Queer Culture in Romania, 1920-2018 9783031388484, 9783031388491

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Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018 Ramona Dima

Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018

Ramona Dima

Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018

Ramona Dima Centre for Gender Studies University of Stavanger Stavanger, Norway

ISBN 978-3-031-38848-4 ISBN 978-3-031-38849-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38849-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Simona and to our cat Sira. For their love, support, and everything else I (try to) learn from them.

About the Translation

This book has been translated from Romanian by Andreea Moise. The Introduction and Chapter 6 were translated by Maria Cohut.

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Preface

This unique and extensive volume on Romanian queer cultural products brings an essential and much needed contribution to the literature on Central and SEE gender studies, post-communism studies, media, cultural studies and transnational queer studies. Its methodology is contextdriven: I look at Romanian queer culture “from inside”, and also from the acknowledgement that the research process is guided by the sensitivity of the approached topics, by the lack of archival footprints and by a solid dose of media archaeology, especially considering the beginning of Romanian LGBT+ activism in the 90s. The study starts with contemporary Romanian cultural products that are either focusing on queer topics or produced by queer creators. It looks back, using so many lenses, into the memories of seminal queer and trans activists sharing their experiences with the author in extensive interviews conducted for this volume, fragmented literary and media sources that cover most part of the twentieth century. This book offers an extensive analysis of cultural products of different genres, as the author is fully aware that her own analysis bears the heavy responsibility of acting as an archive and as a mediator between often small, independent, nearly forgotten acts or objects, and the world. While there is a select, albeit not extensive, body of research and publications when it comes to queer affects and culture in Central Europe and the Balkans, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, none, and no one, has been looking in enough depth into Romania. Romania

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has a post-colonial history, followed by its communist history, its situation as a shutdown country, under the influence of Soviet Russia. Its specific queer history—and the very late removal of anti-LGBT legislation in 2001, as well as its fundamental patriarchal social structure, make it an excellent analysis case. These are some of the reasons for the difficulties in accessing and understanding this place in relation to the study of queer and gender culture, in the absence of well-structured organisations with an archival impulse. This multiplicity of factors has been mirrored in all Romanian queer products, and an extremely relevant and specific type of queer culture has been the result of it. This book looks with simplicity and emotion into these special conditions, and analyses the culture they caused or produced, with a never-before encountered insider’s eye. Stavanger, Norway

Ramona Dima

Contents

1 2 4

1

Introduction On the Beginning of This Volume Methodology

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A Fragmented History of Queerness Temporal Leaps: Newspapers and Historical Sources Socialising Spaces During Communism Online Sources In Search of Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s* Testimonies and Communities Queer Issues in the Romanian Press and Mass Media. Activisms, Shifts, Approaches and the Contemporary Queer Community The Queer Gaze and the Heterogeneity of Representations in Contemporaneity References

7 9 16 19

Queer Literature Queer Interwar Literature

55 55

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28 41 50

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CONTENTS

The Girl of Zlataust The Hidden Road The Adolescence of Adrian Zografi Remember Memories: The Dragons’ Watch Testimonies from Communism Queer Literature Post 1989 The Death of Ariel The Immigrants The Soldiers. A Story from Ferentari Love Sick The Dolls References

55 59 60 63 64 66 67 67 72 76 82 85 89

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Films Abreast Beyond the Hills Love Sick Soldiers: Story from Ferentari Rodica Is a Good Boy After School Letters to God Mom, Dad, I Have to Tell You Something References

91 91 98 105 110 113 117 120 122 124

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Romanian Queer Contemporary Art Preamble The 1990s and 2000s Post 2010 silenceKILLS—discrimination/ro/files/2011 The Other Us: Workshop for Identity Re-imagining LGBT: Humanity and Inside Insights Bahlui Arcadia ‘98 and SAVAGED pINK References

127 127 129 134 138 143 145 146 148 151

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Performance and Theatre After Trajan and Decebalus: Fragments of Gay History in Romania

153 157

CONTENTS

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The Institute of Change and at the Institute of Change Gadjo Dildo Parallel References

163 173 175 179

Issues Raised by the Interviews The Distinction Between the Western and Romanian Queer Art Scenes References

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Conclusions References

197 205

Index

190 196

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About This book

Currently the only monograph on the Romanian cultural scene and artistic queer history, this book fills the gap concerning academic pieces on Romania in the largest context of publications concerning the SEE region. In the realm of media and cultural studies, queer-related analyses occupy a marginal place. When it comes to the culture produced within the South-Eastern European spaces, these works are even fewer, usually referring to activist recent histories and the formation of LGBT+ and anti-LGBT+ discourses and movements. This book encourages the interdisciplinary analysis of queer culture keeping in mind both the contexts in which they appear and the meaning their producers conveyed. This is helpful for both scholars and students currently involved in fields such as media, culture, gender and queer studies. Furthermore, this contribution challenges the fact that the North and West-centric literature usually employ hegemonic frames of reference and often poorly address the specificities and localities of different movements (activist, artistic, etc.) within the SEE region. Based on the Romanian edition published by Hecate Publishing House in 2022, this volume is constructed as an open archive, where memories of short-lived and of canonical works complement, deconstruct, recompose and reflect upon the history of the LGBT+ struggles for rights in Romania.

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About the Author

Dr. Ramona Dima is a researcher in queer Romanian and South-Eastern Europe issues. With a Ph.D. from the University of Bucharest (2018), Dr. Dima’s publications and topics of interest include queer culture, sexuality and migration, LGBT+ activism, and anti-gender movements. Since 2014, she has been collaborating with her life and work partner, developing a video and performance-based art practice. She is the initiator and co-organiser of QueerFemSEE, the only queer and feminist international conference with a focus on South-Eastern Europe. Between 2021–2023, she led the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral project “Queer Herstories of struggle and survival in Romania: From Communist criminalisation to contemporary anti-gender movements in SEE spaces”.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

During the four years that elapsed between finalising my doctoral thesis (2018) which lays the foundation of this book and its publication, additional cultural products on queer themes have emerged, which I have not included in this book. The reasons behind this choice include time as well as situational limitations, given that, as of 2018, I have been conducting my research in a North-European context. The current work is not exhaustive in its remit, but it sets up the beginnings of an inventory and analysis of queer materials from various media. This research looks mainly at literature, film, performance art, and contemporary art. It also relies on nine interviews with cultural creators that I conducted in 2017. These interviews offer an emblematic snapshot of the current context, as well as key perspectives for critical analysis. Another series of fifteen interviews with persons between 43–74 years old adds to the material: conducted in 2021 and 2022, these focus on the experiences of queer women, trans, and nonbinary persons from communism, adding a new layer to the contextual frame in the present book. Starting from a series of questions, this study aims to capture the way in which elements of queer culture react to the mainstream discourse, how they question issues related to contemporary Romanian society, and manage to generate alternatives to the non-inclusive, heteronormative discourses. The questions forming the basis of the analysis focus on the way in which stereotypes work both within texts and in reaction to these © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Dima, Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38849-1_1

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texts, on the link between social stigma and cultural omission—which applies to the cultural products that were generated before 2000, on the contexts in which these cultural products occur, and on the motivations behind their creation. How are these cultural products presented in the public space and what reactions have they triggered? Does a sense of reticence still surround them, and if so, what sort of discourses take shape in that regard? How do queer creators view their own artistic manifestations or those of others, what are the mechanisms through which they define themselves in relation to mainstream culture? Under what circumstances can we speak of the existence of a Romanian queer culture, and how might we reassess certain texts from before 1989 that have queer undertones which have been generally disregarded? Considering the ephemeral nature of some of these materials, such as online works, as well as plays and performance acts, I have made the choice to describe each of these in detail, referring to selected quotes. These works might otherwise be lost to the world in the absence of a structured archiving process. Discussing the complexity of Romanian queer culture might be a separate endeavour all on its own, given the theoretical nuances and the breadth of constituent materials that would merit analysis. I have settled on a simpler formula for ease, as it allows a glimpse into the manifestations of queer culture within the larger cultural sphere and, at the same time, it offers an alternative to a monolithic notion of “culture” or “Romanian culture”. Working to bring my research to a wider audience has been a necessary and fulfilling endeavour, all at once. Publishing this book is, in some sense, a “thank you” note to the queer community in Romania—whatever it may be—as well as a means of capturing and reflecting on the existing gaps and power relations that occur within the community itself.

On the Beginning of This Volume As far as literary texts are concerned, in 2014 I started collecting volumes and assembling a library of over 400 Romanian and foreign titles, with the selection criterion being their association with queer culture, by means of either queer authors or queer characters. The main axis of the library and the reason for its existence is the body of queer literature published in Romanian as either translations or texts by local authors. From these, six texts were chosen that seem to be the most compelling from the point

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of view of their analysis and that simultaneously feature narratives centred around various types of sexuality. As for films, they are either obtained from Internet archives or directly from their makers. The number of queer-themed local film productions is significantly lower than the literature corpus. Concerning theatre and performance shows, I have had the opportunity to watch live performances—more than once in some cases—and recordings of some of them are available on the Internet. In the case of recordings that are not publicly available, I have obtained the agreement of the directors to watch them in order to build my analysis sections. The first part of my research consisted of obtaining and archiving these texts and correlating the theories and methods developed predominantly in Western academic spaces. Given that I was involved in the Romanian queer cultural and activist sphere during and before the course of my research, I chose to use the collected information and the observations I made in a reflexive manner, trying to take into account, as much as possible, the plurality of experiences, voices and interpretations coming from other people in the community. Certainly, this plurality is neither extensive nor exhaustive, and I take it for granted that there will be voices that remain unheard—that is, whose opinions do not get to be represented—in any academic work of research of this type. One of the ethical duties inherent to this reality is the necessity of highlighting this shortcoming and reducing its repetition in the present study as much as possible. The interpretations of these texts can be correlated with both their socio-cultural context and the manner in which other cultural products—not necessarily tied to queer themes—are constructed, and this fact contributes to the process of pinpointing new approaches and subjects that are absent in the Romanian specialised literature. The selection is to a large extent, representative of what can be labelled queer culture. For the purpose of this study, queer culture is understood as artistic and media productions which deal with non-normative sexualities, topics, characters, life stories and experiences. As opposed to mainstream (heteronormative) cultural products, queer culture often challenges the status quo in both social and artistic realms, frequently employing critiques of the monolithic traditional takes on how “culture” and “national cannon” are defined, as well as alternatives to the configurations of intimacy, sexual desire, plurality of representations, etc.

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Queer culture can also be defined through “projections of «otherness»” (Bhabha 1994), in relation and opposition with dominant cultural tendencies: national, patriarchal, and heterosexual-centred. The relational dimension between mass culture and different niches, such as the queer one, is built upon the intersection of cultural and personal histories (Doty 1993) which seek to create spaces for historically marginalised voices. In the context of a national hegemonic artistic landscape shaped by literary critics this often translated to neglecting the queer dimensions even if those were present in the so-called canonical texts. This study brings to light these nuances, especially when it comes to literary pieces from before communist times. It is built around a narrow definition of “culture”, as a sum of artistic and media productions, and less as the sum of social and cultural traits of non-heterosexual individuals and communities. The term “culture” in this case is mainly used throughout the study because its equivalent in Romanian (cultur˘a ) is often used in relation to artistic and cultural manifestations. Queer culture is not necessarily produced by homosexual authors and this contributes to deepening the discussion on representation and stereotype (re)production developed throughout this book.

Methodology This research involves two sets of in-depth interviews with queer persons which were taken between 2017–2018 (nine interviews) during my doctoral research, and respectively during 2021–2022 (fifteen interviews), as part of my postdoctoral research. The methodology of the thesis has been approved by the PhD committee of the University of Bucharest. The methodology on the basis of the interviews taken in 2021–2022 was approved by NSD (the Norwegian Centre for Research Data) in 2021 and follows the ethical standards of GDPR. Informed consent, both verbal and written was obtained from the participants and pseudonyms were used where the persons requested this. All the participants had access to the finalised transcriptions so they could mark any information they would deem unpublishable, as well as develop and explain certain points. I selected participants using snowball sampling, contacting them either directly (in person, outside electronic means of communication), by email or via social media. Given their willingness to collaborate and interest in the topic, I did not encounter any difficulties from the respondents with regard to sharing and contextualising their experiences as queer persons.

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The interviews lasted between 50 and 200 minutes and were conducted both online and offline. The profiles of the contributors are heterogenous, their ages range from 29 to 74. The 2017–2018 interviews consist of stories shared by producers of queer cultural elements from various spheres (film, visual arts, theatre, performance, literature). The first part of each interview focused on the past—childhood and adolescence experiences in relation to queer cultural products that were available at the time. The second part of each interview was dedicated to current experiences in relation to the topic and aimed at obtaining details and opinions about their own interests: what queer cultural products they have come into contact with, what preferences they have in relation to them, what kind of events they attend, etc., while the final part was dedicated to constructing meanings and interrogating positionalities and interpretations of what builds a queer culture and what are its specificities within the Romanian context. At this point, emotional and analytical links were established between the personal and professional lives of the participants, between the messages proposed by their own cultural creations, and those of other similar products. One of the main reasons for choosing to conduct in-depth interviews was not to generalise the results but to delve deeper into certain aspects, in relation to individual experiences and their interconnection with culture. The methodology used in analysing the interviews combined thematic analysis with narrative analysis. Firstly, patterns and common themes in the personal narratives were identified and analysed in relation to the cultural and social context. Subsequently, narrative analysis was used to pinpoint nuances and differences in collaborators’ experiences and backgrounds, highlighting certain critiques of the way mainstream queer cultural products were dealing with, for example, disproportionate representations of certain LGBT+ experiences over more marginal ones. As for the analysis of cultural products, the study employs narrative analysis, critical discourse analysis, and semiotic analysis, along with principles drawn from queer ethnography: deep and prolonged engagement with the study contributors, sharing and capturing fragments of everyday life with any of the participants. Being a queer person myself, anchored in the Romanian context for the first 28 years of my life, also contributed to nuancing my analysis and gaining insightful knowledge used in constructing this book. The corpus was selected from a more generous one, based on the following criteria: thematic (cultural products that address diverse sexual themes and identities), intersectional (some of

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them closely address concepts such as sexuality and ethnicity or class), formal (different mediums of expression), and based on the nature and purpose of the products (informative, entertaining, personal stories, etc.). Variation in the construction of the corpus was the main rationale behind building up the selection, given the multitude of forms that Romanian queer culture takes and the desire to cover as many thematic areas and forms of expression as possible. This facilitated the interpretations of the texts in relation to the socio-cultural context. The selected materials are, to a large extent, representative of what I call queer culture, without being an example of how other such materials could be produced in the future.

CHAPTER 2

A Fragmented History of Queerness

In order to better contextualise how queer representations function in contemporary cultural products, it is necessary to review the cultural materials and the socio-political nuances that accompanied them. The present historical outline of queer culture is not meant to be exhaustive by any means, but it is necessary. The emergence of a queer culture in Romania is closely connected to the repeal of Article 200 1 in 2001— which led to the decriminalisation of same-sex relationships—as a result of important struggles by various Romanian and foreign individuals, groups and associations, which will be reviewed. 1 The phrase “sexual inversion” was introduced to the Criminal Code through Article 200 in 1936 and it was the first reference to sexuality in a Romanian legal document. It established that, should individuals of the same sex that engaged in intercourse cause “a public scandal”, they would be condemned to 6 months to 2 years in prison. In 1968, the punishment augmented (between 1 to 5 years in prison) and four more paragraphs were added to the law, addressing: the punishment for sexual acts with minors (2–7 years in prison), rape (3–10 years in prison), propaganda (1–5 years in prison), and acts leading to the victim’s death by suicide (up to 25 years in prison).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Dima, Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38849-1_2

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One of the first attempts at a micro-history of Romanian queer personalities is Homoistorii. Ies, irea din invizibilitate (Homohistories. Coming out of invisibility), a volume coordinated by Florin Buhuceanu, gay activist and founding member of the ACCEPT association. It was first published in 2012, with a second edition in 2016 and a third one in 2022. Homohistories marks the first attempt at retracing a queer history— albeit largely concerning gay men in twentieth century Romania— and offers an overview of prominent cultural figures such as Mihail V˘ac˘arescu, Alexandu Bogdan Pites, ti, Cella Delavrancea, Milit, a Petras, cu, Ion Negoit, escu, George B˘alan, Mihai R˘adulescu, Dina Cocea, Neculai Constantin Munteanu and Ion Luchian Mihalea. This historical outline is based on anonymous interviews, archive documents, memoirs and acts that bear witness to the legislative and social trauma that shaped Romanian history. Many of the interviews, literary and archival sources included in Homohistories provide important insights into how the contemporary homophobic movement was constructed beginning with the 1990s. It was characterised by a strong reaffirmation of the traditionalist, nationalist and orthodox strand, and of the values of the Romanian Orthodox Church, endorsed by the “intellectual elite” and most of the political parties, a trend whose revival can still be observed nowadays. Although mainstream discourses on Romania’s self-proclaimed “democracy” continue to glorify the freedom achieved by means of the events of 1989, the abuses of the police and authorities against queer people contradict these discourses. In the early 1990s, the police intensified searches for queer people who continued to be subjected to humiliating interrogations, blackmail and warrants in which personal diaries, address books and gay materials were confiscated, with each victim under pressure to name other queer people. The research conducted by Florin Buhuceanu, in its first edition, focuses on the testimonies of men whose experiences often include incarcerations both pre- and post-1990 under Article 200. The only example of lesbian women’s experiences of legal persecution in the first edition of the book is Mariana Cetiner. Cetiner was imprisoned in 1996 and was subjected to physical and mental abuse by staff and inmates in various prisons until her pardon in 1998, signed by president Emil Constantinescu. The pardon came after intense efforts by national and international human rights organisations and only after she was named the first prisoner of conscience on grounds of sexual orientation by Amnesty International.

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The abuses behind Article 200 were documented in 1993 and 1994 by a group of activists who conducted prison interviews with detainees. They uncovered 57 gay men convicted under the article, despite the authorities’ denials and they obtained testimonies of ill-treatment of those interviewed (torture, physical abuse by prison staff, etc.) (HRW, IGLHRC 1998). The report Public Scandals. Sexual Orientation and Criminal Law in Romania, published in 1998 by Human Rights Watch and IGLHRC (The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission) briefly states in its introduction to the chapter about the case of Mariana Cetiner that “social and cultural barriers to women’s voicing lesbian desire were severe—sufficiently so that the law rarely had to act. But the law was ready” (HRW, IGLHRC 1998, 55). Homohistories connects cultural references with multiple experiences of suffering, often anchoring itself in stories of everyday life. Romania’s queer past is recalled as one closely associated with the Militia, Securitate, extortion and the prison system, as well as shaped by the media, mostly through “shocking” stories, brutal murders and “various affairs”, but equally rich in references to intellectual public figures who seem to practice a “mystical homophobia”, as coined by art critic Radu Ionescu (Buhuceanu 2016, 114). Towards the end of the volume, an excerpt of a transcript details a meeting held by the Chamber of Deputies in 1998 which dealt with the repeal of Article 200, on the eve of Romania’s accession to the European Union. I will limit myself to providing a single quote from the statement of deputy Mircea Ciumara, member of PNT, CD (The Christian Democratic National Peasants’ Party), which sufficiently reflects the attitudes of those present as well as the general tone of the meeting: “If the only way we can enter Europe is ass-first, then I am inviting the Honourable to do so. I refuse” (Buhuceanu 2016, 101).

Temporal Leaps: Newspapers and Historical Sources The first—historically attested—lesbian wedding in present-day Romania, is described by Constant, a Vintil˘a-Ghit, ulescu in her volume În s, alvari s, i cu is, lic. Church, sexuality, marriage and divorce in eighteenth century Wallachia. The account can be found in the tenth volume of V.A. Urechia’s History of Romanians, and is registered as having taken place in the province of Wallachia in 1801. The event is presented in a written

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report addressed to the ruler2 by boyar Constantin Caragea. The denunciation concerned a historically unprecedented case with no punitive counterpart at the legislative level: one woman’s marriage to another woman.3 The report mentions Maria, who, after her first marriage had resulted in a child, met another man with whom she had a “hardknock life” and thus decided to flee to Bucharest. All this happened 20 years before the report. To avoid being recognised, Maria disguised herself in men’s clothes and changed her name to Marin. She took a job with seneschal Iacovache, who starts to suspect a burgeoning love affair between Marin and his daughter, also called Maria, and, for fear of punishment, he gives them permission to marry. Although Nit, a, the godmother had been warned about Marin, she decides to still wed them. Caragea is asking the ruler to punish Maria and Nit, a. The lord’s sentence is similar to the recommendations of the landowner: “[…] we hereby order you to punish with a severe beating both Maria, and even more rigorously her godmother Nit, a, and subsequently by the lord’s order send Maria with my lordship’s servant to the Viforâta monastery at south of Dâmbovita” (Urechia 1900, 94). In my search for other traces on homosexuality and lesbianism in newspapers, during the archival research phase, I have encountered numerous relevant articles, more than 300 spread across over a century, from the late 1880s until the fall of the communist regime in 1989. As for trans accounts, there were no materials I could find, apart from a very limited number of sources from the late 1990s and 2000s onwards. A brief discussion of the main trends presented by news outlets is thus needed, in order to better anchor and contextualise the current research. Before 1916, I could only find scarce accounts, mainly following the key word “pederast”. Indeed, the main news either concerned “mores trials” of men accused of “luring” underaged boys (Adeverul 1901) or different political attacks where the politicians and journalists were “accusing” each other of pederasty (Adeverul 1902). Moreover, some sources

2 The ruler of Wallachia at that time was most probably Mihai Sutu, who was holding , , his third reign in October 1801 in Wallachia and who replied to the epistle on 20 October 1801. 3 “So, having searched both the imperial chambers and the most recent political documents, there could not be found any such instance, that is, of one woman wedding another, so that it be adjudicated and punished […]” (Urechia 1900, 94).

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depict different well-known trials, such as the one of Alexandru BogdanPite¸sti, a left-wing and anarchist writer who is depicted by the conservative forces as a crook, surrounded by fellow pederasts and acting as an agent for the Austro-German forces (Adeverul 1916). It is important to note that gay men were often referred to as belonging to criminal gangs in the newspapers and homosexuality was used as a pejorative attribute in combination with different other depictions. One such example is the association of homosexuality with Nazism, which will intensify once the communist regime comes into power. An interesting finding concerns the so-called “sexual revolution” in Russia during the beginning of 1900s. One such article refers to Russian newspaper outlets and presents Russia as a place where lesbianism and homosexuality were at the base of a new social movement, fuelled by intellectuals and following the issue of Mikhail Artsybashev´s book, Sanin—considered one of the reasons for youth emancipation during the Tsarist period (Luker 1999). The Romanian newspaper article associates homosexuality with “depravation and perversity” (Opinia 1908) and mentions the formation of proto-LGBT + organisations as informal groups, mainly around Russian universities. Issues concerning lesbians were almost non-existent in the newspapers predating the First World War and the very scarce traces I could find mainly mentioned them in relation to foreign literary pieces. The interwar period in Romania is marked by a few extensively covered cases of homosexuality. In 1935, the Orthodox periodical Credint, a (The Faith) run by Sandu Tudor started publishing a series of articles4 attacking Romanian intellectuals Petru Comarnescu, Alexandru Cristian-Tell and Mircea Vulc˘anescu who were part of the Criterion group5 and “accusing” them of homosexuality. Sandu Tudor was sued by the members of the Criterion group for defamation and sentenced to prison in 1936, the same year in which “sexual inversion” became a crime by entering the Romanian Criminal Code (Human Rights Watch & International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission 1988). Once homosexuality was categorised as a crime, and the communist regime came into 4 The articles are described in detail here: https://www.scena9.ro/article/retete-dinhomofobia-traditionala and https://evz.ro/asociatia-criterion-povestea-unei-grupari-intele ctuale.html [accessed 5 January 2023]. 5 A Romanian association of arts, philosophy and literature consisting of intellectual men.

