Cracks Only

Towels 70x140cm, Photographic Print

Queer Placemaking by a Diverse Gaze in Image-Based Media

Cracks Only investigates invisibility, exclusion and repulsion that has historically constructed the reality of marginalised lives in most institutional spaces.

It uses the tacky, the raunchy, yet sensible approach of Camp, its mixture of “high” and “low”, the “good” and “bad” in culture production. A “low” part in German culture production has been a peculiar practise of German vacationers. They are notoriously known and mocked by many neighbouring western nationalities for sneakily reserving sun beds with beach towels very early in the morning. Be it at swimming pools, in hotels, or resorts, in popular vacation destinations among Germans the temporary inhabitance by towel is a symbol for their presence and ownership of the space on the sun beds. This silly technique that proclaims mostly public space to be one’s own, is used in Cracks Only.

With portraits of their butts, queer individuals are projected inside of the institutional space that mostly does not actively promote visibility by considering the marginalised, their diverse narrative and an equal distribution of power. Furthermore the queered portraits on the towels carry the queer gaze into reality, as they deny the straight gaze to make attributions to the individual’s unique queerness or most other markers of their identity.