Queer and Feminist Culture and LORI
Since its beginnings, LORI's primary focus has been informing the public and empowering LGBTIQ+ people, which enabled us to detect the importance of supporting the development of queer and feminist culture, i.e. introducing it to the local community (above all). One of LORI's strategic goals is promotion of queer and feminist culture, thus Queer and feminist culture is one of its pillar programs.
In Croatia, queer and feminist culture are often underrepresented, do not have systematic support, their visibility is marginalised, and therefore the public is not familiar (enough) with them.
Therefore, LORI intends to bring the concepts of queer and feminism closer to the public through artistic content and constructive discussions, so that it can exercise critical thinking about these topics, reflect on queer and feminist concepts, and gain insight into the development and impact of this culture. In this way, support is provided to the development of culture and art as a whole, by encouraging queer and feminist themes in the public space, by promoting inclusivity, and nurturing diversity and acceptance.
In more than 20 years of its engagement, LORI has achieved numerous collaborations through raising the visibility of queer and feminist culture: from civil society organisations (mostly LGBTIQ+ and human rights organisations, but also culture, art), institutions (Department of Culture of the City of Rijeka, Rijeka City Library, Art-Kino, Typhlological Museum in Zagreb, etc.), and individuals prominent in queer and feminist culture from Croatia and abroad.
Hence, LORI has introduced queer and feminist culture to the public through colourful events:
- film screenings: e.g. Queer Moments in Art-Kino (2010) with the association Queer Zagreb, Tom of Finland with Zagreb Pride; at the Festival of Queer and Feminist Culture Smoqua,
- art-activist exhibitions: since 2002 and the exhibition “Against Homophobia” in Rijeka and Zagreb; “20 Years of LORI” (at Smoqua 2020) in the windows of the City Hall, etc.,
- forum-theatre plays: “Will it be different when I tell them I'm gay?”, “Within my 4 walls”, “In the shoes of my gender” (between 2007 and 2012). The purpose of these educational plays with various topics regarding life and difficulties faced by LGBTIQ+ people was to encourage the audience to see the necessity of accepting diversity, as opposed to the violence and discrimination present. They were shown in seven cities across Croatia (and in Ljubljana).
- literary evenings (e.g. on the visibility of lesbians and bisexual women in world literature); presentations of books on queer topics; a short story writing contest on LGBT topics for authors from Croatia (2014.),
- queer poetry evenings Kvir poetRI (since 2015), with the aim of promoting and developing Rijeka queer cultural scene – where published authors such as Jelena Tondini, Kristina Posilović and Nora Verde read their verses as well,
- Festival of Queer and Feminist Culture Smoqua: since 2017, LORI has been organising Smoqua with PaRiter (during the first couple of editions also with other collaborating associations: From the Citizens to Their City and the Centre for Women's Studies at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka).
Festival of Queer and Feminist Culture Smoqua is perhaps the most visible part of the programme Queer and Feminist Culture. More about Smoqua can be found here.