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power, the story of gay intellectuals, especially the ones holding rightwing views, becomes a pattern of surveillance and imprisonment. A few news mention how “pederasty” can be encountered in the theological seminars and in connection to a heresy and immorality process opened by the Synod (Mis, carea 1911; Iorga 1910) against two bishops, one of them considered a “pederast”. The archival research focused on the interwar times showed only a few examples where lesbianism was also in focus. Most of them use the term in connection to theatre and literature, when discussing works by Charles Baudelaire, Julie d’Aubigny, Marcel Proust, Paul Verlaine, Édouard Bourdet, Pierre Louÿs, etc. Some mention Hollywood movies or travel accounts from “depraved spaces” such as Montparnasse in Paris, the “headquarter” of “poets, blasé painters, possessed of all vices, inverts, Lesbians” (Opinia 1928). Few other snippets of lesbianism populate the news: Sappho was seen as “way less pervert than many Hellenists want to portray her” (Adev˘arul 1927) or an article on Swedish queen Christina, rumoured to be “a lesbian, a hermaphrodite” (Bardos, i 1937, 553). A piece based on Georges Blun´s accounts for Journal de Paris is presented in the Romanian media as a testimony of the “failure of the national-socialist dictatorship” in Hitler´s Germany (Lupta 1935). The article argues that Hitler´s propaganda created a “lost generation” of young people, sexually “perverted” and caught into the “vitiate” nationalsocialism, where women were reduced to their reproductive functions and many of them acquired refractory views on religion while engaging in lesbianism (idem.). A detailed case is the death of a well-known Romanian actress, Tita Cristescu. The newspapers dedicate their first pages to depictions of the possible causes: from suicide to murder on monetary grounds or jealousy, advancing one of the hypotheses according to which the assassin is thought to be a lesbian in the actress’s circle (Curentul 1936). There were also a few instances where lesbianism was presented as a joke subject: “You know, that one from the third floor… She´s a lesbian! Oh, you don´t say, I thought she was Spanish!” (Veselia 1934), or, with the variation: “Damn that liar, yesterday she told me she is a seamstress” (Veselia 1937). Akin to homosexuals, lesbians—although less frequently—were also portrayed as criminals and vitiate. During the early 1940s, the newspapers mention organised raids conducted by the police in order to arrest gay men. In some instances, the arrested persons´ full names and addresses were reproduced in the

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articles. While this tendency was augmented in the Romanian newspapers during the 1990s, as homosexual men became more visible through such news, the communist period also holds different types of accounts on homosexuality and lesbianism, all on a pejorative and negative note. The interviews I conducted in 2021–2022 with queer persons who had memories from communism highlighted the lack of information on queerness in the communist newspapers. For example, one participant notes that: You know, this whole period on the subject of homosexuality, I felt, well, it was kind of inchoate, so there may have been people practicing it. Occasionally there’d be an article in Romania Liber˘a, one of those papers, about some notorious case that had been uncovered and almost always between men. It was as if women couldn’t imagine that, it’s just off the radar. But there would be things about some scandalous happening with two men and it’d be in the papers. But not much before ’89. (Julia Johnson 2022)

However, the archival analysis uncovered a slightly different perspective. In an article published in 2013 on the communist investigations of female party members in Romania that took place in the 1950s, Robert C. Tokolyi discovers a case of exclusion from the party on the basis of sexuality. Ferenczy Elena was born in 1916 into a working-class family, and from 1945 onwards she was a member of the Communist Party as well as secretary of the Red Cross. The report states: “She is a member with abnormal, homosexual feelings. Between 1942 and 1947, she practised homosexuality with Iancu Rozalia, as she admitted herself. The Commission resolves upon her expulsion from the Party due to the immoral element that compromised the prestige of the Party” (Tokolyi 2013, 442). In general, homosexuality was seen by the Romanian communist regime as a Western import, and anything related to the US and its capitalism entered the sanctions zone. Interestingly, racism was also sanctioned in the media of the time. The communist propaganda newspaper Scînteia presents a case of a black man from the US who was persecuted in his homeland on racial grounds and managed to escape to USSR “where there are so many persons ‘of color’ and still nobody thinks of differentiating people based on ‘color’ […] The right to happiness he had is not an isolated case: in the U.S.S.R., everybody has this right and it is one of the most sacred of rights” (Scînteia 1948, 1). This example illustrates the early

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Romanian communist state’s views on US contemporary issues, criticising both racism and homosexuality as “Western” products that allegedly do not exist in the USSR and its sphere of influence. Many of the mentions have to do with cultural products from different European countries and the US—the host of the “bourgeoise «poison»” (Steagul Ro¸su 1954). To this, accounts on the “spread” of homosexuality are added, where countries such as France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Netherlands and the US are seen as following the capitalist trend of sexual “promiscuity”. Since homosexuality was often portrayed as a negative trait, different associations would be made by the newspapers. For example, the antiNazi rhetoric conflated with anti-homosexuality rhetoric. The Nazis were “perverts”, and this extended to the sexuality realm: “homosexuals are recruited even from the high rank Nazis” (Viat, a Româneasc˘a 1949). Another way of shaping homosexuality as an enemy was to present them as “tools of the SS” during their incarceration in concentration camps (Iosifescu 1954), while also portraying some of the leaders of Nazi Germany as homosexuals (Corbu 1989). Another trope was that of the criminal homosexuals, and this tendency could be found in the communist newspapers where gay men were often associated with “murderers, thieves and crooks” (Viat, a Româneasc˘a 1954; Munteanu 1947). These strategies of scapegoating would become more visible during the 90s and 2000s, when the Romanian newspapers, freed from the tabu on nonnormative sexualities, would present extensive cases of murders allegedly done by homosexuals. While the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been poorly covered by media through the USSR (Alexander 2023) as a way of limiting access to knowledge and in line with the political view on Western elements which did not exist in the Eastern Bloc, some Romanian media outlets still mentioned this subject sporadically (S, tiint, a˘ s, i Tehnic˘a 1985; Popescu 1987). The archival research shows that the general tone of these articles written by Romanian doctors was an informative one, containing updates on the developments, as well as overall information about the virus. Still, one of the articles clearly delimitates the affected areas to the US and Western Europe (S, tiint, a˘ s, i Tehnic˘a 1985), whilst the following editions focus on the spread to other areas and mention the “American homosexuals” as the ones facilitating the process (Ros, ca 1989). The archival analysis showed that the most mentions of lesbianism and homosexuality still remained in the realm of literary, movie and theatre critiques, where queer characters or queer writers or actors were

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mentioned. It is important to note that some of these mentions also relate to literary works and plays produced by Romanian authors. One such example is a chronicle to a play by Horia Lovinescu, O cas˘a onorabil˘a (An honourable house) directed by Lucian Giurchescu at C. Nottara Theater in Bucharest: “the lesbian advances made by the two heroines of the comedy can be suggested, how can I say, somewhat more indirectly” (Popescu 1968). The consulted material shows different short stories or fragments by Romanian authors, some snippets of travel journals, as well as translations of articles or poems from foreign newspapers, all equating lesbianism with depravation. But what about the queer intellectual, public women figures of the communist times? While most of the scarce accounts deal with gossip about partners or wives of gay intellectuals who were having their share of “affairs” with other women, there is little known about these women and their private lives. One exception is the case of Olga Caba and her partner Eric Tec˘au.6 Born in 1913, teacher and writer Olga Caba was being surveilled by the Securitate starting with the 1940s, as she was framed to be at the forefront of the legionary7 movement in Romania. She was imprisoned between 1952 and 1954 on political grounds involving right-wing views and was arrested in her partner´s house, teacher Erica Tec˘au (at that time). Studying the 1689 pages long Securitate files containing every data recorded on Olga Caba during the surveillance period, Nicolae Afrapt finds intriguing that although non-heterosexual relationships were punishable by law and queer people were easily blackmailed, the Securitate and the other authorities seemed “uninterested” in the fact that Olga Caba lived at the time in a lesbian relationship and that they could have been prosecuted on these grounds (Afrapt 2018, 95). Moreover, the files mention that some people in the small town of Sebes, where the couple lived were aware of their lesbian relationship, and they were gossiping8 while the Securitate rarely mentions Olga´s partner 6 While the sources mention both the feminine and the masculine name, I chose the

second option with one exception, since the lesbian dimension before the transition is quite important and adds context to the story. 7 Members of the Romanian fascist movement the Iron Guard, also known as The Legion of the Archangel Michael. 8 Their students would make comments such as: “The two young ladies teachers do it like the cats” (Afrapt 2018, p. 2).

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and in the few cases when they do, they reference her husband, Eric (pp. 95–96). Ligia Dumitriu accessed their private correspondence and mentions that in 1956 Eric undergoes a sex reassignment surgery on basis of intersexuality at Panduri Hospital, Bucharest from where he writes to Olga: “From now on, I am officially Eric and I have the right to love you” (Dumitriu 2010, 11). One year later, Olga and Eric marry in Tuzla and in 1958 the authorities fire Olga from her teacher position at Sebes, high school and Eric is transferred to a school in Petres, ti, to calm the public uproar caused by the couple´s attempts to live in legality (Afrapt 2018, 98–99). The story of Olga Caba and Eric Tec˘au was substantially documented by various archival sources and brief accounts among the intellectuals of the time, for example, Lucian Blaga´s depictions in his autobiographical novel, Luntrea lui Caron. However, the story is still a marginal one, as compared to the attention dedicated to contemporary gay intellectual figures. In the search for information on queer Romanian public figures, some of the respondents recall the most known names, in a reiteration of the fact that Romanian history of non-normative sexualities was also a man-centred one.

Socialising Spaces During Communism Little is known about how queer women and trans persons would meet or find community during communism. During 2022, I interviewed fifteen queer women, trans and nonbinary persons who shared their memories on communism and the transition period in Romania. When mentioning possible socialising spaces, most of the interviewees had no knowledge on possible gatherings, groups, or meeting places before 1989. Some referred to the more known meeting spots used by gay men. The few accounts on such socialising spaces before 1989 mostly mention the maledominated cruising spaces: the public toilet, the cinema, the Opera house park, etc. While trying to obtain information on similar spaces which were not exclusively used by men, I managed to gather some fragments which refer to both public and private spaces. An exceptional place, also mentioned by one respondent, was Intim restaurant in Cluj. Opened in 1962, Intim was a women-only restaurant, the first and only of this type in Romania. Located in the central part of the city, the restaurant was a success among the locals. In a short

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videoclip from the British Pathé archive9 filmed in 1969, the viewers are offered a glimpse of the interior. The voiceover calls it “the island of Cluj amazons”, a reference to queer women. The restaurant functioned until 1995, when its name was changed and became a mixed restaurant (Pop 2014). While not openly a queer space, Intim might have been an important meeting spot for women who wanted to meet or spend time with other women for more than socialising. The rumours of the time also positioned it as a possible queer space since many referred to it as a place where the loyal customers were lesbians (or spies—as some suspected), and one must be aware not to enter because of the clientele (idem.). Interestingly, one of the owners denies these rumours in an interview for Adevarul.ro, mentioning that it was a meeting place for “actresses, singers, painters, professors, students and not for lesbians” (idem.). This biased exclusion offers an example of how homophobia is still rooted and manifests itself in relation to refuting gossip on sexuality matters and dismissing any such discussions: lesbianism did not have anything to do with “respected professions”, even though the existence of a busy and lively women-only space would leave room for many interpretations, especially given the patriarchal and oppressive context of the times. Alina Nelega remembers Intim, from her student years (1980–1984): “It was somehow accepted as a bar where men would not enter. There was gossip and people knew what that place is like. I wanted to enter on a few occasions when I was with a colleague, but she stopped me and refused to enter. […] You do realize I finally entered. […] It was a big room, with no windows, completely closed. There was such a cigarette smoke that you cut it with the knife, and it vented through the open door. It was absolutely fine, so nothing lewd was happening there. But for sure it was a meeting place” (interview with Alina Nelega, 2022). One lead in searching for socialising spaces where women would also be present is the artistic scene, since artists were seen as more open, and the relationships would have been more easily entertained (interview with Alina Nelega, 2022). While not particularly studied, the sports realm can also be mentioned as a possible meeting environment, that would facilitate non-heterosexual relationships: “In women´s handball teams, where I had more contact, relationships were formed. There are also extraconjugal relationships. It is easy for these relationships to happen since 9 Available at: https://www.britishpathe.com/video/restaurant-for-women-only [accessed 5 January 2023].

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you are always in cantonment and share the same dressing room. It is impossible not to happen” (interview with Alex Colt, a, 2022). Considering the traits of different socialising spaces (cultural, academic, sports related, activist, etc.) is important in conducting these kinds of empirical studies since their particularities also shape the ways these microhistories developed and continue to develop. One possible reason for the scarcity of public personal histories of queer people in Romania is the low interest among researchers in the topic of non-normative sexuality, which continues to be considered a taboo subject. If in other countries there are rich archives10 of queer material, memoirs, and historical sources, the same cannot be said about Romania.11 Two possible sources of material are the archives of the ACCEPT organisation and of visual artist Adrian Newell P˘aun, one of the interviewees and author of several exhibitions, including SAVAGED pINK, on the history of the Romanian gay press. Some of the material from the artist’s collection was used for the section related to post-1990 Romanian queer magazines. Over the years, as a member of feminist and queer circles, the Feminist Reading Circle12 of the Alternative Library and the Sofia N˘adejde Feminist Centre,13 I have come to realise the importance of documenting and archiving materials related to the activity of these groups; this undertaking is essential if one wants to generate and complete a local queer 10 One example is the Spinnboden Lesbenarchiv und Bibliothek (Spinnboden Lesbian Archive and Library) founded in 1973 in Berlin by a group of queer women who wanted to ensure that historical materials related to queer liberation movements would not be forgotten. They were mainly concerned with documenting their own activities as well as those of other lesbian groups in West Berlin. Since 1993 Spinnboden has been funded by the state although it remains an independent institution (Brown 2010, 127). 11 Another such archive is the Lesbian Herstory Archives in the United States, founded in 1975. It houses the largest collection of materials about lesbian people and their communities in the world. (Details: http://www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/) [accessed 6 March 2023]. 12 Started in Bucharest in 2010. 13 Opened on 7 December 2013 in Bucharest. About the centre: “CFSN is a feminist

space that hosts the F.I.A. Mobile Library and the Feminist Reading Circle, which will also function in support of other feminist groups and initiatives. The centre will be open to the community for meetings and activities, will run a weekly vegan café and will provide a reading room, a sewing workshop, a screening room, a rehearsal space, a storage area for groups and various other forms of support if needed” (https://centrufeminist.wordpr ess.com/despre/) [accessed 5 January 2023].

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history. In the absence of archived data, one can only presume that such groups (unregistered and functioning underground) were also operating in pre-1989 Romania and that references and documents related to their functioning can be recovered, if not real people who were involved and have the desire to complete a part of queer history that remains for the time being merely hypothetical.

Online Sources As far as online resources are concerned, particularly in relation to platforms that are currently no longer active, I used the Queer Resources Directory and the Wayback Machine to retrieve captures of queer Romanian websites from the second half of the 1990s. This is how I recovered letters and reports (such as those from ILGA Europe and ACCEPT) demanding international support,14 reports on police abuse of queer people including names, initials, cases and newspaper articles in which the identity and address of those involved were made public,15 as well as some traces of Romanian LesBiGay, one of the first web platforms dedicated to local queer issues. 14 “The Romanian Parliament is at it again. Last month, the Senate approved a draft law

for the revision of Romania’s Criminal Code that would continue to prosecute consensual same-sex relations among adults, and would, for the first time, forbid the association of gays and lesbians in Romania. This draft law, with the exception of a few commas and periods, is identical to the one rejected by the Chamber of Deputies last fall. However, since 1996 is a critical election year in Romania, there is no guarantee that it will be rejected again […] We are writing to urge your organisation to send letters—AS SOON AS POSSIBLE—to key members of the Chamber of Deputies imploring them to end Romania’s state-sponsored discrimination against gays and lesbians once and for all” (source: QUEERPLANET e-mail list, article of 4 April 1996). 15 “Last night two homosexuals were caught making love in Cismigiu Park in Bucharest. Around 2.30 a.m., while on night watch, guards Haralambie Vulcan, Emil Vieru and Alexandru Neculce noticed two people ‘playing with each other,’ naked and wrapped in a bedsheet, on a bench near the children’s playground. Caught in the act, the two were taken to the 3rd Police Station, where they were identified. A/N.: I have chosen not to republish the names and addresses as they appeared in the newspaper, and they have been replaced with the ‘’ sign. They are:, aged 47, residing in Bucharest„ no., district, and, aged 39, from, county. […] Since there were no other witnesses to the ‘frolics’ of the two homosexuals; therefore, not having caused a public scandal, the adventurous couple was released, escaping with only a fine.” (c) 1997 Day—Article originally published on 3 September 1997. Edited by: Adrian Newell January 1998 Romanian LesBiGays on Internet http://web.archive.org/web/19990202071654/http://www.geocities.com/ WestHollywood/1811/ [accessed 5 January 2023].

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An example of such a report is Police abuses against suspected homosexuals in Baia Mare and Ias, i, Romania, a report carried out by Accept and APADOR-CH (Romanian Helsinki Committee, founded in 1990) between 23–28 September 1996. The report contains testimonies of gay and bisexual men who were detained by the police and pressured into naming their gay acquaintances and friends. The researchers also contacted the appointed investigators at the time, but they merely obtained a promise from the prosecutor that he would look into how the investigations had been carried out behind his back. In November 1994, ILGA16 received a fax from the League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADO) outlining the context in Romania: In February 1992, Total relations, the first gay and lesbian group was formed. In February 1993, a second one, Group 200, more politically inclined, was created. They have both sent delegates to ILGA conferences in the past. unfortunately, both are defunct by now, having succumbed to internal fights and, most importantly maybe, to the society’s highly disapproving view of homosexuality. The public still clings to the idea of a traditional, orthodox Romania that can stay uncorrupted by foreign inspired deviances and perversions. (ILGA 1995)17

The two organisations, Total Relations and Grup 200 (referencing Article 200) were two informal associations that did not leave a visible mark on the Romanian activist landscape, given their rapid dissolution. The same ephemeral fate befell Gay45 magazine, which emerged from a project developed by visual artist R˘azvan Ion in collaboration with the IGLHRC (International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission). With the aid of the digital archiving tool Wayback Machine I managed to retrieve a relatively small part of the articles published on the Romanian LesBiGay website, the first Romanian queer website, active in the 90 s and providing information in Romanian and English, founded and managed by artist and activist Adrian Newell P˘aun, who was in the U.S.

16 The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. [accessed 5 January 2023]. 17 http://www.qrd.org/qrd/orgs/ILGA/euroletter/1995/30-01.95 January 2023].

[accessed

5

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at the time. A press release from 20 July 1994,18 reproduced in English on the website and signed by the Swedish-based queer organisation Kom Ut International, is possibly the first reference to a cultural event—an art festival—that was supposed to take place in Bucharest in 1994, organised by the newly published magazine Gay45, and more precisely by one of the founding members of the magazine, the artist and theoretician R˘azvan Ion. This event, located at the intersection of performance art, sound and contemporary dance, was prevented by the Romanian Police. I quote below excerpts from the press release, as I consider it an important document for the subject at hand: Last Saturday the Theatre Casa de Cultur˘a was surrounded by policemen and dogs determined to prevent homosexual artists from performing there. Five Nordic artists—dancer Erik Kubista, musician Peter Berg and ERI, the Finnish dance troupe—were booked to participate in an international gay and lesbian art festival in Bucharest. However, giving in to outside pressure, the director of the Ion Crang˘a Theatre cancelled Friday’s performance on extremely short notice. The show was then moved to Casa de Cultur˘a. But upon arriving at the Casa de Cultur˘a the artists and prospective audience were greeted by a large number of policemen ordered there by the mayor, who formally prohibited the performance. “We weren’t even allowed to hold a press conference at our hotel, The Minerva,” says dancer Erik Kubista.19

A first symposium related to the rights of queer people in Romania took place on 31 May 1995 and was organised by Bucharest Acceptance Group, the forerunner of ACCEPT, and APADOR-CH, with the support of UNESCO-CEPES. This symposium brought together politicians, members of the Romanian Orthodox Church and people from civil society, and the discussions focused on Article 200 and contained the views of those present on the matters of democracy, sin, legislation, religion, public/private, etc. A brief sample of the discussions includes the intervention of the Minister of Justice at the time, Octavian Cojocaru, who stressed the fact that Romanian institutions, the Church, 18 http://web.archive.org/web/20000608165109/http://www.geocities.com/Wes tHollywood/1811/20jul94.html, unarchived via Wayback Machine, https://archive.org/ web [accessed 5 January 2023]. 19 https://web.archive.org/web/20000306073411/http://www.geocities.com/Wes tHollywood/1811/20jul94.html [accessed 5 January 2023].

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and the majority of citizens were anxious about the decriminalisation of consensual same-sex relationships between adults: Human nature is inclined towards romanticism, and the beauty of the Romanian woman allows us to be biblical and evoke God, who told Adam and Eve to go and multiply throughout the earth. It is a matter of Christian morality and the laws of the Bible [...] the new (drafted) law harmonizes the new freedoms of the individual, only to the extent that homosexuality is believed to be a human right. (ILGA 1995)

In 1997, a conference called Expressing Sexuality: Biology, Culture Theory and Psychology of Homosexuality, held at the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, was the first of its kind to initiate a debate on “homosexuality”. The conference focused, as far as it can be gathered from the programme, on the biological and psychological/psychiatric dimension of studies about the queer community. Given that queer people, together with other marginalised groups, have been and continue to be the victims of the abuse inflicted by the psychiatric system, it comes as no surprise that most of those present and invited to express their views in academic formulas were psychiatrists and psychologists, both Western and local. Although one of the aims of the event was to collect various approaches from various disciplines, the programme was packed with presentations with titles such as “Neurological Differences Between Homosexuals and Heterosexuals”, “Neurophysiological Aspects of Homosexual Behavior”, “An Anthropological View of Sexuality and Deviance of Sexual Behavior”, “Homosexuality, Between Dependence and Psycho-social Immaturity”, and “Clinical Aspects of Homosexuality”. Such an approach—which clearly did not take into account the extensive studies on gender and queerness that were substantially developed even then in the West, and which, moreover, seemed to reinforce stereotypes that conflate queer people with the psychiatric system—represented the event’s weak and problematic aspect. Although it was seen as the first conference on the topic of queerness, the event rather resembled a gathering of people from outside the queer community who chose to talk about experiences that were alien to them, in a universalising setting and in a context that overlooks how queer people were already the target of marginalisation and the subject of a heated and diversified debate. It is worth noting that many years later (17–19 November 2017), the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work from the University of Bucharest

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organised QueerFemSEE International Conference,20 the first international conference to bring together scholars and researchers from the fields of cultural studies, queer studies and feminist studies. The participants were mainly from the EEA, from over 15 countries and at various academic stages, which contributed to the plurality of discourses and academic approaches to studies around non-normative sexualities. We equally initiated this conference out of a desire to get in touch with researchers from the Romanian academic space, but unfortunately, the number of researchers was much smaller than initially expected.

In Search of Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s* Testimonies and Communities In 2011, SuntLesbiana.ro 21 (IAmALesbian) was launched: an independent initiative that wanted to create a space for queer women to share their stories and generate a sense of belonging. Since there had not been any community spaces (not even online websites) before this, the website successfully collected 294 stories and 3695 related comments between 2011 and 2012. Alexandra, the initiator of the platform, explained the need for the project as follows: My name is Alexandra and I am the woman behind the initiative SuntLesbiana.ro. The idea for the website came to me as a result of my own experience. When I was 25 I realised I was a lesbian and moved to London. But while I was given the chance to live somewhere where I could be myself, I have never forgotten that things are different back home, in Romania. Here, not only is it difficult to be an openly gay woman, but the journey from the first questions to the realisation that you are a lesbian is much harder than in other countries where there is tolerance, understanding and acceptance.22

20 https://queerfemsee.wordpress.com/ [accessed 5 January 2023]. 21 https://web.archive.org/web/20111219224726/http://www.suntlesbiana.ro/

[accessed 5 January 2023]. 22 https://web.archive.org/web/20111104014343/http://www.suntlesbiana.ro/eu/ [accessed 5 January 2023].

