Medien|Denken – Marc Siegel – What is a Documentary //ENTFALLEN

There are many documentary films about LGBTIQ* people and issues. Colloquially, we call them queer documentaries. But what makes them queer? Their subject matter alone? The sexual or gender identity of their maker? If queer suggests a beyond to existing regimes of representation, as early queer theorists like Lauren Berlant, Elizabeth Freeman and Judith Butler have argued, how can it be documented? What are the aesthetic strategies of a documentary that dare not speak its name? To address these questions, this presentation will return to an unlikely source, Jack Smith’s pioneering underground film Flaming Creatures (1962-63). Hardly known as a documentary, Smith’s avant-garde work nevertheless ties aesthetic innovation to the representation of sexual and gender minorities and serves thereby as a useful reference point for discussing the possibilitites of documenting queerness.