Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
#VoteLGBT was born in the wake of the 2013 demonstrations, when thousands of people (many of them young) engaged in a new type of activism, no longer coordinated by institutions such as trade unions or political parties, but via the internet and social networking sites. With most parties refusing to discuss issues of gender and sexuality, we decided to create what was then a campaign: #VoteLGBT, a platform that concentrated all candidates we could find who supported the rights of the LGBTQ population.
Regarding the relationship with contemporary art (viewed as a sphere of production of political subjectivities rather than only objects), we understand that #VoteLGBT is not situated somewhere “in-between” but demands a political stance of symbolic production as a whole. The presence of collectives and projects such as #VoteLGBT in cultural spaces with consolidated narratives and frameworks contends for the recognition that all artistic production should be understood as producing (and reproducing) political perspectives. How can artworks, curatorial projects, exhibition designs, architecture, occupation programs and various cultural activities resonate the preservation of structures of society and meaning?
With that in mind, the proposal of #VoteLGBT for the 21st Biennial has three pillars: access to rights, political training and struggle over narratives, coordinating services, legal advice and guidelines in the fields of LGBTQ population rights, along with open workshops and debates on issues such as the electoral system and democracy, aligned with the production of content like videos and print material to raise awareness of this discussion among the audience of the Biennial.