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Under the protection of anonymity and through careful moderation of comments, this website offers a multidimensional glimpse into the mechanism of coming out and the struggle for acceptance waged by the people who chose to publish their stories. The site has two sections: the first is dedicated to lesbian or bisexual women, whereas the second is meant for people who have someone close to them whom they perceive as possibly non-heterosexual, and they seek advice from the community. I quote as an example an excerpt from the testimonials available on the website: Maria is my name, I am 72 years old, and I have discovered the mysteries of the internet. I’ve been married to a man my whole life, 49 years, because that was what our parents wanted. We each have 4 grown children with a family of their own, and I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I have never felt fulfilled with my husband. Neither emotionally nor sexually. I once met a couple in a resort, he fell in love with me, but I felt nothing for men, instead I fell in love with his wife. For 24 years I continued my love affair with this woman. She was from Bucharest; I was from Breaza. My husband never understood why, but he tolerated it. He discovered my intimate letters. He didn’t have the courage to leave our marriage, he didn’t know how to take care of himself, that’s how he had been all his life. But She made me feel complete. I lived those years intensely, emotionally and physically. My girlfriend is no longer alive, but I always leave flowers at her gravestone. That’s what a woman does. She gives herself the right to happiness, now when I look back, I know I was happy in this life. You must always respect people’s right to happiness.23

The section detailing the website’s method of funding reads: ACCEPT actively promotes our initiative (the section I am a lesbian and She is a lesbian) and SuntLesbiana.ro donates 25 lei for each published story. Your anonymous story will partially cover the costs of the psychological counselling services offered by ACCEPT. Where does the money come from? There is no foundation or external financial support behind this initiative. The money comes directly from our pockets. Yes, that’s

23 https://web.archive.org/web/20140312021322/http://www.suntlesbiana.ro/cas atorita-timp-de-49-de-ani-dar-am-iubit-O-femeie-timp-de-24-de-ani [accessed 5 January 2023].

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true, even if it’s hard to believe. The site generates no income and remains financially supported exclusively by the SuntLesbiana.ro team.24

It must be noted that there was no information about the people who made up the team, apart from the short story of the initiator of the project, Alexandra. Unlike the other examples discussed above, this site focused on creating a community and providing information that came strictly from the personal stories of those in the community. The Romanian blogosphere includes women who have chosen to make their sexuality public, notably by telling personal stories. Another sphere includes fragments of fiction and auto-fiction, as well as novels published in the form of episodes, as in the case of “How I Killed Diana” written by Ana Mus, at under the pseudonym The Smurfette with the Scarf . The author of the personal blog questioare.ro,25 one of the first blogs managed by a lesbian woman, Ana, came to public attention in 2010, following an interview published on the website reporter-virtual.ro. The questions were rudimentary, befitting the sensationalist spirit of the interview, ranging from intimate to stereotypical questions and betraying a deep misunderstanding and objectification of queer people viewed through the heteronormative gaze: “I don’t really know what your world is like and I might be asking the wrong questions, but do you assign roles to each other: who is the man in such a relationship, for example?”. The interview took place nine years after the repeal of Article 200 and this type of question can still be found even in the content produced nowadays, more than 16 years after the alleged education of public opinion on the matter of non-normative sexualities and the real lived experiences of queer people. Ana’s short story series was to be published in 2014 by Karth Publishing. “How I Killed Diana” marks the first moment in local queer literature when a drama story unfolding between two teenagers is rendered, chapter by chapter, in the Romanian online environment, stirring reactions among readers and being finally published as a cultural

24 https://web.archive.org/web/20140313092835/http://www.suntlesbiana.ro/cam pania-accept/ [accessed 5 January 2023]. 25 The blog is no longer active, but an archive can be found at https://web.archive. org/web/20110630114206/http://questioare.com/. The title of the website is a pun that combines the English word “question” with the concept of trifling stuff (trans. from the Romanian diminutive chestioare) [accessed 5 January 2023].

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product in its own right. Apart from these small communities of bloggers who often exchange links and references in their lists of “followed” blogs, there are also sporadic traces to be found in the press about the stories of lesbian and bisexual women in Romania. Given that queer women are much less visible in the public space as well as in the attempts to historicise queer culture and their community, any resource, be it a banal online newspaper article, is a step towards engendering a collection of untold or unrepresented stories. Thus, fragmented snippets of lesbian and bisexual people appear sporadically in headlines such as “Lesbians Undercover: The Stories Of Women Who Claim To Have Been Wrong About Marrying Men”,26 “Lesbian Sisters: The Relationship That Shocked Romania”,27 “Confessions Of A Lesbian”.28 Sometimes, when one looks for traces of events, blogs and sites that predate the year 2010, these can be found not only using Wayback Machine, but also—not at all paradoxically—on sites dedicated to orthodox resources, which often archive news and events from the local queer universe, needless to say, with the purpose of criticising and subjecting them to practices of stigmatisation. On one such website29 I found some information about the organisation of an International Lesby Festival, which took place in Cluj-Napoca from 9 to 15 February 2009, organised by the association Es, ti Unic˘a (You’re a Unique Woman), an association dedicated to social activities for women. It was accompanied, as it can be learnt from the Orthodox blog but also from an article published by Ziua de Cluj (Cluj Daily),30 by a counter-demonstration coordinated at the initiative of a local PDL (Democratic Liberal Party) deputy (“a march of silence devoted to the protection of Christian values regarding the family”), but also by a constant wave of threats waged 26 An article from 2011 publishes two stories from the website suntlesbiana.ro and makes a brief reference to the project and the ACCEPT Association that had just started to provide its support. 27 Roller Sis is a musical duo that used, similarly to t.A.t.U (a band launched in Russia in 1999), the tactic of non-normative sexuality to attract public attention and capitalise on an image that would differentiate them within the local music scene. Source: https://www.kudika.ro/articol/celebritati~stiri-despre-vedete/27786/surorile-les biene-relatia-care-a-socat-romania.html [accessed 5 January 2023]. 28 https://observatornews.ro/social/confesiunile-unei-lesbiene-74174.html [accessed 5 January 2023]. 29 https://theologhia.wordpress.com/tag/lgbt/ [accessed 5 January 2023]. 30 https://zcj.ro/eveniment/--26370.html [accessed 5 January 2023].

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against the organisers and the participants. In spite of everything, the festival took place, although one of the events—a beauty contest—was cancelled because of fears of possible violence. In an article published by Adev˘arul.ro (TheTruth.ro) under the title Lesbians Fear Fights And Scandals,31 it is mentioned that most of the female participants withdrew after reading in the press about the forthcoming “march of silence”. Sorin Filip, executive director of the Es, ti Unic˘a association, stated: “The girls read about this march in the press. They feared that it would lead to scandals and fights like those that took place in Bucharest, so they decided to withdraw. There was no point in holding the contest with only three girls”. The festival comprised debates, film screenings, a fashion collection launch and an awards gala for non-governmental organisations. Although the development of mass media has simplified how one disseminates news and opinions, the plethora of websites and the continuing expansion of web networks lack a competent method of archiving historically significant content. Given that some information may prove useful for research purposes or even just for researchers interested in a particular topic, the ephemerality of websites remains a major impediment to the tracing of histories that continue to be overlooked and then lost or forgotten. The present analysis of online materials confirmed the tendency of initiating a conversation on non-heterosexual topics in Romanian media. At the same time, it provided information about some cultural events that mark the beginnings of queer culture in Romania. Similarly, the public expression of personal identities through blogs, personal pages and forums that follow literary formulas are all cultural forms that can become the subject of a separate analysis that would uncover the intersection of media and queer studies, a topic not yet addressed in the literature.

31 http://m.indexstiri.ro/lesbienele-se-tem-de-batai-si-scandaluri.html January 2023].

[accessed

5

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Queer Issues in the Romanian Press and Mass Media. Activisms, Shifts, Approaches and the Contemporary Queer Community While other socialist Eastern European countries such as Hungary, Poland, the former Yugoslavia and Russia, have developed incipient forms of queer activism since the late 1980s, and these forms of activism continued and developed in the 1990s, with prevailing archival material, the same cannot be said about Romania. This is largely due to the late and piecemeal repeal of Article 200 of the Criminal Code in 2001. The article condemned—in its final form from between 1996–2001—public expressions of affection between people of the same sex as well as “the promotion of homosexual activities”, which resulted, among other things, in the impossibility of publicly exhibiting or displaying queer cultural products. ACCEPT, the first non-governmental organisation defending the rights of queer people (and the only one, until 2014) was officially established in 1996. Most of its initial work concerned human rights violations and efforts to lobby for the adoption of an anti-discrimination law that would also include sexual orientation criteria. This law was eventually passed in 2000 and then followed by the repeal of Article 200 shortly afterwards. One LGBT+ organisation that came into being before the repeal of Article 200 was ATTITUDE!, which emerged in 1999 as a result of the initiative group Rainbow Group Cluj. The mission of the Cluj organisation, as stated on the website, was to promote “equality, dignity, respect for diversity and to advocate for equal opportunities, i.e. for the right of individuals belonging to sexual minorities to affirm their values and the cultural identity specific to their community”.32 The main events mentioned on the website were the organisation of international seminars, the participation in the annual ILGA conference and in prevention events meant to disseminate information about HIV/AIDS. The website apparently went dormant in 2005, but this NGO must be acknowledged as a part of the fragmented chronology of Romanian queer history. One of the interviewees still remembers the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s as a period when it was not possible for the ACCEPT Association to publish its address on the website, as a security measure: 32 http://web.archive.org/web/20020528001941/http://www.attitude.ro/ [accessed 5 January 2023].

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similar to a game of espionage, those who wished to contact the association were to call a phone number and, after a series of questions, they received the address (interview with Simona Dumitriu 2017). This process further complicated public access to activist-oriented discourses. A new generation of queer activists and cultural producers only began to emerge a few years after Romania’s accession to the European Union in 2007—in addition to the swift and harsh passing into oblivion of some queer first-wave activists. The first Pride march took place in Bucharest in 2004, along with several other events organised under the name Gay Fest. One ACCEPT member recalls that this first march was attended predominantly by people in drag, drag queens in particular, sex workers and their allies. He also feared that no one would show up and he praises the courage of the attendees, who braved the public attacks and insults that accompanied the first marches. These attacks have progressively diminished in intensity and the march has slowly become a potentially less dangerous event, but as more people have started to attend it, a new perspective has surfaced in online comments and reactions both within and outside the queer community: people in drag were “hurting the image of the community”. As a result, a large number of these precursors of the queer movement in Romania have gradually withdrawn from the public event of the march, which has become, in recent years, rather a demonstration of heteronormativity from both queer and straight people. Even the Romanian press of that period did not treat queer issues in an impartial manner. Antonia Cret, eanu and Adrian Coman, members of the ACCEPT Association, anatomised the treatment of queer issues in Romanian press: Considering the frequency and the way the subject of homosexuality is portrayed by the main newspapers, we can observe a rather balanced approach to this subject in Ziua, Cronica Român˘a and Curierul National. They mostly communicate news, ‘for’ and ‘against’ opinions, and the authors of the articles refrain from personal comments. România Liber˘a deals little with the subject, and certainly does not give it priority. [...] The large number of articles from the last three months currently under discussion is explicable to a certain extent due to events such as: the pardon of Mariana Cetiner, the only lesbian imprisoned in Romania on the basis of Article 200 (March 1998), President Constantinescu’s visit to the Netherlands, where he was welcomed by a group of homosexuals and lesbians who raised the issue of the punishment of this sexual minority in

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Romania (March 1998), the press conference where the ACCEPT association presented its draft law amending Chapter 3, Title II—“Offences relating to sexual life,” the Amnesty International report on the defence of human rights in Romania (April 1998), the draft amendments to the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure submitted by the Government to Parliament (May 1998). [...] The language employed—especially in the written press—when dealing with the subject of homosexuality oscillates between aggressive and ironic: “Homosexuals, met with the cross-eyed looks of the Peasants’ party” (Libertatea, 20.05.98), “Homosexuals must have a little more patience” (Ziua, 10.05. 98), “In Romania democracy has not reached the bottom” (Jurnalul National, 14.01.98), “Homosexuals—unaffected by petrol prices” (Adev˘arul, 08.03.98). There are few cases where the language is indifferent or devoid of racy suggestiveness. (Cret, eanu and Coman 1998, pp. 6–7)

Another material worth mentioning is the press-monitoring report by Florentina Olteanu, which took place between 1 September 2005 and 28 February 2006 and followed topics related to LBGT people in 167 articles in 7 national newspapers. Among other findings, the report reveals that articles appeared predominantly in tabloids, that lesbian women are much less visible than gay men, articles about trans individuals are slowly multiplying, the percentage of negative articles (30%) is decreasing compared to previous studies, and there is an increasing tendency for media coverage of news about LBGT personalities (Olteanu 2006, 9–11).33 In 2014, TransForm—the first organisation representing the rights of trans people—was established in Bucharest. In 2015, MozaiQ emerged: a second LGBT + association, more active and cooler than ACCEPT, but, as was the case with ACCEPT, most of its founding members are white gay men. Just three years prior to its emergence there was no (or no visible) cultural product made by trans people, just ten years prior there existed almost no queer cultural product made by out and proud queer people, and none made by a cisgender queer woman, so the few experiences and the little knowledge surrounding queerness were mediated either from other geographies or through heteronormative lenses. And to 33 The report can be found at the following online address: https://www.scribd.com/ doc/198338593/Homosexualitatea-in-Presa-Scrisa-Din-Romania-2 [accessed 5 January 2023].

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this day, the history of queer women dating back over 50 years is missing in its entirety. Also notable is the emergence of the first local queer association, LGBTeam in 2006 in Timis, oara. Since 2002, the informal organisation Be An Angel Romania (BAAR) has been operating in Cluj-Napoca, constantly organising local events, among which perhaps the best known is the film festival Serile Filmului Gay [Gay Movie Nights ]—initiated in 2004. The other associations initiated in Bucharest but with national coverage (TransForm in 2014, MozaiQ in 2015) will shortly follow and, in the midst of heated debates on legislative proposals related to legalising samesex partnerships, a group of people and associations mainly religious and with far-right beliefs initiated Coalit, ia pentru Familie [The Coalition for the Family]. Its mission was to define, encourage, support and protect “the family based exclusively on the marriage between one man and one woman”.34 Between 2015 and 2016, The Coalition for the Family organised a signature-gathering campaign, claiming to have received more than 3 million signatures to start a referendum aimed at revising Article 48 (1) of the Romanian Constitution. The focus on the marriage between a man and a woman is the central theme of their speech, given that the Romanian Constitution uses the term “spouses” to define the family: “The family is founded on the basis of freely consenting marriage between spouses” (Art. 48 (1) of the Romanian Constitution). The Coalition considers that the term “spouses” can represent an argument for filing for civil partnership and it wishes to amend the word and replace it with the phrase “a man and a woman”. After the failure of the campaign, the website of The Coalition for the Family was deactivated and its method of communication has remained social media, mainly Facebook. The referendum initiative of The Coalition for the Family was counterpointed by various reactions in the cultural and social media spheres, coming from both the queer and non-queer spectrum. Perhaps most notable was the online presence of Coalit, ia pentru Vanilie [The Coalition for the Vanilla],35 which appeared in early 2017 and was intended as a parody of the other Coalition. The Coalition for the Vanilla carried 34 https://safielumina.ro/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/coalitia-pentru-familieTEHNO.pdf [accessed 5 January 2023]. 35 Translator’s note: The title of the initiative was meant as a pun that highlights the rhyming Romanian words familie (i.e. family) and vanilie (i.e. vanilla).

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out a mostly Facebook-specific type of activism, with a page that reached just over 15,000 likes. The mission of the coalition members was “to protect and support ice cream founded on the basis of vanilla. We have a constitutional right and a moral obligation to protect it from modern ice cream trends that diminish its importance and accelerate its degradation. The vanilla that belongs to our people is at the heart of our mission, together with the wish that the entire Romanian vanilla-consuming civil society shall join us”.36 Through memes and viral approaches, such as the Vanilla March or Three Million Seals (a parody of the Coalition for Family’s “3 Million Voices”37 promotion video), the volunteering publicists and self-declared hipsters behind The Coalition for the Vanilla intended to propose a referendum to make vanilla the only ice cream flavour accepted under the Constitution.38 Their approach did not end up having the desired outreach: by early 2018 the project was already almost entirely dormant and it could make the object of a case study on how the project was nothing more than a mechanism that instrumentalised an already fragile community for no other purpose than establishing a creative communication portfolio on social media. At the same time, queer activism is becoming more diverse and several other local support groups are emerging, including the first informal support group/organisation dedicated to LBT women in Cluj-Napoca, Les Sisterhood—renamed Queer Sisterhood (in 2016), and RiseOUT Ias, i (in 2017). Also in Cluj-Napoca, the Prisma Equity Association was founded in November 2017 and in Timis, oara Identity.Education started its activity in 2018. A specifically trans oriented NGO, TransCore was founded in 2020 in Bras, ov. In the last few years, more and more articles signed by queer people have been published in the mainstream press in Romania, especially on adev˘arul.ro and vice.ro. Returning to the topic of queer festivals and events, three such Bucharest-based cases should be mentioned: ROQDOC (Romanian Queer Documentaries), a small informal festival coordinated by Adrian Newell P˘aun since 2014, FAQIFF (Feminist and 36 https://www.facebook.com/pg/coalitiaaiablanao/about/?ref=page_internal [accessed 5 January 2023]. 37 Translator’s note: The pun underscores another rhyming pattern in Romanian, the plural nouns voci (i.e. voices) and foci (i.e. seals). 38 https://www.vice.com/ro/article/3knadb/am-vorbit-fara-ironie-cu-coalitia-pentruvanilie [accessed 5 January 2023].

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Queer International Film Festival) initiated in 2016 and organised exclusively by queer people, and the Cine Club Queer event, organised since 2017. The year 2017 brings the first Pride event organised in a city other than Bucharest, more precisely in Cluj-Napoca. Cluj Pride39 took place from 28 June to 1 July 2017, culminating in the #spunedrept 40 march, approved with great difficulty by the city hall. Organisations involved in the Cluj Pride initiative41 had to submit 22 applications to the ClujNapoca City Hall,42 each with different proposed routes for the march, with all routes leading to the central area being declined. Concomitantly with their proposal, the city hall approved a rally for “normality” in Avram Iancu Square, in the city centre, on the same day as the march. Their proposal was submitted later than the initially rejected applications of the Cluj Pride organisers but was accepted after a single application. The #spunedrept march took place on the 1st of July on a semi-central route, with participants being verbally abused by some local members and sympathisers of the New Right. This event joins the collection of historic moments for queer activism in Romania. The Master’s thesis of Vlad Viski, one of the founding members of MozaiQ , includes a brief overview of the shifts undergone by the queer community with regard to activism: After Romania joined the EU states, gay and lesbian rights lost ground as priorities for the Romanian state. I highlight the main discussions that took place within the gay and lesbian movement in Romania, revealing the event of a schism after 2005, with one side pursuing a top-down strategy that relied more on lobbying and raising awareness, while the new side applied an American-style, grassroots, bottom-up strategy with the intention of community-building, framed by their effort in HIV/AIDS prevention. I argue that the top-down approach has advanced supportive legislation but has failed to construct a community. The grassroots approach survived for as long as its funding permitted. With major international donors having 39 https://clujpride.ro/ [accessed 5 January 2023]. 40 Translator’s note: The title of the hashtag is a Romanian idiom that translates into a

call for honesty, but it equally emphasises the homonymy of the word drept (i.e. right). 41 PRIDE România, Gay Movie Nights Cluj Napoca, in partnership with the ACCEPT, ACTEDO, GO FREE, and MozaiQ associations and Les Sisterhood Cluj. 42 https://actualdecluj.ro/marsul-comunitatii-gay-de-la-cluj-A-invins-intoleranta-primar iei-cand-si-unde-are-loc-marsul-cluj-pride/. [accessed 5 January 2023].

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withdrawn from Romania after 2012, the gay and lesbian movement is undergoing a major crisis. (Viski 2015, i)

These observations led the researcher to construct three categories of gay and lesbian activism (the author’s terminology): the first category focused on the legislative framework that featured ACCEPT as its main actor, the second focused on community-building (bottom-up, grassroots) and was less interested in the legal dimension, and the third category gravitated around community-building and HIV/AIDS prevention (Viski 2015, 4– 6). It is interesting to note that the author chose to focus on the role of gay men in the construction of queer activism in Romania, dedicating a good part of his thesis to projects carried out by organisations such as PSI Romania, an organisation founded in 1998 as an affiliate of a global HIV/AIDS prevention and advocacy network which mainly focused— in partnership with ACCEPT and especially in the late 2000s—on the outreach and prevention effort within MSM.43 In an attempt to bridge the gap between “gay activism” and “les + bi activism”, I will mention below an article published in 2017 by Margareta Amy Lelea and Sorina Voiculescu. The two authors institute the Ladyfest event as a tool meant to strengthen queer activist networks, while simultaneously providing a platform to discuss issues such as intersectionality and personal experiences, elements that were—and to a large extent continue to be—nonexistent in mainstream activism. The article starts from a series of interviews discussing the first Ladyfest in Romania, which took place in Timisoara in 2005 and was followed by a second edition in Bucharest in 2007. Despite Romania’s discursive anti-discrimination reforms to align with EU standards, the country continued to be characterised by sexism, homophobia, racism, violence against women and xenophobia. Activists felt the need to organise a haven (or at least a space as safe as realistically possible) by means of Ladyfest ’s meetings and events. Ladyfest Timisoara took place during the weekend of 20–22 May 2005, preceded and followed by several other one-off events, and it consisted of a series of workshops, exhibitions and art presentations, concerts and audio performance products by women. The 2007 edition took place in Bucharest on 12–14 October and, like the first, featured a mix of grassroots events organised by women activists, including a Take

43 Men who have sex with men.

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back the night! march to protest violence against women. As Lelea and Voiculescu (2017) note: In the 2005 edition of Ladyfest , there was an imbalance between the audience who attended the workshops (the ‘political’ part) and the audience of the music concerts (the ‘artistic’ part), so in 2007 the workshops were given more attention, as Ruxandra, one of the organisers, explains (Grassrootsfeminism, 2009). For the Ladyfest organisers, responding to the Romanian context meant choosing to emphasise the political aspects of the event. One of them explained this need as follows: “There needs to be a conversation about the fact that misogyny is something we all face, deeply rooted in the society we live in and... this society needs (feminist agitation) feminist activism that informs as many people as possible about gender issues and possible shifts”. (Lelea and Voiculescu 2017, 5)

Among the workshops included in the Ladyfest programme in Bucharest, one was on “queer vs. heteronormative identities”. Some of the strategies drew on the dimension of harmonising with different international groups and activists and the employment of common tools to organise and facilitate such an important festival. Women’s queer and feminist activism was furthermore centred around informal groups that implemented their projects without or with very limited funding, thus relying on the personal relationships between the members themselves and occasionally collaborating with other individuals, groups or NGOs for one-off events. There are always differences and similarities between transnational activist movements, and activists have always borrowed tools and principles from each other that were then applied to their own local contexts. Moreover, in post-communist states, there are closer connexions insofar as types of activism related to the main public forces that structure and re-structure these societies are concerned. An example of how scholars address these connections can be found in Andrada Nimu’s comparative analysis of the emergence of gay and lesbian rights44 in Romania and Poland. An important observation would be that during the communist regime, the Romanian Orthodox Church “carried out negotiations with the communists and managed to secure an influential position in society, with the implication that it would be best to cooperate for the good of 44 Once again, the researcher refers predominantly to only two types of identities included within the LGBT + I or queer spectrum of individuals and communities.

