayrillères choreography: Julie Cunningham and Harry Alexander

Being in the light, visible, is a political precondition for claiming rights. But queer, deviant and racialized bodies have often been rendered hyper-visible in order to be scrutinized and policed.

Les Gayrillères might appear at night, in a deserted club, in a cruising area, on the fringe of a demonstration, in a museum's basement, underground. They move in the dark, and in spaces of total luminosity, where the blinding lights offer a refuge to hide.

The choreography shows a series of steps for a gay guerrilla, building on the unpredictable power of bodies moving in concert, experimenting with forms of togetherness. Inspired by Monique Wittig's writings, the Gayrillères' pleasures are indivisible from the sadness of political backlash: the endless violence in public spaces, and the withdrawal of rights by authoritative governments.

The right to opacity, the right to disappear from view, or to control one’s own degrees of visibility, is highlighted by the performer's costumes, which are the only sources of light on their march, while their brightness is either too low or too high.

Directors of photography: Bernadette Paassen, Siri Klug
Sound: Johanna Wienert
Costumes: Heloise Mantel
Wig: Dushan Petrovic
Stage production: Wibke Tiarks
Dramaturgical assistance: Renen Itzhaki
Sound design: Rashad Becker
Colour grading: Waveline
Music: Ivo Dimchev, "Overrated" (home version), Tragic Selector (a.k.a. Daisuke Tadokoro & Terre Thaemlitz), "A Dialogue With Gravity"