diary

"I'm more stronger" that's reason why Alex was playing the male team at the EuroGames.

In parallel to Zeljko 's relational art practice in form of QueerSports.LAB (in Roodkapje’s Work-in-Progress residency space), I’ve done work more related to the construction of identities while joining him. Probably because it is difficult for me to work with the LGBT movement, which I find dated and as they have been mostly accommodated in the normalization of a series of models of homosexuality (...so far I encountered many ideological walls in my way with LGBT community). Practitioners of these models tend to forget that a full reform is not completed, as binary separation of two genders is still very present. It is my opinion that these gays and lesbians often remain insensitive to general non acceptance of more-queer individuals by society who do not fit basic models of gay or lesbian. Among my psychowanking Zeljko introduced me to a guy who came from Mostar in Herzegowina (less pronounced part of Bosnia&Herzegowina) to play basketball and whose name is Alex. One of his particular characteristics is that after many years of professionally in local basketball team he doesn’t play basketball anymore but has come to an international tournament. This is a common denominator of quite a few participants in the EuroGames. Another is that he changed sex from female to male. One of the reasons for Alex to participate in the EuroGames was to join male league.

Until now I've been trying to conduct interviews with participants of the EuroGames for a couple of days without much success by the number and in the content of interviews. I could not extract any solid sense, political cause, sentimental reason, compelling content, or meaning to justify the existence or organization of a EuroGames. From my point of view this is not an isolated incident in the organization of gay sport tournments but something that is also shared with the Gay Pride. These events lost their initial content and have been stripped of meaning they had in the past when the repression of LGBT people was a link to different political and intellectual opinions converged on a strong movement. Now they become parties to produce income, confirm power relations and validate stereotypes. The LGBT movement (if one can use the word still) is no longer fighting for the plurality, but acceptance in homogenization.

My conclusion as a first time spectator is that the only motivation behind the participants of the EuroGames is meeting guys, traveling and spending causal time. This conclusion could have an interesting political content. But this simple and unpretentious concept is masked in a bubble of universal ideals such as human rights, equality, difference, etc. using them indiscriminately and without substance. Even posing a question: Do gay people need a special league because they can’t compete in general ones? Are gays weaker than straight?