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the nation and for the recognition of its historical role in defending and preserving the nation in difficult times” (Nimu apud. Tarta 2015, 35). The same influence was maintained and increased after 1989, becoming more and more visible as clerics began to openly intervene in political life through reactions to the decriminalisation of homosexuality, anti-discrimination legislation, same-sex partnerships, among others, while politicians often appealed and still appeal to religion and the “Orthodox values of the Romanian nation”. Beyond the queer individuals and groups who continued to voice opposition to these views, it is necessary to underscore that the legislative struggle has been greatly influenced by external and internal organisations such as the League for the Defence of Human Rights (LADO), Amnesty International, and APADOR-CH 45 in the early 1990s. Nimu mentions these associations alongside others that were established in early 2015—MozaiQ and Hecate Publishing (Nimu 2015, 76), which might create confusion when it comes to historically significant contributions and the course of queer rights movements in Romania. In another comparative work on Romania and Albania, Australian researcher Shannon Woodcock writes: Considering the funding prioritization of sexual health issues for gay men in the LGBT movement, lesbian communities in Romania (in practiced reality) and Albania (in the NGO envisaged future) both offer primarily ‘discussion group/ counseling’ services. In Romania, lesbians are also politically involved in imagining a future where the rights of same sex couples to legislative protection (marriage, antidiscrimination laws, adoption, inheritance) are established. (Woodcock 2004, 6)

The main hypothesis that emerges from the Woodcock’s argument is that associations whose work is centred on gay men accessed most of the funding available for health programmes (HIV/AIDS prophylaxis) in the early 2000s, while queer women organised themselves in small interrelational support groups that considered its own future. In another paragraph, Woodcock explains: In my personal experience, prior to 1999 in Romania (and currently in Albania) it was relatively easy to walk the streets holding hands with

45 The Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Romania—Helsinki Committee is a non-governmental organisation founded in 1990, still active.

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another woman, even to kiss a little more passionately than usual in public. The reason for this ease was the lack of popular words or discourses to identify, name, and judge female same-sex practice. In the matrix of what can be called homosocial practices between women, the lack of the word lesbian in popular culture meant that, unlike in Australia or America, bystanders did not have this signpost to an established homophobic discourse at their disposal. (Woodcock 2004, 8)

Of course, the fact that certain queer women had relationships or went out on dates with other women and publicly showed their affection by holding hands does not amount to a general openness to homoerotic discourse in Romanian society. While some homoerotic experiences of women in the public space were not always marked by verbal or physical violence, there were instances when this would happen. Woodcock points out the paradox of the invisibility of queer women in the Romanian public space and focuses on the lack of homo-imaginary and vocabulary within the heteronormative sphere in Romania, which diminished the presence and repression of queer public manifestations between women. At the same time, the vocabulary of the Romanian language was not, either before or at that time, devoid of pejorative terms that denoted lesbians: limbist˘a , leb˘ad˘a , lingurist˘a , t, ât, er˘a, for example.46 Gay men were much more often mentioned and visible in public discourse and the pejorative terms referring to them were much more used and diverse. In April 1993, the first two (and only) issues of the first gay magazine in Romania, Gay45, came out with a front-page editorial written by artist R˘azvan Ion and entitled “Why?” The reasons behind producing the magazine are briefly introduced: queer people’s need for visibility in Romania, the desire to create a breach in the collective mentality that postulated non-normative sexuality as a taboo subject, a call for tolerance and—with a peculiar wording—an incentive: “Let’s accept our fellow citizen without interesting ourselves with his private doings”. These were the premises of the issue. The magazine contains opinion and information articles, as well as external news, all exclusively queer or—more precisely—about gay men. The choice of images remains emblematic for the period of the magazine’s publication. It should be

46 The last three terms can be found in The Romanian Dictionary of Slang, 2007 edition.

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noted that in 1991 same-sex relationships were punishable by imprisonment. The front cover features Bill Clinton, described as “America’s most liberal president.” The lack of queer material that is specifically Romanian and the unfavourable legal and social context of queer people are also reflected in the visual resources presented in the magazine, which display images of celebrities or private individuals who do not belong to the Romanian space. Gay45’s counterpart came out more than 10 years later (in 2003) under the name Identit˘at, i [Identities magazine]. Identities had twelve issues and has the merit of being the first magazine created exclusively by individuals from the Romanian lesbian community. Unfortunately, only the first issue was kept in the ACCEPT´s archives and from several interviews I conducted in 2022 with some of the persons involved at that time a striking element was reiterated: while some remembered working on subsequent issues of the magazine, other ACCEPT employees could not recall what happened to the other 11 issues which were never archived. The authors used pseudonyms (martsi13, satura, Ioanina Paraschivescu, întuneric bezn˘a , bluesister, maria, pic, lumi, cactus ), and the editorial team section listed the authors’ initials. The 18 pages of the first issue of Identities cover topics such as the principles of positive discrimination, articles on identity and research on human sexuality, an interview with a lesbian’s sister, information on the poet Sappho, the explanation and analysis of the term homophobia and the varied levels of its occurrence—institutional, personal, interpersonal, cultural; forms of discrimination, examinations of articles in the Romanian press about lesbian people, translations (for example, the poem Why Do I Need To Come Out To You? by activist Mary Dispenza, translated as Ce anume m˘a face s˘a-t, i spun?), film recommendations (Orlando), and poems in Romanian and English written by the editorial team. One of the literary references in the magazine concerns the fairy tale Ileana Sîmziana collected by Petre Ispirescu, in which we find the story of an emperor’s daughter who turns into a man as a result of a spell/ curse: The zmeu’s47 mother understood that some mischief was at play and told her son that the strong young man who had saved him from danger must 47 Translator’s note: The zmeu is an anthropomorphic villain to be found in Romanian folklore. In its animal form, it may resemble a dragon or an ogre. It woos young maidens

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be a girl and that such a brave girl would be a marvellous match for a wife. However, the zmeu did not believe her, because it could not be that a womanly grip would handle the sword as masterfully as Prince-Charming did. [...] – Holy Lord, make it so that the ungodly human who dared to touch the holy baptismal vessel with their defiled hand to become a woman if he is a man, or if she is a woman, to become a man! And at once the hermit’s prayer was fulfilled: the king’s daughter was turned into a handsome lad. As soon as he reached the emperor, he himself was astonished and did not know what to think, for he noticed that he had changed. […] After this, Ileana Sâmziana said to Prince Charming: – It is you who brought me here, you who brought me the herd, you who killed the zmeu that had stolen me away, you who brought me the baptismal vessel, therefore you shall be my husband!48

This story, in spite of its queer overtones in the form of a transgender character and references to a non-heterosexual wedding, manages to evade the homophobic filter and it emerges as a children’s fairy tale. In fact, following the universal fairy tale convention, the narrated world is fantastic. In the case of other post-1989 Romanian cultural products, we can observe the same tendency to accept androgynous people or people who “violate” gender norms, because audiences seem to react to the cultural products in similar ways; for example, the sketches of actors such as Stela Popescu and Alexandru Ars, inel, Vasile Muraru and Nae L˘az˘arescu, etc., as well as fragments of the productions of the Vacant, a Mare group49 are all performed in drag and they pass for sketches whose sole purpose is entertainment. Thus, by means of their process of reworking and exaggerating gender norms, they seek to reach the public (character of Ileana Sâmziana), who are locked away and ultimately saved by a PrinceCharming figure (F˘at-Frumos ). 48 Online: https://www.povesti-pentru-copii.com/petre-ispirescu/ileana-simziana.html [accessed 5 January 2023]. The abridged version of the fairy tale was published in 1977 by Ion Creanga Publishing House, Bucharest, in a print run of 200,000 copies. 49 Especially the couple Leana and Costel played by Mugur Mih˘aescu and Radu Pietreanu. In the early 2000s, the Vacant, a Mare group recorded high audience levels (2.2 million viewers between 2001 and 2002) on ProTV. Source: http://www.ziare.com/ social/capitala/cele-mai-mari-audiente-tv-din-toate-all-times-333391 [accessed 5 January 2023].

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through humour, which often involves normalising behaviours such as physical, psychological and domestic violence, among others. It goes without saying that these products cannot be claimed by queer culture, but the indirect references to transgender people and its influence on their public image as reflected in the media are important facets of understanding how the general public relates to issues surrounding transgender or non-binary people who are beginning to make their voices heard. And this time it is no longer about characters created for entertainment, that can only be found in the fictional and stereotypical worlds of television programmes. Other magazines that are worth mentioning are Inklusiv,50 Switch,51 Angelicuss and The Third Sex.52 Unlike Gay45 and Identities, these magazines were printed in colour and in glossy format. Another difference lies in the contributors’ identities. The magazine Inklusiv covers various topics, some including personal experiences, while others attempting to introduce terms like “patriarchy” and “feminism” into public discourse. It also features a dating column for queer people, with two sections: Bucharest and Outside of Bucharest. In no. 3–4 of Inklusiv magazine, an interview with Florentina Ionescu, then manager of the queer club Queens in Bucharest and former vice-president of ACCEPT, discusses one of the first queer theatre performances to be included in the Gay Fest 2005 programme, the second edition of the festival that later became Bucharest Pride: a parody called “Night of the Advertising Tasters”, performed by actors in drag and which set out to break traditional norms in a humorous way (Ionescu, in Inklusiv magazine 2005, 14). Lack of funding was the main stated reason for the disappearance of queer magazines. Also, their limited circulation and low visibility turned them into archival material with no measurable impact. Even today, the Romanian press does not have a magazine dedicated to queer culture, but it can be said that the number of quality articles written by queer people

50 Produced by the ACCEPT Association, distributed free of charge. The first issue appeared in 2005. 51 Published in 2005, it was a sequel to Angelicuss, launched in 2004. Switch appeared in three colour issues. The first two issues were published in Cluj-Napoca and the third and last in Bucharest. The editorial team was mainly made up of people working in journalism and the magazine was distributed by mail. https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Switch_(Romanian_magazine) [accessed 5 January 2023]. 52 The first issue appeared in 1993.

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published on various journalistic platforms has increased, for example in Decât o Revist˘a, Vice, Revista Arta, various newspaper articles, etc.

The Queer Gaze and the Heterogeneity of Representations in Contemporaneity It is certainly not possible to speak of the existence of a queer culture before 1989 that excludes literary texts, especially since this seems to be the only manifestation of thematic products in the Romanian space. The present research offers an overarching perspective that contains (specifically literary) references to queer cultural products before 1989. The area of Romanian queer-themed literature also includes other prose and poetry books, which will not be thoroughly analysed in this study, but which belong to and complete the local queer cultural landscape: Ca s, i cum nimic nu s-ar fi întâmplat [As if nothing happened] by Alina Nelega (Polirom 2019), Dezr˘ad˘acinare [Uprooting] by Sas, a Zare (frACTalia, 2022), Tot ce r˘amâne din nimic [All that remains of nothing] by Andreea Corneanu (Neverland Publishing House, 2021), Stiliz˘ari, ap. [Styling, ap.] by Alexandru Adam (frACTalia, 2022), Dona Juana by Lorena Lupu (Herg Benet Publishing, 2015), Cimitirul [The Cemetery] by Adrian Teles, pan (Herg Benet Publishing, 2013), Do not Cross, by Dora Pavel (Polirom 2013), Poeme Cinematografice [Cinematographical Poems] by Dominic Brezianu (Herg Benet, 2014), Viat, a lui Kostas Venetis [The Life of Kostas Venetis] by Octavian Soviany (Cartea Româneasc˘a Publishing, 2011), Opere I. Poezia Antum˘a [Collected Works, Vol. 1. Anthumous Poetry] by Benjamin Fundoianu (Art Publishing, 2012), Becks merge la s, coal˘a [Becks Goes to School] by Cristina Boncea (Herg Benet, 2016), Din amintirile unui chelbasan [From the Memories of a Chelbasan] by Ana Maria Sandu (Art, 2013) or the 24th issue of Decât o Revist˘a, published in 2016, with the title Feminin/Masculin. Between 2001 and 2004, musicologist George B˘alan published the series Iubirea mai presus de fire. Trilogia iubirii prigonite [Love Above All. The Trilogy of A Love Abused], a veritable tour de force among homoerotic cultural products throughout historical and geographical contexts. The last book of the trilogy (Homofobia) includes a few pages on the Romanian context during the communist period. Several moments are evoked: the tax on celibacy, rumours about the sexuality of public figures, testimonies about people imprisoned under Article 200, as well

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as the author’s own testimony about the interrogations to which he was subjected. In most cases, queer people were blackmailed by the Securitate on matters regarding the victim’s career and fame. B˘alan remembers the following phrase, as a result of his subtle allusions against the communist regime: “Mind you, if you don’t behave yourself in your public outings, we’ll pressure you into it by disclosing your private life” (B˘alan 2004, 480). In those uncertain times, B˘alan befriends the head of the Bucharest Security service, General Officer Nicolae Stan, who forces him to keep their friendship a secret; the musicologist regards him with sympathy, as a saviour. The general aids him in fleeing Romania in 1977 (B˘alan 2004, 482–483). In the preface to the volume Iubirea din oglind˘a. Despre sex s, i identitate [The Love in the Mirror. On Sex and Identity] by Tatiana Niculescu-Bran, published in 2017, the author transcribes an exchange of messages shared by George B˘alan and Andrei Ples, u. The musicologist reproaches Ples, u for his refusal to initiate a new series entitled The Other Eros in the magazine Dilema veche: “if Dilema veche, the most unprejudiced Romanian publication, remains so inaccessible, it would be pointless for me to knock on the doors of other editorial offices” (Niculescu-Bran 2017, 9). Ples, u’s response mirrors the classic homophobic arguments that open with a disavowal of any accusation of discrimination and continues as follows: “personally, I find it wholly abnormal that an issue of intimate life should end up ‘on the market’. I was sincerely happy when, under pressure from the European Union, homosexuality was decriminalised in Romania. I harbour no prejudices about this component of one’s personality. […] I wouldn’t want to end up apologising for not being gay. […] We are suffocated with priorities. In this context, allow me to tell you that the issue of homosexuality is not to be found among the top 50” (Niculescu-Bran 2017, 11–12). In the following, a few novels written by women about women will be briefly presented; the importance of these novels resides not in their artistic qualities, but rather in the subjects they tackle and their position among the few novels in queer literature that deal with lesbian women. In 2007, the volume Jurnalul meu de lesbian˘a sau despre fenomenologia imaginii [My Lesbian Journal, or On the Phenomenology of the Image] was published in Ias, i. The title itself and its baiting nuances were enough to attract the attention of the public, the burgeoning queer audience included. Its author, Medeea Iancu, recomposes a series of varied, eclectic

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and largely erotic vignettes that ultimately produce a fragmented stream of consciousness that includes very vivid and potent dreams, attempts at philosophical assertions, theatre critique, and stories about the characters surrounding her. The main character, Lora, confesses that she undertook the task of narrating her story with the purpose of self-discovery. The lesbian experience dissipates considerably, and becomes blurred by inconsistent fragments describing the character’s relationships with both men and women, and the word lesbian itself seems to appear in the text often only to mark moments of remembrance, in a dialogue between the author and the male figure. One of the recurring lesbian characters, Heloise, anchors Lora’s experiences. But this character lacks a well-rounded arc, and Lora often refers to Heloise as a passive presence, framed in the uneven flow of the narrative only to create a backdrop for Lora’s experiences, discursively constructed as a demonstrative form of opposition to Lora’s love for Dor: “My attraction to Heloise bloomed in the presence of her carelessness and passivity […] The love for myself manifests itself through my love for Heloise. I aspire to confirm my ego through my love for her” (Iancu 2007, 36–37). The book is a fictionalised diary, in which everything seems to unfold in the absence of any local social and political context. Certainly, this novella-sized novel does not prove memorable for its literary quality, but it nevertheless represents an effort to introduce the word lesbian into recent Romanian literature. There are also situations in which the woman, from being the adored or criticised object (as happens in some writings with heteronormative nuances and exclusively in the heterosexual sphere), becomes the one performing the act of adoration or manifesting herself as an active element. This is the case with Lorena Lupu’s novel Rondo Capriccioso, whose subject revolves around a theatre graduate who falls in love with a famous actress during her time as her assistant director. We are also witnessing the waning of the trope of male characters who perform the unique role of recording and commenting on the young woman’s feelings and who express their desire for the actress. The male gaze is depicted as intrusive and functions in this case as a coercive, heteronormative mechanism on the relationship between the two, or rather on the young woman’s amorous projections. However, the interaction between the two remains platonic, sometimes ambiguous regarding any existing affection, and the intimacy envisaged by the young woman when she imagines sharing a kiss with the actress never surpasses the limits of mere fantasy. The novel features a few attempts at expressing feminist

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principles, such as brief fragments that explore the societal tendency to objectify women. Daniela Rat, iu’s In vitro is another novel that remains relevant because it highlights how gender stereotypes and heteronormativity operate even in contemporary literature that openly deals with queer topics. The common denominator of its characters is their sexual unfulfillment. Camelia’s character spotlights stereotypes regarding lesbian women. Having just come out of a relationship with a married man, she discovers that she is attracted to women; indeed, the preconception that lesbian women take refuge in same-sex relationships after failed heterosexual ones is widespread. Camelia’s traits, as revealed in her brief descriptions, are masculinised, and this reveals yet another stereotypical view regarding the perception of queer women in society. Camelia falls in love with a new tenant, Ilinca, who previously joined the three neighbours. While Ilinca reads Camelia’s gestures as friendliness, the latter constructs her attraction based on signs that she interprets according to her desire. The masculinized Camelia rapes Ilinca, in a transfer of power that until then was held only by men. In terms of local filmography with queer themes or content, the products analysed in their corresponding chapter can be joined by a series of short films presented mainly during the festival Gay Movie Nights in ClujNapoca, as well as several other documentaries or fictional films that do not make the subject of the present analysis. A first example of queer-coded material with mere suggestive subtext is the 1973 film Departe de Tipperary [Far from Tipperary], directed by Manole Marcus. During the four-minute opening scene that lists the filmmakers, a short and fragmented scene shows a woman dressed in “masculine” attire holding a whip in her hand, ordering her woman servant to undress. This scene is sexually charged, reminiscent of dominance and submission practices, as suggested by the woman’s gaze as she selects her maid’s clothing and accessories; the two appear together in the frame, the maid is regarding herself in the mirror as the other woman is watching her and exclaims: “You’re quite pretty, you sluggard!” Their story is not developed, as the father decides to fire all his employees on the grounds that they might be Security agents, a decision which angers his daughter. Another scene in which lesbian temptation can be read between the lines is the woman’s meaningful glances at a bar singer. There are also brief hints of another relationship between two women in the 1973 TV series Un August în fl˘ac˘ari [An August Aflame], in which

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another character, Mrs Hoffman, played by actress Magda Barbu, chastises her maid for attempting to steal her things, after telling her: “Why should we break up? You’re coming with me”; the relationship subtext was revealed in an earlier scene in which the maid reminded Mrs Hoffman that she had promised to travel with her to Berlin: “You promised to take me to Berlin, and we’ve yet to go” (Away from Tipperary 1973). These two examples, in which suggestions of non-normative sexualities are well-defined, seem to have managed to evade the censorship practices of the Communist regime. This may point to another possible line of research that focuses on other Romanian cinematic productions from the communist period that feature allusions to queerness. Some more recent films are: Orange/Milk, a short film made in 2010 by Florina Titz, which briefly portrays the reunion of two old friends at the seaside and their rekindled feelings for each other; another documentary, Gay in Romania (written and directed by Jean Lorin Sterian), considered to be the first of its kind, was broadcast in 2006 on the national channel TVR2 as part of the programme “F˘ar˘a Limite” [No Limits]; Noi Doi [The Two Of Us], a documentary made in 2011 by director Claudiu Mitcu, that details the relationship between two young men, Cristi and George. This final documentary is particularly interesting due to its diary-writing style and first-person plural narration; the director provided the two protagonists with cameras and allowed them to film intimate moments in their lives over several months. The premiere of the documentary Noi Doi at the Studio Cinema was met with violence. Some attendees lit torches inside the cinema during the screening and started chanting anti-homosexuality messages. Two years later, a group of people interrupted another screening of a queer-themed film by singing the Romanian anthem, church songs and shouting “death to gays!” while performing the Nazi salute, thus forcing the cancellation of the screening in the New Cinema of the Romanian Director.53 In fact, this was not to be an isolated incident. Another two similar events later unfolded at the same cinema: in 2013, when a mob put a stop to the screening of the queer-themed movie The Kids Are Alright, and five years later, on 4 February 2018, when another crowd tried, this time unsuccessfully, to interrupt the screening of the Cannes award-winning film, 120 battements par minute; in the same place, a few days later, the 53 Further information can be found at: http://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-esential1427 0775-video-scandal-mtr-incidente-proiectie-film.htm [accessed 5 January 2023].

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opening of the film Soldat, ii. Poveste din Ferentari 54 [The Soldiers. A Story from Ferentari], had been interrupted by a throng of nationalist and homophobic people. Another example is O noapte la Tokoriki [A Night at Tokoriki], a short film directed by Roxana Stroe and released in 2016, which tells the story of a love triangle occasioned by a birthday party in a makeshift club; Soldiers. A Story from Ferentari, the film directed by Ivana Mladenovic based on the novel of the same name written by Adrian S, chiop, premieres in February 2018. The writer also stars in the film. As far as theatre and performance shows are concerned, between 2005 and 2010, Romanian theatre seemed to resort quite often to the visual assemblage of homosexuality, at times distorting it and at other times employing the instrument of characters en travesti. One could list shows such as Sado Maso Blues Bar, by Geanina C˘arbunariu, performed for several years at the Teatrul Mic in Bucharest, or Sunt propria mea sot, ie [I Am My Own Wife], which premiered in 2007 at the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest, directed by Beatrice Rancea. Based on a text by playwright Doug Wright, the performance tells the story of a real character, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a trans person whose identity is intertwined with German history, namely the Third Reich and East Germany. Unfortunately, the play and its 2007 version exclusively emphasise the idea of cross-dressing,55 thus mirroring the real life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, whose gender fluidity has led various authors to consider her either a cross-dresser or a transgender person—although she used female pronouns during her entire life. Also in 2007, the Odeon Theatre hosts the premiere of Jean-Luc Lagarce’s It’s Only the End of the World, directed by Radu Afrim. The performance, made up of poetic monologues on the theme of the return of the prodigal son/the return of Ulysses, was written by the French playwright a few years before his death from AIDS in 1995. Directed by Radu 54 Ferentari is a city area in Bucharest that is now often associated to poverty and often racially stigmatized because it is considered to be mainly inhabited by Roma persons. However, during communism, Ferentari was considered a working class area, with modern buildings and hosting important members of the communist regime. After 1990, many former house owners received their confiscated properties back, therefore the most socially vulnerable persons had to move out and found unfinished facilities where they could live (Gudu 2022). 55 http://suplimentuldecultura.ro/1197/doug-wright-un-travestit-de-legenda-laodeon/ [accessed 5 January 2023].

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Afrim, the performance contains choreographic moments with homoerotic nuances. Queer connotations can be found in many of Afrim’s plays, one of the most influential contemporary local directors. It would also be worth mentioning a few other cultural products from the queer thematic spectrum made after 2010, such as ROGVAIV [ROYGBIV ] (which premiered in 2011), a social theatre production by director Bogdan Georgescu (in charge of direction and dramaturgy) at the Teatrul Sp˘al˘atorie in Moldova. The play aims to criticise the intolerance shown by the Moldovan authorities towards queer people. Dating from 2010 and proposed again in 2015 with a new cast, Testament, directed and written by Radu Popescu, starring actresses Ana Sorina Corneanu and Mihaela Popa, addresses the theme of love between women in the context of tense questions about death, suicide, and depression, related to religion and the rhythm of corporate life. In the broader context of the discussion surrounding the Constitution and the Coalition for the Family, the National Theatre in Targu Mures premiered the performance Tat˘al meu, preotul [My Father, the Priest] at the end of November 2017, based on a text by Gabriel Sandu and directed by Leta Popescu. The topic of the play is simple and timely: in a priest’s family, where both the priest and the priestess have collected signatures for The Coalition for the Family, their Orthodox Christian son comes out to them as gay. Finally, to be found rather at the intersection of performance, contemporary dance and visual art, the various performances by queer choreographer and dancer Mihai Mihalcea (especially under his artistic alter ego of Farid Fairuz, made public 2008) should also be noted. Perhaps the best known instalment is Realia (Bucharest-Beirut), from 2013, in which the performer renders autobiographical elements, in overlapping layers, as well as stories with existential and social overtones, intended to break the boundary between the real and fictional and enter the territory of multiple identities. In the area of contemporary queer art, in addition to the exhibitions, projects and artists already mentioned in the review, one could also mention the group exhibition Bad Colours. The Homophobic Festival,56 which took place in June-July 2014 at the independent gallery Visual Kontakt in Oradea. The curatorial concept belongs to Olimpia Bera and

56 http://www.visualkontakt.ro/portfolio_page/opening/ [accessed 5 January 2023].

