Archiving and Curating the Margins: Queer Memory Activism and Infrastructures in Southeastern and Eastern Europe

Objective

In the In the 21st century, a new wave of anti-LGBT+ sentiments have emerged in global and local politics, often framing queerness as newly invented and imported from outside the local borders. Challenging this erasure from collective memory are queer memory activists and grassroot infrastructures such as archives and cultural festivals, which store, curate and circulate queer memories and resist heteronormative histories. Research into memory activism’s role in (re)imagining local and transnational pasts and futures has become a focal point of queer archival turn two decades ago. However, histories, memories, and meanings of queerness outside the global West are still chronically underexplored. QEAST fills this research gap by engaging with queer memories from the Southeastern and Eastern Europe (SEEE), a site of both anti-LGBT+ backlash and vibrant queer memory activism. Using tools from queer, memory, and festival studies and ethnography, QEAST zooms in on the SEEE’s grassroot past and current memory stakeholders, archives, and cultural festivals to O1) build a digital database of regional stakeholders and memory activism strategies; O2) map and analyse the mnemonic strategies of memory pioneers during socialism, how these efforts are historicized, preserved, and inherited; O3) develop a conceptual grid for understanding the dynamic of transcultural queer memory and queer theory travel, adopting globalized terms and narratives as well as original production, decolonization, and localization processes in the SEEE. By exploring how queer memory stakeholders preserve, produce, curate, and circulate queer memories, QEAST will deepen the understanding of queer memory’s role in community-building and challenging dominant local and global historical narratives. Ultimately, QEAST aims to decolonize Western-centric queer frameworks by uncovering alternative SEEE queer genealogies, providing insights for future research on queer memory activism in other peripheral regions.