Artists’ Statement

At the heart of the time machine are video works about spaces and collective structures that have evolved in the city across different eras. These are centres of ideas, self-organization and visibility. The videos show queer, migrant and BIPoC initiatives that have shaped Berlin for generations. Instead of appearing as static sites, the spaces take the form of a networked social landscape. Fragments from the lives of queer BIPoC in the 1920s engage with the political struggles of queer movements in the 1980s, with the visibility of queer migrant identities today, and with young queer BIPoC generations’ visions for the future.
The installation illuminates these perspectives both individually and in concert, showing queer migration as a continuous yet changing current. Earlier meeting places and sociopolitical structures are juxtaposed with today’s self-organized projects and community places. The result is a moving fabric of individual and collective stories and narratives.

The combination of “BIPoC” and “queer” is often seen as a recent phenomenon – as if it had never existed before. This perception is closely linked to forms of political archiving: that which is documented and preserved shapes our understanding of history.

Migrant histories and narratives are often simplified by museums. They appear as artifacts, survivors, perpetrators, or one-dimensional stories – or else they remain invisible. By contrast, “Time Machine Infinitum – Queer migrant Berlin” opens an attempt to read these stories as stories of continuations, multiple layerings and collective memories.

Despite a growing cultural presence and visibility, the daily lives of many queer BIPoC continue to be marked by stigmatization and racist discrimination as well as queer- and transphobia. By shining light on counternarratives, the installation sees itself as part of a self-directed history that resists a final form.

The visibility of queer people, and especially of queer migrants, has never been a matter of course. It has been forged and fought for: by collective work, by self-organization and by the creation of designated spaces and structures. This installation not only awakens memories of these processes, but also relocates them within the context of a museum.