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the list of artists consists of Carlos Carmonamedina, Emil Costrut, , Felix Deac, Silviu Filip, Lucian Iv˘anescu, Arnold Platon, Vasile Popa, Lucian Rad, Constantin Stoian, Tomasito, R˘azvan Com˘anici, Alexandra Fenes, an, Valentin Ionescu, Mihai Nut, u and Daniel R˘adulescu. The artistic array of installations, video art and photography seeks to partially return the homophobic gaze and ironise it. One of the most significant objects and installations is a large-scale sculpture of a straight couple, captured in a close, erotic embrace, with their legs cuffed and each holding a gun, pointing it at the space around them. The corridor leading to the toilet and the toilet itself were remodelled into a kind of flashing disco, and the walls were painted from top to bottom with the kind of texts one finds in public toilets: in this case a mixture of homophobic messages, ironic messages against political and religious forces (such as: popo, the Romanian vocative of the word pope), or some that bore quite harsh sexual tones, juxtaposed with texts that explained discriminatory practices and succinctly named some more or less known episodes of aggression against the queer community. In July 2015, the art and text project designed as an Arsenal of Political Art (Arsenalul de Art˘a Politic˘a ) emerges as a reaction against the messages and the activism promoted by The Coalition for the Family. Its presence becomes visible on social media through its Facebook page and blog.57 The idea behind the Arsenal is a single one that, following the model of The Coalition for the Family, set out to provide the public with an array of straightforward messages, accompanied by images, that countered the traditionalist, ultra-religious and homophobic discourse of the Coalition, and these messages could be shared further. The style of the art is diverse, ranging from extremely refined, to collages, even to caricatures or children’s handwriting, depending on their accompanying messages. For example, the drawings that appear to have been made by children are a reinterpretation of the same message spread by the Coalition, “How do you explain to your child…?”, with texts such as “HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN TO YOUR CHILD that the supporters of the Coalition for the Family deny the Holocaust on national television?”.58

57 https://web.archive.org/web/20181128044156/https://arsenalarta-politica.tum blr.com/ [accessed 5 January 2023]. 58 https://web.archive.org/web/20181128044156/https://arsenalarta-politica.tum blr.com/ [accessed 5 January 2023].

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At the same time, we witness the arrival of serial characters such as Reverend Chicken® —the pastor of a reinvented church and selfappointed missionary of The Coalition for the Family—and the page of the Arsenal has also become increasingly involved in related struggles, such as women’s rights to their own bodies. In the musical field, there are only a few references that can be mentioned: for example, Constantin, a gay English-language folk singer. The lyrics of one of his songs, Dirty Crucifix, detail the singer and other boys’ experiences of sexual abuse at the hands of orthodox priests. Other mentions: Cristi from Banat, another popular gay folklore singer, the band Secret,59 the hip-hopper Posset, a heterosexual man who filmed the first video for Romania’s first queer-themed hip-hop song Subiecte tabu [Taboo Subjects]; the band FLUID (described as a queer techno faggothique 60 act) which features queer artist and activist Paul Dunca/ Paula Dunker on vocals, Admina and the group corp [body] - a queer and feminist electronic music band.61 Other projects that have employed music are several short-lived online radio stations that were dedicated to the queer community: Radio Pride LGBT, Radio Q and Radio G One. If some of the above-mentioned queer-themed products seem to have been made with the sole purpose of introducing the topic of nonnormative sexuality or spotlighting its novelty in order to gain attention, others emerge from the very desire of the authors to reflect their own sexualities in a cultural landscape where, until recently, such manifestations were unthinkable. It is not possible to speak of a coherence and a thematic consistency that go beyond the genre of each product, be it zines, contemporary art, theatre, film or literature, given that each one displays its own thematic and constructional particularities that differentiate it among contemporary products. The emergence of queer products seems to have accelerated in recent years, but their visibility remains low.

59 The first Romanian rock band that was founded in the early 90s. One of the band’s videos (for the song Oras,ul f˘ar˘a case [The City Without Houses ], 1997) opened with an intimate scene between two women. 60 A play on the words goth and faggot (a pejorative—and in this case re-appropriated— English word used as a slur against gay men). 61 Valentina Iancu spoke to me about this band: “I think they are the only ones who commit themselves to a queer discourse in the field of music, in fact a political discourse mixed with the music.”

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University website, 2015. Available at: www.etd.ceu.hu/2015/viski_vlad.pdf [accessed 5 January 2023]. Woodcock, Shannon, “A Short History of the Queer Time of “Post—Socialist” Romania, or, Are we there yet? Let’s ask Madonna! ”. In De-Centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives, (Ed.), Robert, Kulpa, & Joanna, Mizielinska, 63–84. Ashgate, 2011. Woodcock, Shannon. “The Globalization of LGBT Identities: Containment Masquerading as Salvation Or Why Lesbians Have Less Fun.” In Gender and the (Post) ‘East’/’West’ Divide, (Eds.), Frunza, Mihaela, & Vacarescu, Theodora-Eliza, pp. 171–88. Cluj-Napoca: Limes, 2004.

CHAPTER 3

Queer Literature

Queer Interwar Literature In the pre-1989 period the few Romanian cultural products containing queer elements were predominantly literary. It is therefore necessary to record some of its first instances. The Girl of Zlataust Ionel Teodoreanu’s novel Fata din Zlataust [The Girl of Zlataust], published in 1931, is among the first Romanian novels that focused on a lesbian story. The action takes place mainly in a girls’ high school in Ias, i, with its protagonists being students Delia En˘achescu and Raluca S˘an˘atescu. The novel is built around anonymous letters, sometimes signed with fictitious dates, which occasions a scandal around student En˘achescu’s reputation. As teachers and school inspectors are all drawn into the series of letters, it becomes clear that the pupil provided sexual services for various men. At the same time, another series of letters is addressed to Delia; these constitute, as is revealed at the end, the main thread of the plot: Raluca S˘an˘atescu’s feverish love for her classmate. The references and clues scattered throughout the novel provide sufficient evidence for the disclosure of the true author of the letters, discussed below. The denouement is tragic: S˘an˘atescu confesses her feelings to her classmate and, following her rejection, kills her. The ending—which © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Dima, Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38849-1_3

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features the trial—is particularly important in terms of the heteronormative sphere that circumscribes the novel and which reflects the Romanian society of the time: although Raluca S˘an˘atescu admits to her crime and reveals her motive, she is acquitted due to not being believed to be the murderer. In a society that deems non-normative sexualities taboo, often unacknowledged and even invalidated, such a verdict proves entirely realistic. The nature of the story unfolding between the two women was not overlooked by critics, but it is usually dismissed without any indepth analysis, as in the case of George C˘alinescu: “At the end we are surprised to learn that Ralu S˘an˘atescu was the sender of the letters. She falls on her knees before Delia, confessing everything and asking for her love in the lesbian mode. After being refused, she shoots her. The novel, which may have appealed to young scholastic audiences with its caricature of school and sexual innuendos, comes across as impure and unserious today” (C˘alinescu 1982, 755). Although the notion of an “impure novel” is not to be found in the critical bibliography of literary theory, its most straightforward interpretation within the context of criticism underlies the presence of elements of non-normative sexuality. Moreover, one might gather from the critic’s statement that in a relatively recent past before the time of his History of Romanian Literature from the Origins to the Present, lesbian stories might have been better received. Needless to say, this seems implausible given the non-existence of literature of this kind, as well as the similar criticism received by works with references to queer subjects, not to mention the Romanian social context before and during the Second World War. The notion of morality is a narrative leitmotif. Interestingly, it only pertains to the young student’s alleged heterosexual relationships, and not necessarily to the author of the love letters. The novel abounds in hints to non-normative sexualities, alluding to the fluidity of femininity and masculinity. One early instance concerns the priest who teaches Latin: “But the girls had otherwise noticed that the professor of the dead language smelled of sweet flowers like a new-fashioned priestess. His silky anther, too, carried a feminine rustle…” (Teodoreanu 1931, 16). The same priest is further effeminised by the narrator: “he had a womanish— or popish - feeling that something was going on around him” (p. 17), thus foreshadowing the interplay between what is deemed masculine and what is seen as feminine, that is touched on throughout the novel. In fact, Raluca’s curt physical portrait is concluded by noting that “everything […] was strictly scholastic, without any feminine touches” (p. 98), and in

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another instance we learn that the pupil “cried gravely, like men” (p. 140). Identity play is also highlighted in the letters signed in various forms, and gender norms are often questioned: “You get this: Jesus’ charm was feminine” (p. 47). As for Raluca’s feelings for Delia, from the very first pages Raluca’s actions can be read and interpreted in a queer key, from small gestures such as “S˘an˘atescu took the pencil [from En˘achescu] and her fingers fiddled with it for an hour” (p. 18), to literary references such as Pierre Louÿs, a French writer known for his writings on lesbian themes1 (p. 20), other characters’ thoughts—while beholding the two pupils, the French teacher says to herself “Indeed, I know you for who you are” (p. 21)— references to queer personalities—the picture of the bisexual ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky is found inside a pupil’s desk (p. 29). There are also references to the history of pathologising queer people, which—depending on the social and geographical context—still occurs today. In one of the letters sent to Elena Gavrilas, , a city councillor, and signed by “a normal student,” we find another allusion to sexuality: “You rightly reject Freud; his theories, you have demonstrated, are valid for ‘isolated cases, not normal generalities.’ But perhaps one can discover such ‘cases’ in girls’ schools too” (p. 37). Taken at face value, this fragment may seem too general to be taken as an indication of sexuality, but seen in relation to another fragment from another letter received by the Minister of Public Instruction, their queer reading makes sense: “Such a headmistress [A/N: the headmistress of the school supported the two pupils during the scandal], faced with Sodom and Gomorrah, surely seems to have exclaimed: ‘Poor things, they make do with what fun they can have’ and appears to have given them her blessing, for the curse is a prejudice and the lady has none’ (p. 57). The reference to the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which, among other things, referred to the violence and inhospitality of the inhabitants of the two cities, becomes reiterated in discourses of a homophobic nature—homosexuality as a ‘vice’ and the sole reason for the destruction of the cities—is an obvious reference to the narrative thread of Teodoreanu’s lesbian story. The more or less subtle references are also supported by fragments in which non-normative sexualities are openly discussed: “It seemed as if no

1 There is another reference further on to The Portrait of Dorian Gray (p. 123).

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one at the school—as memory worked more closely—felt their conscience clear. […] Other girls celebrated in the secret room the mysterious cult of premature erotic initiation, with two or four hands of the opposite or the same sex. […] The girls were not aware that they were vicious—and since they lacked self-awareness, they weren’t” (p. 76). The search for the identity of the letters´ author is intertwined with the clues scattered by Raluca in each letter, signed “I” and “P.S. My pronoun is more sinister than a leper’s mask” (p. 39). The quick narrative pace is complemented by the identity game, enriched by Teodoreanu’s strategy of introducing a different character as a possible author of the letters: Iv˘anuc˘a, Delia’s childhood friend. In fact, Iv˘anuc˘a serves as the male figure through which the heteronormative gaze can determine—before the ending states the opposite—a possible “culprit” for the intrigues, declarations of love, and threats contained in the letters. Thus, both Delia and perhaps some readers end up slipping to some extent into the mirage of a heterosexual tale in which the student is by turns disparaged, adored, and deceived. The platonic relationship between the two reaches its first climax when Delia kisses her classmate’s hand, in her sleep, as a sign of gratitude for standing up for her in front of the faculty (p.143). Raluca’s astonishment at the gesture is visceral: “She was frighteningly intimidated. She could find neither thoughts nor words. […] Will you be my friend?” (p. 143). Shortly after publicly defending her, Raluca persuades the school principal to talk to her mother and obtain her consent to take her friend into her home. The narrative is allowed to continue as Delia procures shelter and protection at a time when she is expelled and barred from enrolling in other high schools. While living in her friend’s house, Delia begins a relationship followed by marriage to Raluca’s father, Gabriel. The scene of Raluca’s confession takes place a few years later: “It’s me, Delia. It is I who loves you. Only me. I’m begging for your forgiveness on my knees. You are mine…”—this triggers strong feelings of rejection in Delia. Her unrequited love is likened to “rotten mushrooms, freshwater silk, viper’s venom” etc., and Raluca is seen as a “monstrous woman” (p. 353). The most compelling episode concerns the trial proceedings, following the murder. The intensity of Raluca’s passion for her victim is muffled, in spite of her vehement claims: “If you knew, you would stone me to death” (p. 382). At the same time, small episodes such as the one in which Raluca is caught in the act of reading a book written by Pierre

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Louÿs are transfigured, losing any trace of queerness: the book in question becomes, in the trial testimony, a book “of French history” (p. 377). The attempt to erase every trace of the very motif that impels the narrative is emblematic at the macro, societal, level. Moreover, the historical disregard for queer people finds a subtle counterpart—and certainly unintended by the author—in the court handling of the trial. In March 1997, a radio drama based on Teodoreanu’s novel was produced, The Girl of Zlataust. Dramatised and directed by Titel Constantinescu, the play conveys the dualities and ambiguities of the literary characters. The Hidden Road Another character that can be endowed with a queer-coded interpretation is Cora Persu in Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu’s novel Drumul ascuns [The Hidden Road] (1932). There are subtle allusions to her sexuality in the beginning, under the form of remarks such as: “[A/N: Lidia, a minister’s daughter] came to make a scene of jealousy to Cora Persu because she had waited for her in vain on the day before and had not slept all night” (Papadat-Bengescu 1986, 329). Cora’s description is repeated twice in the narrative, her masculine features are emphasised and this contributes to introducing the readers to her upcoming ambiguous relationship with Coca Aimée: “Tall, slender but firmly drawn, with a superb oval, masculinised by her stiff attire and two-pieces as well as her boyish haircut” (idem). Cora develops amorous feelings for Aimée when she meets her: “Cora did not love men, and her admiration for women at first only provided her with style” (p. 335) and these feelings are initially attributed to her “style.” Moreover, Aimée seems to be perpetually mistaken about the true nature of her friend’s feelings: “[Aimée] also told herself that some whispers about what Cora labelled her ‘style’ were quietly confirmed by her; […] Aimée did not at all think, however, that the ideal partner of decomposed and recomposed harmonies could—in Cora Persu’s intention—be her own self” (Papadat-Bengescu 1986, 345). A friend of Aimée’s, Hilda, with whom Aimée used to exchange numerous letters, is foregrounded; moreover, a love triangle is suggested, in which Hilda’s feelings towards Aimée also seem to be of a lesbian nature: “Perhaps the great friendship between Aimée and Cora Persu also hurt her without her confessing it’ (Papadat-Bengescu 1986, 369).

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Although Aimée seeks to get close to Cora, their intimate moments of conversation, as when Cora expresses her own sexual preferences, relegate Aimée to the status of victim of the heteronormative gaze, as she does not seem to understand the nature of Cora’s interest in her: “As for Aimée, she felt embarrassed and could not find the right words for their tender reconciliation. Instead of the tenderness she had expected, Cora interrupted the silence with outspoken opinions on feelings deemed strictly according to her own conception: How much more beautiful was the love between two women!” (Papadat-Bengescu 1986, 421). The omniscient narrator highlights Aimée’s confusion; following Cora’s confessions, she is upset about how they did not speak, instead, of their possible reconciliation. Nevertheless, the growing distance between them leads to Aimée’s suffering, even though it is unclear whether the nature of her distress is amorous or social, given that she was now depleted of a well-regarded friend in the social hierarchy of the novel. Another character in the Hallipa series, Nory Baldovin, who often appears as “Nory the feminist,” transcends the binary of gender norms, builds an image of herself as an independent person and, through her visible disinterest in heterosexual relationships, can join the category of queer characters. An excerpt reminiscent of Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto, though published decades after Hortensia’s writings, reveals Nory’s feelings towards men: “Let ‘them’ perish first, and then I’ll see what’s left for me to do! Bad seed! […] But get out of the way if you don’t find some comrade who is clever enough to proclaim the supremacy of women and the collective infamy of men” (Papadat-Bengescu 1983, 447). Often interpreted by literary critics from the perspective of “cases” worthy of psychoanalysis (see the example of Ovid S. Crohm˘alniceanu), some of Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu’s characters provide, as we have seen, a viable source of queer research. The Adolescence of Adrian Zografi Panait Istrati’s novel Adolescent, a lui Adrian Zografi [The Adolescence of Adrian Zografi], was published in 1927 in France. At first glance, the story appears to depict a gay relationship that can be considered to some extent covert. One can successfully apply a queer gaze on Istrati’s novel, given the clues to the homoerotic relationship between the protagonists.

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The novel is set in the early 1900s in Romania, and its main character, Adrian Zografi, a half-Greek native of Br˘aila, betrays a substantial biographical likeness to Istrati; the author’s queer sensibility, rooted in his own sexual identity, is to be found in Adrian, as we shall see below. Adrian spends his childhood in an ethnically diverse city, but one where he witnesses bouts of patriotism and xenophobia. A good example is the account of the day of Romania’s independence, when he holds one of his former classmates accountable for choosing to show his patriotism by singing the royal anthem and shouting anti-Semitic messages. Adrian retorts to the former colleague that he does not deem himself a patriot, since patriotism means anti-Semitism, but he receives as a reply a bellowing of the words “Out with the Phanariots!”, a reminder of his Greek origins (Istrati 1927, 12). This brief episode captures the spirit of the times and places the narrative in a context where otherness is regarded with suspicion and aversion, an atmosphere which, unfortunately, still permeates Romanian society nowadays in various degrees and forms. Although the critic George C˘alinescu may be deemed outdated, I have chosen to insert a quotation from his brief summary of Istrati in his History: “Although Panait Istrati also produced Romanian versions of his French work, he will never be a Romanian writer, because his versions lack the spontaneity and that slavish translation of idioms that create an exotic effect in French. And French literary histories equally ignore him, which should give emigrants some food for thought” (C˘alinescu 1982, 969). The first “clue” to Adrian’s sexuality comes when he sees a man reading in a pie shop: “For the first time, Adrian feels himself burning with the fire of Love, which overcomes life and survives death. The friend, his friend was there” (Istrati 1927, 19). The man’s name is Mihai, a poor man who worked in the shop, with uncertain origins and a mysterious life story. Adrian tries to befriend Mihai by lending him money from his employer, in the hope that he can spend more time with him. This is nothing more than a reaffirmation of the power relationship and the social difference between the two, a fact castigated by Mihai: “in your country, the ‘dreamers’ themselves ask the boss for the help of his servant, as if they were a horse or a donkey, that is, with no care for whether the servant is paid or not…” (p. 21). The conversation about love arises after Adrian declares his love to Mihai, the latter being sceptical; declarations of love are interwoven with definitions of friendship, in an ambiguous key but in keeping with the times, when camaraderie, friendship, and other words

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were used to describe homoerotic feelings. Underneath all this ambiguity, Adrian’s ideas about the love and feelings that he develops towards his new friend are stronger than those towards Leana, his girlfriend. Adrian believes that he and Michael belong to the same “soul race,” a phrase that may reveal the homoerotic nature of his feelings (p. 26). As the two become friends and Adrian grows increasingly fonder of Mihai, those around him begin to discuss their relationship, look down on them and even abuse them; an excerpt of a phrase reminiscent of ancient Greek choruses marks these moments: “…You fool, you who love Mihai with a ‘suspicious’ tenderness, go on deaf and blind, go on your way” (p. 74). The two are not explicitly labelled by those around them as gay. However, their general surroundings, from the reactions of Adrian’s family—his mother tries to convince him that Mihai is merely a friend and that he will need a woman—to those of others (suspicious looks, insults), manufacture a universe that bans homosexuality in the same breath that it condemns it. Homophobic reactions even take the form of a street fight, in which three men recognise and abuse them. The two are supported by the painter Petrov, who is also fascinated by Mihai and shares Adrian’s instinct of saving him: “who knows what human value he might hold!”; his reaction may be due to Mihai’s introverted and mysterious personality, but it may also suggest the painter’s own sexuality (p. 71). In general, queer stories or stories involving queer characters in Romanian literature have tragic endings, the most obvious example being The Girl of Zlataust, but also The Death of Ariel, Love Sick, etc. This is not the case in Istrati’s novel; Adrian’s mother accepts Mihai as her son’s boyfriend and the two decide to leave town and travel the world. The Adolescence of Adrian Zografi is the story of a homoerotic relationship between two well-defined characters, a rare occurrence in Romanian literature. Often, dialogues take philosophical turns, the characters experiment with and interpret the world according to their own values, while their sexuality does not define them. Another trend that I have noticed in my research on Romanian queer literature is the construction of complex gay characters, as opposed to lesbian or bisexual ones, which are usually either hypersexualized or reduced to a few bare characteristics; authors in question thus choose to define their characters strictly by means of their sexuality and erotic experiences.

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Another novel by Istrati that includes homoerotic references is Chira Chiralina, published in 1923 in Europe magazine and more than ten years later in Romania (1934). In the story entitled “Stavru,” the same Adrian, still under his mother’s protection, meets Mihail and sets off with him and the merchant Stavru for Slobozia. The mother’s attitude, as well as Adrian’s feelings, are revealed from the outset: “For her, Mihail is a stranger, a suspicious scoundrel […] I love this man, because he is smarter than me, more learned, and because he puts up with misery without complaining. How? Because he doesn’t want to shout his name, his country’s name and the number of his missing teeth from the rooftops, he’s nothing but a scoundrel? Well, I want to be this scoundrel’s friend” (Istrati 2009, 11). The tendency to reject nationalism, manifested repeatedly by Adrian, can be easily pinpointed, but also his mother’s suspicion towards anyone who appears to be different. The kiss shared by Stavru and Adrian is condemned by Mihail, the character who spotlights the heteronormative discourses of a society that rejects sexual otherness. Stavru’s response to these accusations, which can be understood as a response addressed to society at large, proves singular for Romanian literature, especially during the interwar period: “You say ‘perversion’, ‘violence’, ‘vice’. And you think you’re demolishing me with shame. Yet I have told you that I am dishonest. And that’s much more culpable, because by that I understand: inflicting harm consciously. What about perversion? What about violence? Vice? […] They happen around us every day and no one revolts” (Istrati 2009, 23–24). Remember Given that there is no information that might elucidate Mateiu Caragiale’s sexuality, any presupposition could be interpreted as a mere figment of the imagination, fuelled by, on the one hand, the writer’s life story, or fragmented research from writers dealing with the history of Romanian literature, on the other. The son of I. L. Caragiale and Maria Constantinescu, cultivated his aristocratic dreams, and some of their climate can be found in Remember. The context of the narrative follows art museums, walks along the Spree river and in and out of Dutch-themed taverns, a “carefree and vain world, stripped of common prejudice” (Caragiale 1921, 3).

