QUEERNESS IS NOT yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an identity that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future.

Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity – Jose Esteban Muñoz

Queerness is not only a sexual identity. Queerness is an umbrella of culture identities, many selfs, class, gender, and race. Queerness comes from a social movement and struggle organized by marginalized people with low income in the gay community: drag queens, representatives of the transgender community, effeminate young men, male prostitutes, and homeless youth. The participants of the 27th issue of Kiez-Monatsschau, together with the performance artist Rima Najdi and the filmmaker Zara Zandieh, develop their own queer perspectives in order to take a closer look at what queer is beyond identities and maps of gender, sexuality and borders. They invite us to look at family histories, pop-cultures, experiences with war, religion, class, various languages, sexuality, bodies and gender(ed) selves. They cross the borders and frames of these boxes, dismantle them, create irritation within them and beyond.