How to Use Gay Nazis in Job Interviews:  Queer Media, Striptease-Lectures and the Art of Existential Sodomism

Alexandros Papadopoulos

A video-performance on homoerotic nazism is transformed into a deranged guide of professional and erotic survival. Based on an actual interview with a gay Nazi, this project encompasses academic essays, lecture-performances and a series of digital and urban sensations. All these forms expression explore how social media can stage a horny war against fear, hatred and uncertainty. Physically and intellectually provocative, this is an analysis of the relationship between facebook, austerity-horror and queer desire. This polymedia project includes a short clip and ritualistic acts of self-exposure. This dialogue between storytelling and art-theory re-stages the shocking testimonies of the experimental short-film/video-performance (The Homonazi Effect). Centered on factual -- violent, flirty and cyber -- encounters with Athens-based gay neo-Nazis, the Homonazi Effect encompassed an alliance of platforms: blogs, queer festivals, popular magazines, academic writing and social media. Visual components of the artwork, and particularly, the author’s impersonations of his ‘homo-Nazi’ interlocutor were re-used and re-adapted with various storytelling and self-writing formats – co-creating a fragmented intermedia collage of confession and defeat. Social Media rituals twisted the meaning, context and impact of the initial story – re-situating its visual dramatics within an aesthetic backdrop of failed job interviews, zero-hour contracts and traumatic escapism. A cinematic narration dissolves into a project of self-writing, one that establishes an exhibitionistic archiving of failure. The boundaries between fiction and non-fiction, history and imagination and digital and non-digital dramaturgy collapse. A new queer utopia is now disruptively staged on the performative intersection of precarious routine and austerity-age dreamland.

References

Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011).

Claire Bishop, ‘Digital Divide: Contemporary Art and New Media’, Artforum International (September 2012) <http://artforum.com/inprint/id=31944> [accessed 1 March 2017]

Claire Bishop, ‘The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents’, Artforum International (February 2006 ) < http://newsgrist.typepad.com/files/claire-bishop-the-social-turn-collaboration-and-its-discontents-in-2006-artforum.pdf> [accessed 1 March 2017]

Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984).

Maria Chatzichristodolou, ‘New Media Art, Participation, Social Engagement and Public Funding’ Visual Culture in Britain, 14:3 (2013), 301–318.

James Curan, Natalie Fenton and Des Freedman, Misunderstanding the Internet (London: Routledge, 2012)..

Guy Debord and Gil J. Wolman, ‘A User’s Guide to Détournement’, Les Lèvres Nues (May 1956) <http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/detourn.htm#1> [accessed 1 March 2017]

Guy Debord, ‘Theory of the Derive’, Les Lèvres Nues, (November 1956) <http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/theory.html> [accessed 1 March 2017]

Christian Fuchs, Social Media: A Critical Introduction (London: Sage, 2014).

Judith Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham and London:Duke University Press, 2011).

Indrek Ibrus and Carlos Scolari (eds), Crossmedia Institutions: Texts, Markets, Institutions (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012).

Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York and London: New York University Press, 2006).

Robert McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning Internet Against Democracy (New York and London: New Press, 2013).

Munoz, J. Esteban, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (Sexual Cultures) (New York and London: New York University Press, 2009).

Alexandros Papadopoulos, ‘A Violent Archaeology of Dreams: The Aesthetics of Crime in Austerity Britain, 1944-1950’ PhD Thesis, University of Manchester, Manchester (2011).

Alexandros Papadopoulos, ‘Golden Dawn’s Porn and the Pleasure of Evil’, Lifo [online], (27 October 2012) <http://www.lifo.gr/team/gnomes/33297?comments_page=22&comments_order=p> [accessed 1 March 2017] (in Greek)

Alexandros Papadopoulos,‘Performing The Homonazi Effect: Gay Neo-Nazism, Digital Drag-Attack and the Post-Cinematic Cultures of Crisis’, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ World Making, 2:3 (2015), 108-124.

Carlos Scolari, Paolo Bertetti and Mathew Freeman, Transmedia Archaeology: Storytelling in the Borderlines of Science Fiction, Comics and Pulp Magazines (New York: Palgrave, 2014).

REFERENCES

Berlant, Lauren (2011) Cruel Optimism, Duke University Press: Durham and London.

Bishop, Claire (2012) ‘Digital Divide: Contemporary Art and New Media’, Artforum International, September2012, http://artforum.com/inprint/id=31944 accessed 1 March 2017.

Bishop, Claire (2006) ‘The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents’, Artforum International, February 2006 < http://newsgrist.typepad.com/files/claire-bishop-the-social-turn-collaboration-and-its-discontents-in-2006-artforum.pdf> accessed 1 March 2017.

Certeau, Michele De (1984) The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press: Berkeley.

Chatzihristodolou, Maria (2013) ‘New Media Art, Participation, Social Engagement and Public Funding’ Visual Culture in Britain, 14 (3), 301-318.

Curan, James, Natalie Fenton and Des Freedman (2012) Misunderstanding the Internet, Routledge:London.

Debord, Guy and Gil J Wolman, ‘A User’s Guide to Détournement’, Les Lèvres Nues, May 1956

<http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/detourn.htm#1.> Accessed 1 March 2017

Debord, Guy (1956) ‘Theory of the Derive’, Les Lèvres Nues, November 1956 <http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/theory.html > accessed 1 March 2017

Fuchs, Christian (2014) Social Media: A Critical Introduction, London: Sage.

Halbestarm, Judith (2011) The Queer Art of Failure, Duke University Press: Durham and London.

Ibrus, Indrek and Carlos Scolari, eds. (2012) Crossmedia Institutions: Texts, Markets, Institutions, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Jenkins, Henry (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York and London: New York University Press.

McChesney, Robert (2013) Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning Internet Against Democracy, New Press: New York and London.

Munoz, J. Esteban (2009) Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (Sexual Cultures), New York University Press: New York and London.

Papadopoulos, Alexandros (2011) ‘A Violent Archaeology of Dreams: The Aesthetics of Crime in Austerity Britain, 1944-1950’ PhD Thesis, University of Manchester, Manchester.

Papadopoulos, Alexandros (2012) ‘Golden Dawn’s Porn and the Pleasure of Evil’, Lifo[online], 27 October 2012 (in Greek). Available: <http://www.lifo.gr/team/gnomes/33297?comments_page=22&comments_order=p> accessed 1 March 2017

Papadopoulos, Alexandros (2015) ‘Performing The Homonazi Effect: Gay Neo-Nazism, Digital Drag-Attack and the Post-Cinematic Cultures of Crisis’, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ World Making, 2(3), 108-124.

Scolari, Carlos, Paolo Bertetti and Mathew Freeman (2014) Transmedia Archaeology: Storytelling in the Borderlines of Science Fiction, Comics and Pulps Magazines, New York: Palgrave.

Tip

Tip

Debord, Guy and Gil J Wolman, ‘A User’s Guide to Détournement’, Les Lèvres Nues, May 1956