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Remember is the story of Aubrey de Vere, a mysterious character who reminds the narrator of Van Dyck’s portraits. The fact that de Vere wears make-up and jewellery arouses conflicting feelings in the narrator: Should he have assumed him, after this, to be one of those vulgar fellows of vicious character whose numbers seem to have increased everywhere, in recent times, to a saddening degree? No, I could not believe it, for if the lips of this powdered doll sometimes fluttered in an uneasy smile, beneath the severe arch of her eyebrows, drawn in black quill, her eyes had that innocent clarity that beams only under the eyelids of heroes and children. (Caragiale 1921, 3)

The narrator describes the character with tenderness, and although he seems attracted to de Vere, he chooses to maintain a certain distance. De Vere is found dead and news of the murder appears in the “fait divers” section. Although a former schoolmate offers to impart details of the murder seven years later, the character-narrator refuses to listen. This short tale contributes to part of the body of questions the analysis is based on: how do narrators relate to non-heteronormative characters and stories, and what is the authors’ contribution to the construction of the queer universe? In this case, the narrator is distant and prejudiced, and seems to constantly reject the idea that the character who captured his attention might be queer. He also has the power to decide which part of the story he wishes to preserve and propagate, in accordance with his heteronormative framework: “It will seem strange to you, I went on, but to my mind, a story’s beauty lies only in its handful of mystery; if I reveal it, I find that it loses its charm” (Caragiale 1921, 13). In this case, Aubrey de Vere appears as an exotic character and as twodimensional as the portraits he calls to mind; the narrator holds all the power and decides, in the name of “mystery” to (metaphorically) leave his body in the Spree, without completing the story of a queer character’s crime and destiny. Memories: The Dragons’ Watch The volume Straja Dragonilor [The Dragons’ Watch] constitutes the first part (the years from 1921 to 1941) of the critic, writer and literary historian Ion Negoit, escu´s memoir. The writer recounts his childhood and adolescence, creating portraits of his relatives and friends, as well

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as of the objects of his growing sexual desire: from the soldiers visiting his family, to high school classmates. Negoit, escu’s background is not overlooked, and its numerous references can be found among the erotic stories scattered throughout the book. An example of such stories is: “The initiatives I have taken were actually carried out with Dan, the boy of a biscuit manufacturer; […] I loved Dan, who was pretty, delicate, with his tempting silhouette underneath the tight sweater, and I eagerly awaited his arrival at my place, where I had a space convenient for erotic manoeuvres: in a closet, there was a bed base, leaning obliquely against the wall and matching his height, on which the boy would lie down facing me, and I, with my face towards him, would cling to him as tightly as possible, and we could remain like that for an unlimited time, in nameless ecstasy” (Negoit, escu 2009, 90). It is worth noting that the place where the erotic episode takes place is the closet, an enclosed and sheltered space that brings to mind the phrase in the closet (synonymous with hiding one’s own non-normative sexuality). The “nameless ecstasy” is, moreover, a reality of the historical period of the stories, given the absence (or limited use) of the terms homosexuality and homoerotic desire: “During our physical education classes, in the gym, dressed only in our underwear, I was looking for opportunities to find myself somehow glued to him again, with the constant apprehension of not letting show how horny I was, through my skimpy clothing […] lacking any desire for more, for copulation (for I did not know that it was possible between men)” (Negoit, escu 2009, 172). The literary critic Nicolae Manolescu discusses these passages in an ironic-negative tone: “Although it commences under Goethean auspices, it is perhaps the only Romanian autobiography conceived in the spirit of a Rousseauistic sincerity. No one has ever had the courage of such a direct and honest confession, all the more so as the author was a pederast of the ilk of Gide and Cocteau” (Manolescu 2008, 920). In his diary, Negoit, escu recalls the moment when he publicly revealed his sexuality, in an essay written in high school about “his erotic particularity”: I didn’t use the word ‘homosexual’ because I didn’t know it, just as I didn’t know that there existed a category of men with similar inclinations. I felt strange, special, and yet normal. I was only ashamed of the fact that, at the age of prohibition, I practised sexuality. (Negoit, escu 2009, 119)

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Lack of terminology is often encountered among people who discover their sexuality at a young age, especially when the context is not conducive to discussions about sexuality, and the words that define it are considered taboo. In fact, the entire concept of “sex education” was and still is missing from Romanian schools. Another essential detail that emerges from Negoit, escu’s memoirs is that he was a member of the Legionary Movement. Attracted by the Legionary ideology in high school, he later became a Legionary at university. The contradiction between being queer and joining a far-right nationalist and ultra-orthodox movement that condemned, among other things, homosexuality for “moral” reasons, is paradoxical for the critic’s identity. Towards the end of his memoirs, Negoit, escu denounces his choice.

Testimonies from Communism Most testimonies about the lives of gay men during the communist period concern their imprisonment and the involvement of the Securitate in their private lives. In the volume Dosarele secrete ale agentului Anton. Petru Comarnescu în arhivele Securit˘at, ii [The Secret Files of Agent Anton. Petru Comarnescu in the Security Archives], Lucian Boia collected information on the story of literary and art critic Petru Comarnescu, who became a Securitate informer under the name “Agent Anton.” Although he lacks any reliable knowledge that might elucidate the recruitment process, Boia is left to presume that the critic’s reason for becoming an informant is connected to his fear of being blackmailed and imprisoned on charges of his sexuality. Comarnescu’s rich social life and numerous connections made him a useful informant for the state. In his reports, we find details of his sexual interactions with other gay personalities such as conceptual artist Andrei C˘adere questioned by the police as a result of the reports, writer Dominic Brezianu, and others. The reconstruction of Petru Comarnescu’s story is based on the archives of the former Securitate and is similar to many other testimonies of the traumatic histories of gay men in Romania; this history is particularly significant in the process of constructing Romanian queer history. As for queer women in communism, some fragments can be found in writings such as those of Lena Constante, a Miercurea Ciuc prisoner for

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twelve years on political charges of espionage. Among the stories about other inmates, there is a brief account of a lesbian woman (Valerica). The author renders her story without the usual empathy she manifests in the descriptions of other women; her portrait is succinct, with Constante finding her unattractive, silent and unsmiling (Constante 2013, 84). Lili, a close friend of Valerica’s (who has been in love with her) since before her imprisonment, tells the other inmates stories about her, during which time, as Constante notes, she plays with her feelings, teasing her at every sign of physical contact. Other testimonies can be found in Nicolae Balot˘a’s diary, which notes details of intellectual circles during the communist period. For example, in an entry dated 12 April 1955, the critic writes: “Yesterday evening at Mihai R˘adulescu’s. Always the same fauna, with other and other specimens” (Balot˘a 2007, 513). Balot˘a regards the others from a distance, amongst them Ion Negoit, escu, Stere Popescu, Chindi and the pianist Alexandru Demetriad, and he endeavours to describe them by means of his own heteronormative filter. His outsider status in that meeting is also reinforced by the critic’s need to reaffirm his heterosexuality. Balotea especially manifests his preconceptions in his effort to establish and describe a gender of “uranists,” the word he uses for gay men: “Uranism, like any rebelliousness, […] encloses and simultaneously reassures those who are spiritually, biologically troubled because of their sexual inversion” (Balotea 2007, 513).

Queer Literature Post 1989 The Death of Ariel Moartea lui Ariel [The Death of Ariel] (1995) is a screenplay by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi. The screenplay, which has not yet been performed, is based on the story of the composer and leader of the Song choral group, Ioan Luchian Mihalea. The news of his murder in 1993 was widely publicised. In the writer’s text, the gay composer is given the name Anton Marcu. In the case of this literary product, queerness and heteronormativity are its ruling operational concepts. The main character is defined as gay, and his interaction with other characters, except for his wife and son, on the matter of his sexuality, as we are about to observe, reveals a strong heteronormative character.

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The quick-paced foray offers both well-defined characters and a sketch of post-1989 Romanian society, characterised by police abuses, homophobia, racism, censorship and the media’s penchant for sensationalism at the expense of ethical and impartial operating principles. The narrative opens with composer Anton Marcu’s friends and co-workers waiting for him at his own performance. As all their attempts to find him fail, they begin to worry and their minds create possible scenarios. The mystery is solved at the very beginning of the script, in the voice of Adi, a TV reporter working for the national TV station, who insists on interviewing a woman: “News, programme one! Now’s your chance to become a celebrity. What time did you find the body?” (Mungiu-Pippidi 1997, 151). The intrusive attitude of the reporter constantly manifests itself throughout the text, making him a representative and even an archetype of the local press, eager for exclusivity at any cost and by any means. In fact, it can be said that this character embodies a criticism of the Romanian media, and the treatment given to the murder of a gay person has its correspondence in most of the news of the type, published in Romania. As the media quickly covers the story, the police are pressured into quickening their pace and moving forward with the investigation. Certain sources emerge that claim Marcu was a Securitate informant, a familiar fate, as we noted earlier, for gay people who had lived under the pressure of extortion from the communist authorities. At the time of publication, Article 200 was still in force and continued to be applied. The usual practice of recruiting distinguished and well-connected public figures in the artistic and intellectual world, as carried out by the secret services, can also be found in Marcu’s case. The colonel involved in the investigation recounts these memories to Filip, one of the people in charge of the investigation, who is astonished to learn that Marcu had a wife and child, given his sexuality. Here is a first stereotype stated in the text, with reference to contemporary Romanian society: queer people with children make for special topics, and pretendmarriages work precisely because of their restrictive context. The colonel’s response, which also contains a presupposition about the possible perpetrator(s) of the crime, reveals his negative and discriminatory views on gay people, whom he reduces to a group with common and indivisible traits: “It must have been one of their own, because jealousy makes them go ballistic” (p. 157). A similar stereotype is later reiterated by Adi during his discussion with the victim’s wife. Based on what he believes to be fact, constructed from the image reflected in mainstream cultural products,

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the reporter expresses his heteronormative views from the position of an uninformed person with a strong bias on the subject of non-normative sexualities: “Boss, gays kill each other. I’ve read books, I’ve seen movies, I’m telling you this stuff has to do with murder” (p. 162). The author appears to be including numerous queer stereotypes in the construction of her characters, ranging from those related to a certain “behaviour,” to appearance and taste. During the funeral, Adi learns about the victim’s sexuality from his TV colleague, a make-up artist, who draws his attention to a group of men, while at the same time making it clear that Marcu was dear to him only as a friend: “Only one of them is obviously something, the rest are with him, but he looks like everyone else” (Mungiu-Pippidi 1997, 157). The new information pleases the reporter, who senses the riveting potential of the news and its underlying nuances, particularly because Marcu had not made his sexuality public, which would have led to his imprisonment. In a conversation with the husband’s wife, the reporter brutally interrogates her on her reasons for marrying a gay man. The same question, repeated in a different form by the investigator, betrays another stereotype, one that links masculinity to heterosexuality, normalising gender and sexuality and linking them to strictly biological factors: “Why did you marry someone who wasn’t a man?” (p. 160). The fact that the victim’s sexuality and the reasons for their marriage should not be brought into question is highlighted by his wife, who asks whether this fact is important for the investigation. The script gives an overview of the struggle of the local queer community in the legislative sphere in the form of the dialogue between Ionescu, a representative of a gay association and human rights activist, and the investigators who paid them a visit. Ionescu asks them not to repeat history, so as not to start a new wave of arrests of gay men under the pretext of investigation. As suggested, the arrests that took place in Romania in the 1990s on the basis of Article 200 were based on tactics similar to those used by the Securitate: blackmail, violence to obtain money, etc. (Human Rights Watch 1998, 79). Since this article was available at the time of the scenario as well, one of the investigators pressures Ionescu, telling him that they could arrest him for confessing his homosexuality. In response, the activist anticipates what will happen in a few years: “Not for long. You know that international organisations are

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pushing for a repeal of this article of the Criminal Code that persecutes a sexual minority” (p. 163).2 It is under these auspices that one can reference Teun van Dijk’s theories on the operation of power relations within cultural processes; in this case, the relationship between the police and the queer people that they continue to persecute under the protection of Article 200 is the main form of control touched upon throughout the text (van Dijk 1995). Although the victim’s sexuality adds interest to the story, Adi’s superior refuses to broadcast any news on this subject on national television, fearing public opinion and possible repercussions for the station; thus Adi reorients himself to a private competitor. One of the novel’s climaxes is the arrest of the suspect, a young man named Cris, whose sexuality is revealed during the TV programme that details the arrest. The suspect’s sexual identity is thus revealed not only to the general public, but also to his mother and girlfriend, who knew that the victim had been his friend. The leitmotif of the script is life presented as high-profile news, treated brutally through the violation of intimacy and the strategy of surveying a taboo subject from the perspective of the “mainstream” group. Among the clichés reiterated by people who discuss queer topics (mainly discriminating against queer people and making a point of bringing up the subject of children) is the question of “how can anyone explain what a gay person is to a child?” The subtext, raised to the standard of consensus, is that young people should be protected from the subject of sexuality because they do not understand the issues at stake, along with the absence or refusal to provide explanations. The composer’s son asks his mother: “Is there anything wrong with being gay? Mrs. Marcu (hugs him, kisses him): No. It’s just that it’s very rare and unusual, and then people freak out when they hear someone is gay as if they were… a kangaroo. (Child laughs)” (p. 177) Later, the child is assaulted in the school restroom by a group of boys who justify their attack on the grounds that he is the son of a homosexual. This short scene is one of 2 Alina Mungiu-Pippidi was a member of one of these organisations, APADOR-CH, which was discussed in the chapter on the Romanian social context and legislation against same-sex relationships. She also supported BAG (Bucharest Acceptance Group). All this suggests that the author has extensive knowledge of police abuse and the transformative stages of Article 200 during the 1990s. From this point of view, I believe that this script, not yet materialised into a film, is both a pioneering Romanian literary work, in terms of subject matter and approach, and a plea for change.

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the few depictions of the school reality where children are subjected to bullying (in the form of verbal and physical abuse) because of their sexuality. The list of abuses continues with the rape of Cris, whose perpetrators are the very police officers investigating him, and his forced confession to the murder of the composer. Romania has a long history of systematic persecution of queer people that is not sufficiently covered by historical research. Fragments of this history can be found in the reports of the morality police, in the notes of Securitate informants or scattered throughout memoirs such as those of Ion Negoit, escu, Petre Sirin and others. In an attempt to uncover the events of the Holocaust, since other countries have begun to unearth the identities of their queer victims, I consulted the first report on the Holocaust in Romania, published only in 2004, “Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania.” In the 416 pages of the report, the word “homosexual” is mentioned only twice, in both cases in an enumeration: To use today allegations of faulty criminal procedure in order to rehabilitate war criminals who humiliated, deported, murdered, or exterminated people because they were born Jews or Roma, or were Soviet POWs, homosexuals, or communists, or belonged to specific religious sects is to reject the most generous values of democracy. (Wiesel 2004, 331)

Returning to the text of the script, one excerpt is emblematic of the gaps in our historical knowledge, which Romanians appear to be indulging in: “Filip: These ones really deserve to be gassed. They really should have gassed these ones. Lieutenant: Well, they tried. Hitler went after the gays. Philip: How do you know? Lieutenant: I read it in today’s newspaper” (Mungiu-Pippidi 1997, 178). Although this dialogue may sound like an exaggeration to some readers, it seems to be faithfully inspired by the discourses encountered in the public space and especially in the comments section of articles posted on the Internet, where anti-Semitism, racism and homophobia are often intertwined, not to mention the ever-present evocation of Hitler. With the arrest of the second (of Romani ethnicity) suspect, public racism swings into action. Interviews are conducted in which interviewees declare that they no longer feel safe on the streets and that the death penalty should be reintroduced, in close connection with the perpetrator’s

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ethnicity and everyone who belongs to the aforementioned ethnic group (pp.192–194). In Alina Mungiu-Pippidi’s script, numerous clichés are brought together to reveal the hatred towards various “categories” of people that are at the root of the intolerance displayed by Romanian society. In an interview published in 1998 in the newspaper Adev˘arul, the author states that “my character is gay, he is gay because this allowed me the opportunity to discuss intolerance in Romania, it allowed me the opportunity to discuss, paradoxically, the condition of women in Romania. Much of the story is based on the character’s wife, a woman living in a very ‘macho’ world, about whom everyone wonders, why did she marry a gay man?” (interview by Cristina Modreanu, 1998). The Immigrants Published in 2011, Ioana B˘aet, ica Morpurgo’s novel Imigrant, ii [The Immigrants] is made up of six parts, each chapter titled after its main character. The first and only story with queer references is R˘azvan’s, one of the few queer characters in Romanian literature that facilitates the voicing of an articulate social critique. The character’s leftist political choices are committedly declared, and his ideology manifests itself in the topics he discusses with his friends and lovers. The action takes place mainly in the UK, and in Romania for a short period of research, where R˘azvan is pursuing his doctoral studies. His thesis focuses on the secret prisons operated by the CIA in various places, including Romania, and the political implications of these, as well as the actions taken by the United States of America in areas such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In his dialogues with various characters, he expresses his disapproval of all forms of torture, his scepticism regarding the motivation of American armed actions as a fight against terrorism, and he highlights the double standards of tolerance to be found in Western societies. R˘azvan believes that queer people, by virtue of their assumed identity, should be politically engaged, and that, in fact, they should constantly question, analyse, and reject the social order of their countries, given the systemic discrimination they face even in allegedly “tolerant” societies. In other words, R˘azvan seems to suggest that social inequalities continue to exist in these spaces even though, at the declarative level, certain institutions adopt certain principles whereby certain social groups are tolerated.

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The context of its queer parameters is, in this case, more contemporary, with the dimension of power relations shifting from the institutional to the personal. At the same time, the short personal narratives presented throughout the text have the sole purpose of revealing a meaning (Pickering 2008) and constructing a broader discourse that moves from the personal sphere towards the social. In this way, a critique of society is produced, specifically of Eastern and Western European societies. R˘azvan’s intimate experiences, such as his first erotic experience and its recollection at various points in the narration, as well as discussions with Mircea, a friend who does not express his sexuality to others— similar to Ravi, the young man of Indian origin who is under family pressure to marry—are interwoven with political discussions. The author’s choice supplies the text and its characters with verisimilitude, as it paints a succinct picture of everyday life and its Romanian realities filtered through the perspective of an economic migrant. There is a passage in The Immigrants which—similarly to Panait Istrati’s novel discussed earlierdiscloses the nationalist intolerance towards non-Romanians: “Nationalism and its expansive formulation – imperialism – find their roots in racism. In fact, nationalism is nothing more than a sophisticated formulation of cultural purism. Romania is in this phase: it is elaborating its strategies of sophistication” (B˘aet, ica 2011, 77– 78). These strategies seem to operate in the current context by appealing to the concept of a “national culture” and ignoring elements that are part of it, in an effort to homogenise and reject or ignore otherness (Roma culture, queer culture, etc.). These elements are indicators for the intersectionality dimension which, as we shall observe, is much more pronounced in other queer-themed media products. The narrative is sometimes interrupted by data and statistics, quotes from officials referring to torture, historical decisions taken by Romanian officials regarding NATO military bases, references to international press articles but also to how the Bush administration viewed the issue of prisoners at Guantanamo, poems written by Guantanamo detainees and reports on their situation.3 These fragments intertwine with R˘azvan’s erotic memories and fantasies, diary excerpts, his new love interests and family-related issues. 3 One of them includes Donald Rumsfeld’s remark (the Secretary of Defense who referred to the hunger strike initiated by Guantanamo prisoners in 2005): “They are going on a diet to get press attention.” (Baet, ica 2011, p. 55).

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Another important character in the narrative thread is Ravi, a man whom R˘azvan meets through common friends. The two enter into a relationship marked by uncertainty regarding Ravi’s future. This is an example of queer people experiencing social pressure about their own identities. Ravi is simultaneously under pressure to marry a woman of his family’s choice and under pressure from R˘azvan not to follow his parents’ appointed path. In a conversation between the two, Ravi weighs the consequences of his possible coming-out to his family. The two possibilities are, unfortunately, still valid for many queer people who face this issue in terms of family: either he will be rejected by his father or he will be forced to marry in order to “be cured” or to keep up appearances. Of course, one can see similarities between their social contexts, without being representatives of their particular culture. These fears are accurate both in the Romanian and Indian spaces but can be reiterated even in the Anglo-Saxon space. R˘azvan’s parents have different views and ideologies about ethnicity and sexuality. While his mother exhibits racism towards the Roma community and homophobia, believing that homosexuality can be reversed, R˘azvan’s father, himself a member of a (Hungarian) minority, does not hold racist or homophobic views and supports his son. One of the lines directed at his wife is: “If we raised him to be himself and now he is himself, what more do you want from him?” (B˘aet, ica 2011, 45). If we look at surveys, LGBT + people are still, together with Roma people, the most discriminated “categories” in Romania, and the echoes of this oppression still remain faint in public discourse and contemporary cultural products, even in queer ones that touch on the subject of discrimination.4 4 According to the Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey (EUMIDIS II) Roma—Selected findings: “The results show that 95% to 98% of Roma in Spain, Portugal and Slovakia are covered either by the national basic health insurance scheme or additional insurance (Figure 14). In contrast, only 45% of Roma in Bulgaria and 54% of Roma in Romania indicated that this is the case” (p. 29). “The situation is worse with regard to access to clean drinking water through a connection to a water supply system with public access. EU-MIDIS II results show that, with the exception of the Czech Republic and Spain, the share of Roma living in households without tap water inside their dwelling is much higher than for the general population (Figure 17). For Roma, this ranges from 9% in Greece to 68% in Romania. Compared to results from the 2011 Roma survey, the situation seems to have improved in Slovakia, Bulgaria, Greece and Romania.” (p. 33). https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-2016-eu-minorities-surveyroma-selected-findings_en.pdf. [accessed 6 February 2023] According to the 2015 Public

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The novel outlines a mixed world of experiences and references, most of which pass through a socialist filter and are placed in opposition to the discourses of right-wing ideologies. R˘azvan observes a scene that features a massive and aggressive man arguing with a woman; this image leads him to associate the man with a Nazi, he deems him misogynistic, and suggests that he resembles the gender that sparked the feminist movement. Of course, this passage reflects only a brief critique of the types of masculinity encouraged in the public sphere and does not allude to the complex and long-standing struggles within feminist movements. Albeit mentioned in a short passage, the fact that one man criticises another man’s violent masculinity is a rare episode in Romanian literature. Martin is another character that serves to reveal R˘azvan’s convictions, due to the patience and attentiveness he demonstrates in sustaining conversations on his friend’s interests. The friendship between the two, with small amorous nuances that are not acted upon, begins with a play on words. A mutual friend introduces them, calling R˘azvan “a Romanian activist,” while Martin corrects him “Active, you mean,” further adding that he understood, but he prefers the title of “active Romanian” (B˘aet, ica 2011, p. 17). The dialogues between the two, often contradictory, touch on political, religious, love and death topics. Before committing suicide, Martin constructs his motive in the form of a poem entitled “I will do it”. Here is an excerpt that captures the ever-present social pressure on queer people: I will do it for gay men in Saudi Arabia [...] because of the SS officer who is now 90 years old and lives surrounded by grandchildren in his Florida mansion [...] for the unloved and unlooked-for [...]. I will do it because I

Opinion Eurobarometer, 42% of Romanian respondents declared that they would feel uncomfortable having an LGBT+ work colleague and 43% would feel the same way about a Roma person (p. 2). When asked to consider whether LGBT+ individuals should have the same rights as heterosexual people, 54% of respondents strongly disagreed, with a further 69% saying that non-heterosexual relationships were wrong and that same-sex marriage should not be allowed in Europe (p. 3). Source: http://ec.europa.eu/COMMFrontOffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Survey/ getSurveyDetail/instruments/SPECIAL/surveyKy/2077 [accessed 6 February 2023]. In a more recent survey by the Pew Research Center entitled Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe, 85% of young adults surveyed in Romania believe that “homosexuality should not be accepted by society”. Source: https://www. pewresearch.org/religion/2017/05/10/social-views-and-morality/ [accessed 6 February 2023].

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am one of them I’m part of everything everything everything everything going on goes on goes cold....5 (B˘aet, ica 2011, 97)

Throughout the chapter there are, of course, also various references to Nazism and the Holocaust whose victims also included queer individuals, references to countries where queer people are still persecuted, imprisoned and killed, and the character internalises these realities as part of his own identity. It can be said, in conclusion, that Martin considers himself, by virtue of his mere existence, to be part of the universal history of injustice. In the sense proposed by Hall, R˘azvan, as a member of a subculture, embodies a representative of one’s resistance to norms. This is revealed by his ideology and by his critical and acid comments on institutions and other entities that hold power over groups considered marginal. His character renders manifest the mechanism that facilitates the self-definition, in terms of identities and political positions, of queer people and groups in relation to the larger context of society (Hall 1976). The Soldiers. A Story from Ferentari The novel Soldat, ii [The Soldiers] (2013) can be considered an autofictional novel, given the fact that its author, Adrian Schiop, chooses to build his main character, Adi, in accordance with his own biography: like the author, Adi is a PhD student working on a thesis on manele, who moves to Ferentari to undertake his research, keeps in touch with friends and people from the Romanian artistic scene whom he mentions in the novel and who has a correspondent in the writer’s world. Last but not least, the author’s sexual identity is transferred onto the narrator-character. The action of the novel takes place at the—not geographical, but rather social—periphery of Bucharest, given its levels of segregation and racial oppression that enfolds Roma people living in Ferentari and facing marginalisation. Although the context may prove fruitful for a critique of racist attitudes, the narrative is not what one might call a “social critique”, 5 Translator’s note: The original final verse, “sunt parte din tot tot tot tot ce se petrece trece rece ce e” ends with a progressive disintegration of the word petrece (trans. “happens”) into trece (trans. “passes/goes on”), rece (trans. “cold”), and finally, ce e (trans. “what is”).

