Liminal

With a glass of rhum in his hand, during one of our first conversations, Tony tells me that the word queer gives him joy as much as the expression "I'm depressed", but for the opposite reason, for the rarefied outlines. I had never heard of queer until I discovered my body, the chance to live it, to enjoy it and make it enjoy. I kept talking to Tony, I did not stop anymore. I started the journey.

Literally queer means transversal, diagonal, oblique. In the 90s it was used as an insult. It was a derogatory epithet that was addressed to homosexual.Those were the years of the AIDS crisis and there was a violent campaign to criminalize the sexual promiscuity of gay and transgender people. The militants of Queer Nation, the first queer collective in New York, wanted to respond with peaceful actions, to the growing street violence against gays and lesbians, and against the full representation of prejudices in the media. So they chose to present themselves just like those fags that caused so much disgust in right-thinking citizens. The appropriation of that provocative image also implied a new inclusive attitude for the need to overcome those boreders of the homosexual community between gays, lesbians, transsexuals, transgender, bisexuals. In particular, the rigidly binary conception of sexual identity was denyed, both male/female and heterosexual/homosexual, incapable of considering gender as a "fluid variable that changes and adapt itself in different contexts and epochs" (Michele Foucault).

In Italy meanwhile was emerging a critical consciousness moving from the feminist message "the personal is political". It wondered about the possibility of other opportunities of thought, action and life. Here, like abroad, today as in the 90s, through the art of performance, of an experience lived within and beyond the borders of conventional culture, actors, actress, activists offer us real and freeing alternatives.

On the route of gender nomads, nomad myself, I went to the east and in the Pigneto district of Rome I crossed the colorful life of Tony, Nita, Play girls from Caracas and Silvia. Fluid bodies, queer beings, migrants, who fabulous and provocative tell about deviant subjectivities and subversive desires. In short, dangerous stories for morality, decency and conscience of normal. With them I wandered around Italy in different queer places. Like nature, they struggle to understand the borders. Mountain ranges, rivers and seas, they are geographic elements that are overdetermined to delimit the territories and impose a power: if the sea can be an obstacle or an escape route, the mountain ranges are natural boundaries but also well-defined cultural regions, the body could be the basis for a revolution that starts from questioning being a man or a woman, to be oneself.

These artivists open a path to unlimited transits between genders and lead us through the possible fluctuations of desire among heterosexuality and homosexuality, creating other imaginings, new spaces of life and relationships.

Tony, biological male. When he speaks about himself he usually use the feminine. He was one of the first performer of the queer roman scene.

Nita, biological female. She prefers to be neutral, and not be recognized as a man or a woman. With her performances, she leads us through the pleasures of positive sex through the discovery of BDSM.

Playgirls from Caracas is the queer music project of Annalisa and Gilvia, an artistic couple and in life. Both biological females.

Silvia, biological female. Being queer for Silvia is a political urgency, it is her body to be political, especially when the theatrical expression allows her to manifest herself in her integrity.