What is this event?

The Queer Joy Workshop was conceived as a roundtable event where the central aspect is meeting each other, which constitutes the first step towards change. The workshop highlights the activist force that lies behind the act of self-representation and the concept of joy in relation to the visual arts.

The workshop facilitates a walk through Bucharest as an opportunity to explore the city through a queer & joyful lens since there is an absence of joy pervasive in the history of western art; it is also an opportunity to discuss freely what queer representation and self-representation has looked like over the last century in photography and cinematography ~ participants are encouraged to learn and get their hands dirty in showing their own joy through a handful of activities directly related to a queer ethical praxis.

Together we will create a safe space in which cynicism is rejected in favor of softness and normative life scenarios are genuinely questioned and reinterpreted to make way for a better version of life suited to our particular needs.

To attend this event, the Consent Workshop attendance is not required.

📝 We confirm attendance 48 hours before the start of the event at the latest. Please register by filling the RSVP form at least 2 days before the start of the event. To manage the limited number of participants for this event, it is essential that you also complete the questionnaire posted in this description with your responses.

What happens at the event? What is the schedule for each day?

Workshop structure and schedule:

2nd August evening schedule:

🕖 17:30 PM – 18:00 PM – We gather at InFLUX
🕣 18:00 PM – 22:00 PM – Workshop activities:
– introduction of Daniela, Ioana and participants
– the short history of visual arts from the self-portrait perspective with Daniela
– assignment

3rd August evening schedule:

🕖 17:30 PM – 18:00 PM – We gather at InFLUX
🕣 18:00 PM – 22:00 PM – Workshop activities:
– the short history of the absence and presence of queer characters in western cinema with Ioana
– assignment
– Q&A

4th August day schedule:

🕖 15:00 PM – 15:30 PM – We gather at InFLUX
🕣 15:30 PM – 21:30 PM – viewing of the participants assignments and Q&A

Please be on time, so as not to disturb other participants. We cannot guarantee that someone will be available to open the door for you after closing time.

How can you reach us?

🔥This event is hosted at InFLUX! 🔥

Our address is Bulevardul Theodor Pallady 287. You can find information on how to reach us here or here.

The area has many parking spaces, especially in the evening or after 6 pm. The metro station at “1 Decembrie 1918” is the closest to us and it’s only 8 minutes away, on foot.

Take the small elevator (behind the large stairs on the ground floor) to the 5th floor, where you will see the sign for InFLUX. One more flight of stairs up, and you’re there. If mobility issues prevent you from climbing up a flight of stairs, you can take the large elevator, which will take you straight to our door, but that one is much slower.

Our phone number is +40723258105 and you can write to us on WhatsApp before the door closing time.

Who can come?

This workshop welcomes everyone, regardless of the level of knowledge or visual arts skills.

🎫 Fill in the form and questionnaire below, in this description, to register for this workshop. You will receive an email confirmation and we will keep you updated with information about the event. You will also receive an email reminder close to the event, so you don’t miss it.

We reserve the right to select event participants.

What are you bringing? What are you wearing?

This event has no dress code, so wear whatever makes you comfortable.

A professional camera is not necessary, a phone that takes pictures is enough.

🪪 Please bring your ID card so we can check your age at the door. We keep none of your data, but we need to make sure that everyone is an adult. You can see here or here how we check your ID so that all your data but your year of birth and picture are visible to us.

Who organizes this event?

In the summer of 2020 Daniela Groza participated in a photography workshop taught by American photographer Jennifer McClure, who specialises in the self-representation technique. Through a series of self-portraits realised for the workshop Daniela redefined her love for the power that images can hold as a means of expression within the queer activist community in Romania, a community she joined precisely through this exercise of visibility. In this way she identified a lack in photography – a lack of humor and joy in the visual arts, a lack which she seeks to replenish through adding her own images along with those of her students’, hoping ultimately to redefined the image of queer people anywhere, an image that often times is defined from the outside in an unsympathetic or truthful light.

The self-portrait series on film (danielagroza.com/queer-joy) gives off an utopian feel along with a very real one – life as it is, during moments of respite, during moments when freedom is palpable and the desire to take hold of one’s story away from homophobic distorsions comes alive. The QUEER joy series comes together along with a series of digital images (queerjoy.world) that focuses on themes such as what ‘home’ means, what gratefulness looks like – gratefulness and the multitude of experiences that make Daniela feel safe, and last but not least the tension between feeling grateful and the harnessing of necessary energy to resist the oppressive forces that a queer person faces in a world that favors greed and hate.

Daniela and Ioana Ofelia met during a Queer Joy workshop while Ioana was hired to document the workshop in the summer of 2021. They became partners in life and also partners in this voyage of self-representation and queer activism. They share the same vision concerning the power of visual activism and this becomes immediately accessible through the portraits and self-portraits they create together for the Queer Joy series, always defining joy as resistance. In this way joy transcends personal selfish joy by becoming a tool, an engine working against heteronormativity. Through their own images and through the workshops they teach together they wish to give hope and lend a strong voice to future generations of queer folx by accentuating this necessity to give back and give forward personal queer histories that increase visibility and legitimize further the LGBTQIA+ community.