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but rather, as we shall see from the analysis, a continuation and extension of racism and exoticisation advanced by a white, educated man against members of an ethnic minority. In fact, the researcher does not shy away from labelling the area of Ferentari “the wild east of tenement blocks, where drug addicts and tramps have been isolated” (Schiop 2013, 37). Adi is not an empathetic character, and his language is often harsh, a mixture of autobiographical naturalness and ethnographic gaze, and this fact raises problems when employed with regard to the disenfranchised, all the more so as he considers himself a left-wing intellectual. The novel’s construction suggests that subcultures are in close connection to the narratives that involve them (Gelder 2007), but it also reveals how elements of the collective imagination, for example, stereotypes about Roma people, are used in an uncritical way to construct the textual universe. The exoticised nature of the interactions between Adi and the other characters is apparent throughout the text. Members of the Roma community reject him on several occasions precisely because of his exoticising gaze. In one such episode, Adi puts forward an offer to a few people in a bar that he could call someone to film them and turn them into “celebrities.” The response comes promptly: “Go home, man, you’re drunk, leave us to sit in our hurt, we don’t need the circus” (Schiop 2013, 17). On another occasion, he is told, “you think you’re the first one to try to infiltrate this place?” (p. 107) Indeed, it is a common tendency among researchers or artists to take their material for future cultural products from marginalised communities. Reference is also made to foreign researchers who carry out their fieldwork for a short period of time in contexts they have no contact with and cannot understand or contribute to. One such representative is Adi’s friend, a researcher from Hungary who arrives there to finalise his fieldwork. The exoticisation of Roma people is compounded by the process of gentrification, particularly in poor Bucharest areas, which are marked by evictions and the erection of new places, usually office buildings or leisure facilities, for people with the necessary funds. This logic implies a first stage of observing the area, usually put into practice by attracting the young middle-class. One of Adi’s ideas connects to the previous ones; he

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plans on bringing people from the “Centre” to visit Ferentari (p. 184), creating a platform that frames the neighbourhood as a tourist landmark.6 The ideas that arise from concepts such as non-discrimination are overlooked, as the author chooses to focus on the novelty of situations and characters, perpetuating the stigma against poor and/or Roma people, who are reduced to the bare elements that achieve their recognition, without presenting, suggesting or criticising the mechanisms that enable this process (Halberstam 2005). In an interview with Roma actress and activist Mihaela Dr˘agan, she comments on the writer’s attitude towards the Roma in his novel: [...] I have read Schiop’s Soldiers before. It seemed to me [...] that the relationship between the characters was one of super power and that this guy [A/N: Adrian Schiop] was one of those, a super exoticist. [...] and everything was so, very exotic and all the stereotypes that are known about the Roma, you know? It seemed like he was exoticising a gay Roma character. We make fun in Gadjo Dildo of anthropologists, too, those who come to Roma communities to research us. (interview with Mihaela Dr˘agan)

The efforts to integrate into the Roma community in order to study it are, according to the actress, similar to those made by the novel’s author in his real life. As for researchers who often enter communities considered “closed,” the members’ reluctance is one of the obstacles mentioned. Moreover, this type of approach is on the borderline of research ethics, given that not infrequently, researchers do not share the research results with the participants and/or do not reward them with other benefits for their willingness to provide essential material. Adi strives to integrate into the Ferentari community, mainly by using his doctoral scholarship to pay for various men’s bar consumption. This is how he met Alberto, a young Roma man who had been in prison. The relationship that develops between the two is one of power, based on the rift between Adi’s social position and that of Alberto, who becomes financially dependent on the researcher.

6 In fact, Adrian Schiop is the organiser of a series of parties in Ferentari, where the target audience is composed of people living in other areas of the city, usually educated, young, sometimes from categories such as hipsters and supporters of minority rights.

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The entire novel is packed with stereotypes, that are not combatted, but rather deepened by Adi’s attitude. In this case, these representational elements assist in the process of overlooking the social situations that intersect with one another throughout the text; this kind of view of certain categories of people and their representations is also discussed by Richard Dyer, who tries to draw attention to how representations are made and what is left out or repeated under the form of stereotypes (Dyer 2002). Descriptions of ghettos and poverty accomplish the image of an affectionate landscape that reminds Adrian of Romania in the 1990s: “In Ferentari I feel shielded from history and politics; it’s my 90s bubble that protects me from the present” (p. 150). The romanticised image of the neighbourhood is not, however, partnered with reflections on the poverty of its inhabitants and the mechanisms of oppression that force them into occupying the area. Adi’s colleagues and friends are terrified of Alberto. Taverns are meeting points between the tolerance of homoerotic intimacy—passing as acceptable and motivated by alcohol—and the rejection, on a declarative level, of homosexuality. There are various characters who are connected to these spaces, some of them gay; for example, Adi describes the owner of a tavern as “the faggot of the neighbourhood”. Adi’s lack of empathy is revealed by the pejorative terms he often uses; the choice of such language in a story about Roma and gay people that is presented to the public can be problematic in terms of reinforcing stereotypes. In a review of the book, published in Observator cultural, Iulia Popovici considers that Adrian Schiop remains aware of the ambiguity inherent to his social position all throughout the book, but he refuses its codes of behaviour7 : Adrian Schiop is the only contemporary Romanian prose writer (or at least the only one I know of, Cristina Nemerovschi included) who places atypical or paraphilic sexuality (but not deviant, mind you—since the very phrase ‘deviant’ alludes to normative structures) at the foundation of political identities—because he looks at sexuality in general in terms of power relations (“relationships are born and nurtured out of power imbalances, one dominates, the other is dominated,” he writes in the novel). In The Soldiers.

7 http://www.observatorcultural.ro/Pygmalion-in-Ferentari*articleID_29437-articles_ details.html [accessed 6 February 2023].

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A Story from Ferentari, the theme of these relationships that are generatively tied to inequality meets (an “intersectional” approach coming from the author) with power relations between social classes (it is fascinating and almost painful to note the symbolical controlling pressure exerted by educated groups on ghettoised ones) and within the social rupture called Ferentari; or, more broadly, the world of the Roma not subjected to modern schemes of societal organisation and control. (Popovici 2013)

Intersectionality applies in this case to the character of Alberto, an exceptional character in Romanian literature, by virtue of his being both queer and Roma, but these are the only constitutive elements of his personality that emerge throughout the novel. Alberto’s internal struggle to accept his sexuality can be summed up by his line, “What, you’re gay if you tell a man you love him?” (p. 26). Adi seems more intent on fleshing out his own characterisation and presentation, at the expense of outlining an otherwise interesting character that is reduced to the status of kept partner and gambling addict. The narrative thread is made up of a few episodes that consolidate its other elements: Adi arrives in Ferentari to complete his research, he meets Alberto, they begin a relationship, Adi runs out of money and breaks up with Alberto. The world outlined by the narrator is hypersexualised, with scenes that feature Adi paying for sex while exoticising and hypersexualizing Romani men: “slender thugs and well-made gypsies phenomenally [sic] available”, to stories of homosexuality in prison, erotic recollections, conversations about sex. In Adi’s opinion, the NGOs “falsify” Roma people, and it pleases him to be able to present Alberto to his friends as a concrete object and representative of the Ferentari Roma. The entire construction of their relationship reiterates the power relations and influence that the researcher holds over Alberto. In a brief change of narrative voice, Adi allows his friend Andrei the opportunity to recount his visit to their home. This explicitly reveals the relationship of subordination between the two, seen through the eyes of the majority: (referring to Alberto) “he’s living off your money, keep him on a shorter leash” (p. 165). This seemingly open universe of an unbiased person is in fact one that replicates the opinions and language of the majority. Adi sets himself up as Alberto’s saviour and promises to find a solution to obtain his papers: “I have a rich friend with a house in the country and an apartment in Bucharest […] He laughed in disbelief too, the rich don’t mix with the

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poor. […] and I said Alberto, she likes being with the poor, in a daily mouthful” (p. 180). But his benevolence is not carried through to the end, for beneath it one can find the trenchant impressions of the rescuer who begins to shed his role. In a moment of reflection on his current situation, the researcher wonders “what the fuck am I doing with this illiterate in the country-side […] What am I doing with my Ph. D.” (p. 182). The researcher realises serenely that, by assuming the false role of rescuer, he made use of his relationship with Alberto in order to write his thesis (“he was my guide in closed environments”) and imagines that Alberto must regard him as a saviour: “I think that he thinks of me with gratitude, that intelligent man tried to do something with my life, someone noticed me” (p. 248). This is the ending of the novel, concluded not with Adi’s regrets, but rather the recognition of his unethical behaviour which triggers his self-victimisation (“That’s the most painful part.”) (p. 248). Adi steers clear of politically charged topics and activism in general. In one passage, he recounts an incident during Bucharest Pride, or “Gay Parade” as he calls it—the same term used by many of those who condemn queer people—which he had forgotten was taking place and which he considers part of the “modish agenda” (p. 193). He goes on to refer to the other producers of culture who intrude into marginalised communities in search of subjects, with the declarative aim of getting their stories heard. The way he presents the people who become sources of inspiration is indicative of his own vision, and possibly shared with other cultural entrepreneurs who are intent on making social injustices known: I have friends who make engaged art of quality, moreover, they go into communities and try to help [...] the finished product is a black widow thing, too serious to believe. Not in the sense that every performance fills you with remorse, no, on the contrary, the plays show you that these people have fun too, that despite oppression they have a life and they make jokes—the problem is that you don’t really feel like laughing at those jokes, I don’t know, they’re missing something. (p. 194)

Extending researcher Peggy Phelan’s theory on the reproduction of images and subjects that can be catalogued as novel and which are subsequently adopted quickly by the market for increased profit (Phelan 1993), it can be seen that the author relied on the fact that his novel is the

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first work of Romanian literature to feature a well-defined gay and Roma character, which largely led to the success of the book, and its latter film adaptation. Thus, in line with bell hooks’ theorisation of the processes of cultural appropriation and exoticisation, Alberto’s character and by extension Roma people, become a commodity, and the “otherness” he embodies comes to attract the cultural interests of dominant groups in society (Hooks, 1992). Love Sick Cecilia S, tef˘anescu’s book, Leg˘aturi boln˘avicioase [Love Sick] was published in 2002. The story has a complicated epic thread, with narrative voices that blend into each other, and fragments whose sequence does not follow the temporal order. Sexual identity is also placed in a game of seemingly disordered thoughts, within the snippets of the lives of the two characters and event descriptions related to former loves. This text is an example of how the author’s heterosexuality reflects itself in the novel, for she maintains a distance from the characters and opts for a writing style that values the aesthetic component. Both Love Sick and Adrian Schiop’s novel contain elements of authenticity (Gl˘avan 2015, 71). However, as we are about to observe, in the case of Cecilia S, tef˘anescu’s novel authenticity is not a central element that transpires at first glance. The main narrative thread follows Alex and Kiki, two college classmates who become lovers. Their story is consummated in-between city walks, meetings with friends, domestic moments and dreams. The two end up falling in love, only to drift apart, then rekindle their feelings and finally break up. The author’s chosen formula is a string of stories, commented on by various narrative voices. This manner of constructing the text can complicate analysis. However, the present analysis focuses on the important moments and the portrayal of the two protagonists. The story opens with university recollections and Kiki’s first impressions of her classmate: “I found her very insufferable, that girl I was later to love with the despair of a hungry, filthy tomcat” (S, tef˘anescu 2002, 9). The heteronormative gaze manifests itself in the general perception of their relationship: “For most people, we were two good friends who could not find a place in this world” (p. 17). The search for identity unfolds throughout brief episodes that depict their affairs with various

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men, which will later become motifs in their relationship, occasionally marked by jealousy. The fact that the development of their relationship is described as “natural” appears to be a plea against heteronormativity and the views surrounding the concept of “normality,” which deny the truthfulness of queer people’s experiences. The author attempts to construct a relationship that is presented as any other heterosexual relationship. The linearity is interrupted by a few references that seem to contradict her intentions and which anchor the narrative within Romanian society and its still existing stereotypes: an episodic character makes a point of telling Kiki, with visible concern about the automation process and the increase in technical unemployment, that “the family, the children, the home at large have gone to hell. From now on, the world belongs to freaks” (p. 60). One of the particularities of the narrative construction is the plurality of voices (Kiki, Alex) that narrate and which might be at first confounded. The narrative flow also contains references to negative opinions about queer people and this simultaneously facilitates the progression of the story: “Don’t be afraid the world will judge you harshly. After all, what’s your deal with this world?” (p. 53). Moreover, the two resort to strategies of keeping up appearances with the aid of interested peers and friends, and this fact mirrors queer people’s mechanism of protecting their intimacy. One of them, involving marriage to a person of the opposite sex, was mentioned in the case study of The Death of Ariel. In addition to the relationship between the two, an incestuous relationship transpires between Kiki and her brother, Sandu. Significantly blurred in the novel, it becomes an important narrative thread in the film, as does the character of the brother who becomes responsible for the women’s separation. Alex and Kiki meet each other during their teenage years when Alex’s mother invites Sandu, with whom Alex was friends, and his sister Kiki, to visit. One of the few references to the incestuous relationship between the two appears in the following passage: “she talked conspiratorially in my ear to make her brother jealous, she tickled me, pretending to play my ribs like an instrument, and kissed me whenever she caught my cheek near to her chubby cheek” (p. 47). Sandu is the one who explained to Kiki the sexual concepts of conception and pleasure. Later, during her relationship with Alex, their sexual moment is interrupted by “a state of terrible disgust” (p. 155).

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Seemingly paradoxically, Alex recounts an incident when she witnessed two men who had been arguing in the Opera House Park and who made up with a kiss. Alex has a viscerally homophobic reaction to this scene and writes to Kiki: “the nauseous feeling that spread across my body like scabies […] I pitied the freaks, just as I pitied you. But I also thought of you with longing, in the very frequent moments when I was unhappy. And how else could I have been at 16?” (p. 66) In their circle of friends, the two try, at first, to abide by the social norms of heterosexism, by slipping into bigotry and homophobia. For example, they share a table with a gay man who claims to have a boyfriend, and who captures the bigotry and hypocrisy of the two: “if you were honest, you’d admit that you’re smitten with the girl next to you,” and the reaction of the others is to label them “faggots, pederasts, freaks” (p. 68). The disassociation of the two can be explained by a certain level of internalised homophobia. The pressure of those around her and the denial of Kiki’s sexual identity are also present in the letter addressed to her by Sergiu, a young man in love with her: “you will realize that, in a bizarre way, you have deceived yourself by growing into what you are not” (p. 98). The story line is interrupted by passages containing words with no apparent connection to the narrative line. They are, however, fragments of Kiki’s life, reduced to units that express it. The novel’s construction is nonhomogeneous, as the voices of the characters intertwine and certain passages might come across as confusing. The blending of identities can be an auctorial strategy of hinting at the very fluidity of sexual identity, but also of the characters’ experiences and feelings. This novel’s publication opens the discussion underlying the public understanding of a text that develops the first loving relationship between two women in Romanian culture. The representation and selfrepresentation of audiences are carried out in relation to texts, as Rob Cover argues, and the emergence of these resources can contribute to the genesis of a set of approaches regarding the understanding of sexual identities as a whole (Cover 2002). Given the complexity of the characters and the love triangle present in this text, the analysis operated in accordance with the working concept of queer gaze and focused on the relationship between the two female characters, to the detriment of the incestuous one that is briefly referred to in the novel but, as we shall note, is much more developed in the film. Of course, reading in this key may in turn be influenced by previous

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readings that have shaped the ability to identify certain layers of meaning, particularly in terms of the ways in which queer women are represented in literature (Goodall 2000). The Dolls The main subject of Cristina Nemerovschi’s 2014 novel P˘apus, ile [The Dolls] is the story of two teenage girls and their love affair. The narrative is retrospective: a series of moments and situations experienced by Dora and Luna as they experiment with their identities and develop their relationship. Dora is the narrator-character who paints the picture of her relationship with Luna, who is deceased, as mentioned at the outset of the novel. Sprinkled with erotic moments and episodes involving those around the two teenagers, the novel designs a world rooted in everyday Romanian life, with hints of homophobia and racism, but also references to the related socio-economic stratification. The name of the novel comes from the story Dola’s mother tells her about two dolls, Luna and Dora, who resemble the two main characters. In a fragment with biblical connotations, a reference is made to the universe that Dora and Luna created for themselves, adapted to their own feelings: “In the beginning was not the word, God, the endless expanse of water. In the beginning were Dora and Luna. And everything started thereafter” (p. 40). Albeit far from being a novel with feminist overtones—quite the contrary, given certain aspects—the narrative is set in motion with a description of an episode from Dora’s childhood. Her mother, Eva, is painting a picture that alludes to the struggle between man and woman, which ends with the man’s victory. The association of the man with love and the woman with death is employed at the beginning of the novel and anticipates the narrative stages: “love wins over death. […] with us it was not so” (Nemerovschi 2014, 8). Dora’s rhetorical questions about death, life, and love establish the melancholic tone of the story and contribute to the usual dilemmas and reflections typical of other novels for teenagers. Dora decides to write the story out of a need for catharsis (p. 17) and she structures the narrative in two parts: the love and the death, both of which open with quotes from songs by queer people or from similarly themed books. The heteronormative dimension operates at the level of the text with the help of stereotypes about queer people, which appear under the form

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of—occasionally humorous—allusions voiced by other characters. Here are some examples. Dora’s friend, Claudiu, brutally asks Dora “How the hell does a girl like you end up a lesbian?” (p. 23) The question implies, of course, the stereotype that queer people choose or end up changing their sexuality. Claudiu is regarded by Dora as unprejudiced, but ignorant, since he enters their lives in an “impertinent and arrogant” way, by reiterating a cliché. Dora considers the subject to be more complicated and does not consider herself a lesbian: “I loved Luna and that didn’t make me in the least a lesbian […] Neither did Luna’s love for me […] make her a lesbian” (pp. 27–28). Moreover, Dora admits that she had never wondered how she could fall in love with Luna, since they were both girls. Instead, those around them try to filter their relationship by means of their heteronormative gaze. For example, when Dora tells her father that she’s in a relationship with Luna, he goes through several stages: at first, he suggests that they are just friends and that he is happy for his daughter, but then, at Dora’s insistence, he bursts out, “All right, but you’re girls!!!! […] Both of you, I mean” (p. 174) The humour behind the situation comes from the fact that Ema, the person with whom her father has a relationship after her mother’s death and who is Dora’s confidante, tries to ease the tension by constantly encouraging the two of them to taste different types of food. A second cliché is reiterated by Dora’s father on another occasion: that two women cannot be mothers, and in another instance, through the voice of a friend of Luna’s father, we learn that, in his view, sexuality is “transient”: “From his point of view, I was just Luna’s sex partner, a stranger and more perverse experiment of hers, which she was sure to get over” (p. 164). The treatment of non-normative sexualities with a kind of curiosity and appetite for the unusual is also highlighted in one of the situations where Dora and Luna are approached by a young woman who meets them in a club and who wants to interview them for her radio station. One of the questions is: “Do you think it is difficult to be gay or lesbian in Romania, given the public opinion?”. The two are amused by the questions: “I think it’s hard to be almost anything in Romania”, thus suggesting the ridiculousness of situations in which a person’s sexuality becomes a sensationalist subject for the media (p. 91). Another moment when the media becomes involved in their story is Dora’s interview, in which she mentions her relationship with Luna; this is followed by Luna’s father’s public declaration that his daughter has an “absolutely normal”

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relationship with a man. The tendency to go through the motions and erase lesbian stories from public discourse is also evident in the episode that preceded the incineration: Luna’s father asks Dora not to attend the funeral, offering to buy her silence. Although the story of the two had apparently not been marked by heteronormative norms, it can be seen that these were eventually re-established; their love story is no longer the object of public attention, and it instead becomes a mere rumour. Dora complies: “I, too, think it’s better this way, that people don’t know. What would be the point?” (pp. 274–277). Luna and Dora belong to the same social class with above-average income and live in a bubble that is sometimes permeated by others’ homophobic remarks. Two old men see them embracing on a bench and express their disapproval: “These young people nowadays, I’m telling you… Not an ounce of shame! […] These days, girls kiss girls and boys kiss boys!” (p. 297). The old men’s comments continue, and they are surprised when the two girls engage. Their disgust and disapproval stem from religious beliefs: “They haven’t read no history book, they don’t know who the Almighty was, when he lived, poor them! But canoodling in the park, that they know! That’s what they know! What they see on the TV all day long… It is what it is. Damn you, sinners… Shame on you…” (p. 299). All these episodes are foregrounded, as they anchor the narrative in the local and contemporary context. This array of places where their relationship develops, apart from a few situations like the one described above, is predominantly comprised of spaces where their relationship is accepted, so-called safe spaces, or, in Ken Gelder’s view, belonging to a “subcultural geography” (Gelder 2007). The two girls fabricate a universe of their own that shelters them from homophobic reactions coming from the outside, and where they are free to manifest their own identities and personalities. Another level of action concerns the “ugly Romania” (p. 130). This is composed of people belonging to other social classes with whom the two do not interact. The cruelty of their regard is reflected in the following passage: “But Luna did not ignore them with superiority […] but pitied them […] If she had a machine gun, Luna […] would have put an end to the suffering of the people who populated the ugly Romania” (p. 131) Moreover, Luna, from her state of social comfort, refuses to consider these issues, emphasising that for her, the only subjects that matter are love and death, as reflection topics.

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Bringing to mind characters who view the poor and the Roma in an exoticising way, Dora decides to film a video within these communities. There are racist overtones, particularly in the romanticisation of poverty which, for a person from a comfortable social background like Dora, is in keeping with the clichés of poverty understood as freedom and choice: “they lived in misery, yet they knew how to be free and happy” (p. 132). The “freedom” of these people is soon belied. Dora befriends Mario, who lived with his daughter in a house from which they soon were to be evicted. As she films the scene, her thoughts turn to the novelty of the situation (for her), unrelated to the oppressive context and discrimination experienced by Roma people without housing contracts. Mario’s mother captures the abuse faced by people like them: “You don’t want to hit me in the head, huh, you don’t want to get your hands dirty, you want to leave us to die in the streets” (p. 184). These scenes are accompanied by party descriptions where the two consummate their relationship in the public space, Dora’s confession of the kiss she shared with her mother, the evocation of the moment when someone palm-reads Luna’s death at 26, culminating in the moment when Luna is killed following an altercation between Mario and the person to whom he owed money. The entire story is inscribed within the context of parallel universes, characterised by bigotry, racism and, at times, homophobia, and the time-jumps that carry out the narrative create a teenage world that is unprecedented in Romanian literature. Romanian queer literature is one of the most developed forms of media in terms of representations and interpretations of sexuality in the Romanian space. In the analysis dedicated to this medium, we have observed that literary works simultaneously develop themes related to gender, sexuality, but also to other phenomena in Romanian society such as racism, homophobia, stereotypes and the exoticising gaze to which certain people (the poor, the Roma) are subjected. Through these examples, it is possible to create a fictional universe with strong continuous references to reality, full of similitude and a true literary simulator of the power relations that are carried out on the social level (between the “majority” and the “minority”). As we shall see, unlike cinematic products, queer-themed fiction is less autofictional. Although the themes addressed through literature cover various topics and areas related to queer identities, they can be seen as deficient in terms of life authenticity, which bears an impact on the characters’ construction.

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Stereotypes are often at play, particularly in the case of queer literature written by heterosexual authors. In the case of cultural products in other media, such as audio-visual products, the truthfulness component and self-reflection are much more pronounced. In the following section on film products, these distinctions will be traced and highlighted in order to draw parallels and find points of intersection that will confirm the existence of differences in approach according to the producers’ own identities.

References B˘aet, ica Morpurgo, Ioana. Imigrant, ii. Ia¸si: Polirom, 2011. Balot˘a, Nicolae. Caietul albastru. Bucharest: Ideea European˘a, 2007. Boia, Lucian. Dosarele secrete ale agentului Anton. Petru Comarnescu în arhivele Securit˘at, ii. Bucharest: Humanitas, 2014. C˘alinescu, George. Istoria literaturii române de la origini pân˘a în present. Bucharest: Minerva, 1982. Caragiale, Mateiu. Remember, In Viat, a Româneasc˘a magazine, 1921. Constante, Lena. Evadarea imposibil˘a. Penitenciarul politic de femei Miercurea Ciuc 19571961. Bucharest: Humanitas, 1993. Dyer, Richard. The Matter of Images: Essays on Representation. London: Routledge, 2002. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA). Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey (EUMIDIS II) Roma—Selected findings. GESIS Data Archive, 2016. Gelder, Ken. Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice. London: Routledge, 2007. Gl˘avan, Gabriela. “Gay/Queer în literatura român˘a contemporan˘a”, In Philologica Jassyensia, XI(1), pp. 67–74, 2015. Goodall, Harold Lloyd. Writing the New Ethnography. Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2000. Halberstam, Jack. In a Queer Time and Place. New York: New York University Press, 2005. Hall, Stuart and Jefferson, Tony. Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Hutchinson, 1976. Hart, Lynda and Phelan, Peggy (Eds.). Acting Out: Feminist Performances. Michigan: Ann Arbor, 1993. Hooks, Bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992.

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Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch World Report 1998 – Romania, 1 January 1998. Available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6a8ae34. html [accessed 20 July 2023]. Istrati, Panait. Adolescent, a lui Adrian Zografi. Bucharest: Albatros, 1927. Istrati, Panait. Chira Chiralina. Bucharest: Erc Press, 2009. Manolescu, Nicolae. Istoria critic˘a a literaturii române. Pite¸sti: Paralela 45, 2008. Modreanu, Cristina. “Despre teatru cu Alina Mungiu Pippidi”, In Adev˘arul Newspaper, April, 1998. Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina. Moartea lui Ariel. Bucharest: Unitext, 1997. Negoi¸tescu, Ion. Straja Dragonilor. Bucharest: Humanitas, 2009. Nemerovschi, Cristina. P˘apus,ile. Bucharest: Herg Benet, 2014. Papadat-Bengescu, Hortensia. Drumul ascuns. Bucharest: Editura Nat, ionala S. Ciornei, 1932. Papadat-Bengescu, Hortensia. R˘ad˘acini. Bucharest: Minerva, 1983. Papadat-Bengescu, Hortensia. Fecioarele despletite. Concert din Muzic˘a de Bach. Drumul ascuns. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1986. Pickering, Michael (Ed.). Research Methods for Cultural Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Popovici, Iulia. “Pygmalion în Ferentari”, Online Article, Observatorul Cultural, 2013. Available at: http://www.observatorcultural.ro/Pygmalion-in-Ferent ari%2Aarticle-ID_29437-articles_details.html. Schiop, Adrian. Soldat, ii. Poveste din Ferentari. Ia¸si: Polirom, 2013. Solanas, Valerie. SCUM Manifesto. London: Verso Books, 2016. S, tef˘anescu, Cecilia. Leg˘aturi boln˘avicioase. Ia¸si: Polirom, 2002. Teodoreanu, Ionel. Fata din Zlataust. Bucharest: Cartea Româneasc˘a, 1931. Van Dijk, Teun. “Aims of Critical Discourse Analysis”, In Japanese discourse, vol. 1, pp. 17–27, 1995. Wiesel, Elie. Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. Ia¸si: Polirom, 2004.

CHAPTER 4

Films

The visual materials that form the basis of the present analysis were rewatched and used as material for this volume thanks to the producers who provided me with recordings from their personal archives.

Abreast The main themes that emerge from the short film created in 2016 by Patrick Br˘aila are the discrimination of trans people, the struggle for acceptance and the connection to one’s family during this process. Pieptis, [Abreast], from 2016, is the first Romanian film made by a trans person about their own experience. Patrick Br˘aila, a trans filmmaker and activist, chooses to tell part of his story by focusing on the relationship with his family, especially his mother, in a short film shot in his home village. Patrick spoke about the story behind the film in the interview conducted for this paper, from which selected passages were selected to complement the present analysis. In the construction of his film, the director uses the method of self-reflection, borrowed from the new ethnography and employed as a creative construction strategy of reworking and representing his own identity. Thus, one can speak of a transference process of the mechanisms employed in ethnographic research conducted by the very people who are sometimes its subjects, in an effort to analyse and represent their own © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Dima, Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38849-1_4

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stories, as opposed to researchers who usually place themselves outside their field of research. This artistic approach has another role, besides the educational one: that of establishing a relationship with the viewers and, on a macro level, providing a way for other trans people to identify themselves in a cultural product—something that, until the advent of film, was missing from the Romanian space. This purpose is circumscribed within the transnational trend of providing opportunities for queer communities and individuals to connect with each other, even in a mediated form, through their thematic products (Howe 2015). In essence, this film can be regarded as queer and feminist in nature, offering a subtle critique of societal gender categories that are arbitrarily and stereotypically imposed on trans people. The story takes place in a rural area in the county of Mehedint, i, and its two main characters are the mother played by Maia Morgenstern and her trans son played by Iulia Samson. The son had just begun his transition. The two set off for the cemetery to visit their grandfather’s grave. This journey was made by the director and his mother in real life, and their exchange translates the essence of the real-life conversations they shared during his transition. Patrick spoke to me about his choice of location and how the idea for the film came about: The story appeared in 2013 […] my grandfather had died in October and in December, the day after Christmas, the trip from the movie happened. Just like in the film, because that’s the geography of the place and… and it happened and it was this journey of mine with my mother, from the house to grandpa’s grave. But it was a lot and it marked me very much because it was this setting, the second day of Christmas, the village was quiet, there was snow, I remember there was snow and it was this metaphor of the snow that made me think of those footsteps in the snow and their crunching sound and it’s that quiet, those moments of quiet and that was somehow the skeleton. And on top of it I added moments of interaction between me and my mother over the course of two years. From the moment I told her, to the moment when OK, there’s a kind of acceptance there, a message of OK, let’s do this together, we know it’s going to be hard and long but OK, let’s stick together. On a basis of love and trust that we’ve always had. (interview with Patrick Br˘aila)

The focus is on the atmosphere and the characters’ expressions, the lines are short, the dialogue is interrupted by pauses, and the words are carefully chosen, offering clues to the reasons behind the tense situation

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between the two characters. These elements of multimodality contribute to the construction of the film’s subject and message, in line with the director’s intention. The necessity and incentives that led to Patrick’s choice of creating Pieptis, have an emotional dimension and are closely linked to his identity and its affirmation in the Romanian cultural space: I quickly got rid of this idea and stayed only with the film because it seemed to me that at that time it seemed the most beautiful form of telling stories, through film. […] my real experience with film came when I got to college, when I met those few colleagues who were interested and had a different access to film than I had, and that’s when my horizons began to widen and I began to understand it better and before I made Pieptis, , in fact immediately after, because Pieptis, was somehow a process of artistic becoming for me. It was the same, I wanted it for a very long time and it was very clear to me, as clear as I was that I was a trans man, that I wanted to make films. Cinematography in the classic, rigorous way, with very much attention to craft. That’s the kind of film I wanted to make, kind of like Pieptis, . Well, after I made it, it was a coming out for me also in terms of art because now I don’t want to make a film like that anymore. And I don’t necessarily want to make films anymore. (interview with Patrick Br˘aila)

The director thus had the opportunity to simultaneously achieve two unique moments: his debut as a trans artist, and the exposure of a nonnormative story in the heteronormative landscape of Romanian films. The image of the film is carefully manufactured, which reveals the director’s perseverance and vision in creating a film of high visual quality that relies on the simplicity of the landscape and the weight of the story and the atmosphere created. The introduction of the viewer to the atmosphere of the film happens in the opening scene, which introduces the setting; starting from distant shots (the hills, the houses), the camera moves towards the director’s childhood home. The background sounds are voices, music and the clink of glasses, resembling the moments before a festive meal. The audience does not enter the house, the camera shoots from the doorway as the son comes out and stops to wait for his mother. Her expression of anxiety and unease persists for much of the film. The play of glances, or rather, the avoidance of glances, lasts throughout most of the film. The woman sets off ahead on the road leading to the cemetery, followed by her son,

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who seeks her gaze; even in the brief moments of dialogue, the mother does not look at her son except at most in semi-profile, but instead she maintains the same tense gaze. The gaze plays an important role in this film. Its avoidance might intimate avoiding the subject of transition and not accepting the son as a trans person. From a semiotic perspective, these signs give us an insight into the director’s view of his own life experiences and society as a whole, thus going beyond the subject of his relationship with his own family. Communication with the receivers is achieved through close-ups alternating with middle and long shots, in a play between different levels: social, interpersonal and affective (Kress & Leeuwen 2006). The choice that completes the narrative originates in the director’s sensitivity and his attachment to the audio recording of the Alice in Wonderland story. One finds interspersed snippets of the recording throughout the film that relate to the idea of change and identity. The fragments are carefully chosen and their order corresponds to the main moments of the film. If at the beginning of the journey one can hear “I’m a little girl, my name is Alice”, as the journey progresses, other fragments are introduced that contribute to the unfolding and decoding of the tension between the characters, such as the suggestion that the decision to transition is closely connected to identity and trans people’s need to be perceived and respected, but also to identify themselves according to their appropriate gender: “Look at that, a little table! And on this table, a key! But this key doesn’t fit any door. […] there should be a suitable door around here”. During the entirety of the trip to the cemetery, the mother walks in front of her son, maintaining a distance that is also reflected in the tone of her voice, as well as her sharp manner of conversing with her son: - Did your tests come back? - Not yet, the hormone tests aren’t ready. - And if they come out good? - It doesn’t matter; please understand… - I don’t understand. I don’t understand why you must mutilate yourself when you have a perfectly healthy body! - Because I can’t do this anymore! - The problem is in your head! (Pieptis,, min 02:26–02:44).

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This short piece of dialogue captures several aspects of the struggle of the son, as a trans man, against stereotypes and his mother’s opinions.1 One of them refers to the widespread conception that trans people who start hormonal treatment and those who, in addition, opt for surgery, are mutilating their bodies. What is revealed through the person’s voice is precisely that, for him, it is necessary that his gender identity should be in accordance with his own body. The mother’s last line in this dialogue refers to the psychiatric system at large, which unfortunately strongly influences the transition process. From a legal and institutional point of view, transitioning in Romania involves many bureaucratic steps: visits to psychologists, then to psychiatrists, to official representatives, to courtrooms, and to surgeons. On top of this, there are emotional impediments arising from some of the negative attitudes encountered by trans people during this process. Pieptis, does not expose all of these pressures and mechanisms, but the film, made in a minimalist and richly nuanced way, is an invitation to viewers into the life and struggle of a trans person, through the eyes of a trans person. Following the strategies of social semioticians, the aim was, through interviews, to highlight the meanings that the interviewees gave to the signs that function within this audio-visual product (Chandler 2002). In one of the interviews, Simona Dumitriu, queer artist and curator, mentions Patrick’s film and the intimate manner of its making: I can say that I actually resonated with Patrick Br˘aila’s film, Pieptis, , from this same perspective, from the fact that it is the way an artist from the LGBT+ community chooses to say something about himself and his own transition and relationship with his parents. In general, I think I resonate more with this area, of projects that use a lot of personal experience. (interview with Simona Dumitriu)

1 In fact, Romanian society as a whole is seen as one of the most transphobic and homophobic in the European Union. In the Eurobarometer on Perceptions of Discrimination in Society conducted in 2015, 43% of respondents answered that they would be wholly uncomfortable if trans people were among their work colleagues. In the same survey, 69% of respondents believed that same-sex relationships are wrong and same-sex marriages should not be allowed in Europe (Eurobarometer on Discrimination 2015). http://ec.europa.eu/justice/fundamentalrights/files/factsheet_eurobarom eter_fundamental_rights_2015.pdf.

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Mother’s fear of loneliness is another theme addressed in Patrick Br˘aila’s film. As they pass a house, the two stop and the son learns that one of their neighbours has a son who lives in Bucharest and who no longer visits her. The son looks at his mother and assures her that she will not suffer the same fate. With an empty but loaded stare, the mother replies: “How do you know? As if one can know anything anymore these days”. The son reminds her that he has managed to support himself and is surrounded by friends, people who support him. The mother’s voice trembles as she brings up the subject of transitioning again: “What friends are those who encourage you to mutilate yourself?”. The mother’s persistence in not accepting her son’s identity brings the son to the brink of tears, which he manages to hold back. The struggle between the two is expressed in an excellently coherent and faithful manner by their replies, but also by their expressions and the changes undergone. Another fragment of Alice in Wonderland reiterates the message about the transition, which is becoming increasingly more evident: “Strange, strange things are happening to me today! I wonder if someone hasn’t swapped me in the middle of the night”. The first moment when the mother looks at her son is when he stops and tells her that his back is hurting, asking her for a recommendation—this piece of dialogue is ironic in nature, with rather conversational content, and suggesting that the pain is not necessarily external. The mother’s response is emblematic of the occasional perception of trans people, and it communicates that the identity of the son has not yet been accepted: “Stop walking around barefoot”.2 Before entering the cemetery, the son attempts to reassure his mother that he knows what he is doing and advances a call for her trust. Once in the cemetery, the frame narrows down, focusing on the two of them at their grandfather’s grave; the moment is punctuated by silence, almost two minutes of the film’s 10:43 total, and by the son’s eyes, still searching for his mother’s. The sounds from the beginning of the film make a comeback, the two get up, and as they head towards the exit of the cemetery, the first moment of their shared gaze occurs, when the two regard each other, face to face. The son tells her that he wants to be a good man, like his grandfather: “And if I’m ever half the man he was, all of this will have some sense”. What was hitherto a fight between the two seems to be 2 Translator’s note: Romanian adjectives have gendered structures; the mother uses the feminine form.

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taking a turn for the better. The mother touches his face with her hands, in a moment that marks an important step towards accepting reality. In the final frame, the two return through the same road and fade away into the distance, this time with the son walking ahead of his mother. This small detail may suggest that things are taking a turn for the better for him. The credits roll as the voice of the director—at the beginning of his transition—can be heard in a recording made after his grandfather’s death, about the way he resembles him, and relating memories of him. An excerpt from the interview with Patrick refers to this moment: […] at that time I hadn’t started the transition, I wasn’t… I was just starting to somewhat join the community and make acquaintances and be able to kind of manifest my identity. As a result, that picture with sunglasses is raccourci, so you get it. But this story came out almost viscerally, just like that, organically, I didn’t edit anything, I just put it down on the page. And I remember I recorded it on one of these [A.N.: the mp3 player used to record the interview]. It’s just that it took me a long time to record it, I made around 6–7 attempts. (Patrick Br˘aila)

In the interview, Patrick also discusses his choice of creating the film independently. Meetings with producers who showed interest in the film disappointed him, the main reason being that they did not understand the idea of the film. Regarding the feedback received, Patrick remarks: “I looked at the comments for a bit… So people don’t understand anything. What’s the deal with the mutilation, what… They don’t get it, really. And I think this is somehow the most outsider feedback” (Patrick Br˘aila). Out of the feedback he received at festivals, Patrick remembers one that amused him: There was this feedback: I mean what, you don’t feel manly enough, what, you have to look like grandpa to be a man or what? And I couldn’t respond to that. It’s about a role model, it’s the idea of the role model itself, the mentor, it could have been anyone, regardless of gender or sex. He told me I should make another part explaining that. Sure, I’ll get started tomorrow, let’s do it…. (Patrick Br˘aila)

As in the case of Gadjo Dildo, it is obvious that the film does not seek to draw any conclusions by referring to the outer world, as do products constructed from or mimicking sociological frames. While many

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Romanian films made for general audiences make a more or less substantial effort to “translate” certain heteronormative impressions of queer identities for heterosexual audiences, Pieptis, does the opposite.

Beyond the Hills Cristian Mungiu’s 2012 movie is based on Tatiana Niculescu Bran’s nonfictional novel Spovedanie la Tanacu [The Confession]. Considering the fact that the two cultural products differ in essential aspects concerning the treatment of their two main characters’ sexualities, the movie will also be analysed in relation with the texts and the real case that inspired it. The starting point of both the novel and the motion picture is a story based on real events; in 2005, Irina Cornici was murdered by the priest and nuns at the Tanacu Monastery, following an exorcism ritual. This case caught the attention of the mass media, which generated strong reactions that generally opposed these practices and the institution of the Romanian Orthodox Church at large. Culturally, the event inspired a series of cultural products such as: books—Niculescu Bran also published Cartea Judec˘atorilor [The Book of Judges] in 2007 alongside the aforementioned novel—plays and movies. The two novels were dramatised by their author and staged by Andrei S, erban—with The Confession premiering in 2007 in New York—and together with her husband Mirel Bran and Ionut, Teianu, Tatiana Niculescu Bran produced a documentary film as well, Case Tanacu (Cazul Tanacu) in 2008. As far as its chronology is concerned, Mungiu’s movie postdates the works that involved the novelist. One can observe a certain degree of instrumentalisation of the story of Irina Cornici, especially insofar as her sexuality is concerned, in the way that the latter emerges from the chain of cultural products engendered by her death (Dima 2016, 49–50). Tatiana Niculescu Bran’s novel The Confession is characterised by a closed universe, a semi-gynaecium: the sole man—the priest—also wields the power. Similarly to Mungiu’s movie, the atmosphere is oppressive, and the action takes place within a rural universe which, by virtue of its monastic context, is far removed from the quotidian world displayed by the mass media or the realities of the big cities. Paradoxically, this environment occasions the development of the Sapphic model; it is an alternative space where female sexualities can define themselves, thereby materialising possible non-normative forms of attachment. The novel also mentions Irina’s “manly” attitude towards Chit, a (sister Paraschiva), her

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childhood friend, presently a nun. Irina’s attachment to her seems to be one of the reasons that prompt her to join the monastery in Vaslui county. Incidentally, both novels contain short passages that intimate Irina’s sexuality: ‘Get out, I am sensing temptations!’ she told her. ‘Temptations! What temptations, Irina?’ inquired Chit, a. ‘Not committing sin, hitting you, beating you. Not between two women...’. (Niculescu Bran 2013, 117)

In The Book of Judges, Chit, a’s trial testimony is followed by a fragment that provides additional details about Irina’s sexuality. These are not voiced in court but her thoughts are captured by the narrator, and they encompass the essence of what happened: She had never thought about what might have happened had she not confessed those things about Irina to the priest… Would she still be alive? Would she have left again for Germany? Those matters from the dormitories, when she would touch a girl, Bianca, and she would save her treats from the canteen… She had been jealous then, but it was her that Irina chose in the end. […] she had told her stories of Germany, what she had seen around those places, how some men had taken her for a boy, a bunch of assholes […] But now thanks to the Church, Chit, a was better informed, about sin, about the clouding of one’s judgment, about prayer and how one can avoid temptation… […] The Devil takes over your thoughts, he gets you locked up in the asylum! (Niculescu Bran 2013, 164–165)

Irina’s story does not speak only of sexuality and anachronic religious practices, but also of the pressure and abuses prevailing within the psychiatric medical system, and most notably of the degree of misinformation around matters pertaining to the category of people with presumed “psychic disabilities”, a belief that permeates Romanian society; Irina had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Persons diagnosed with schizophrenia continue to be stigmatised, instrumentalised and dehumanised by their peers, particularly insofar as the medical system is concerned. Indeed, her relocation from inside the sphere of the Church onto the medical system, only to be later returned to the Church, suggests that society currently possesses neither the mechanisms and the means to treat with respect the victims of the psychiatric system nor the instruments to provide adequate support when the latter is requested. The qualities manifested by Irina are

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more conveniently regarded as signs of “possession” even by the medics with whom she comes into contact. Regarding the selected cinematographic example, the two operational concepts that function intensively throughout the movie is the queer gaze and heteronormativity. The former shows how Mungiu’s film is an excellent example of the manner of reading between the lines and discovering the elements that concern the sexuality of the two female protagonists. This contributes new understandings that surpass the sphere of friendly intimacy and concretise the relationship within an amorous framework. Moreover, throughout the analysis the elements pertaining to queerness—albeit more evident in the movie—continue to be subjected to the interpretations given by the audience. One of the indicators of the heteronormative sphere is the shift in gender roles; one of the protagonists is characterised by and interpreted in close connection to elements that are normed as belonging to the masculine sphere. In his movie, Cristian Mungiu chooses to develop the relationship between the two women and suggest a possible romantic bond, an element criticised by the author of the novels in an open letter addressed to the filmmaker. She claims that Mungiu opted for an interpretation that might appeal to Westerners, namely of the love between two women, forbidden by the Church. However, she expresses her disapproval with this portrayal and she maintains that the story between the two women is rather “about the suffering and need for affection experienced by two grown children, two girls raised in an orphanage, whose sexual identities were marred by abuse and indifference. Two beings burdened by a troubled past, that is, and not two volitions that champion the depths of a sentiment in the face of prejudice” (Niculescu Bran 2012). Nevertheless, the novelist’s work abounds in references to the sexualities of the two main characters, the author herself suggesting the very idea of which she accuses Mungiu. Under the pretext of certain subtler and more profound meanings, the writer minimises the human capacity to act, based on one’s own emotions and decisions, therefore reducing them to childhood traumas and reiterating certain Freudian notions that are not regarded critically. Regardless of the validity of the opinions expounded by Tatiana Niculescu Bran in this case, her explanations fail to acknowledge the stigma faced by queer people regarding their identities within the larger context of Romanian society (Dima 2016, 50).

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In accordance with contemporary trends, Mungiu’s film attends more closely to the manner of its narrative construction, and less to the details that correspond to the facts of real life—as they are presented in the novels that inspired it. One notices, therefore, a forceful process of fictionalisation, whereby the cinematic narrative occurs independently of the reality that prompts the subject of the movie (Pickering 2008). Both in the novel and in the film, Alina (Irina’s name in Mungiu’s dramatisation) is portrayed as the protector of her orphanage friend (Chit, a is given a full name, Voichit, a); she manifests her hostility towards institutions like the Church and exhibits internalised homophobia: she calls one of the nuns a “faggot” (33) in a moment of stubborn contempt. This outburst and its pejorative designation represent an example of how the normative gaze is transferred onto a character that does not fit the heteronormative template. Her story and the abuses that she experienced as a child are revealed during her stay at Tanacu and they take the form of critiques against orphanages, the police, as well as legislative and medical institutions. In spite of the fact that these institutions have the stated purpose of protecting individuals like Irina, all of them function in an oppressive manner that often objectifies people who join the system and who are regarded as “beneficiaries” (in the case of orphanages or psychiatric hospitals). Cristian Mungiu chooses to emphasise the lesbian relationship between Alina and Voichit, a. The signs of a relationship that surpasses the boundaries of friendship appear from the very beginning: the long embrace, which pushes Alina to tears when they see each other again after Alina’s return from Germany, and all the more as in the following sequence the camera lingers over the faces of the two girls as they exchange looks. While Alina’s expression suggests joy, Voichit, a’s outlines restraint. In a different sequence, when Alina arrives at the monastery, the following dialogue takes place: Alina: Voichit, a, do you still love me? Voichit, a: I love you, but not like before. Alina: And how is that? Voichit, a: I don’t know. Differently. Alina: What do you mean, differently? Why differently? Voichit, a: Because I am different now, Alina. Someone else is in my heart. Alina: Who? Who do you have in your heart besides me? Voichit, a˘ , what’s happened with you?

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Voichit, a: People change, Alina. The one who leaves is not the same as the one who returns. Alina: Voichit, a, do you love that priest? Do you fuck him? Tell me, is that it? Or what did he tell you that muddled your thoughts like this? (Dup˘a dealuri 2012).

This dialogue unfolds in a tense moment, after Voichit, a refused to leave for Germany with Alina. The setting is a closed space, Voichit, a’s chamber, and the attention of the audience is channelled towards the reactions and words exchanged between the two characters. The conflictual relationship between Alina and the priest is also revealed, with the particular implication of Voichit, a’s possible attraction to him. Although the characters frequently leave the grounds of the monastery for the city, the atmosphere of atemporality is maintained through Mungiu’s framing choices; the action seems to unfold within a circular space, without exit. The soundtrack does not include musical pieces, but instead, it is made up entirely of rural sounds, thusly prompting viewers to focus on the story; this represents an addition to the minimalism behind the presentation of the main setting: the monastery. Its surroundings consist of mud, snow and monastic cells scattered throughout an area enclosed by a shabby wooden fence, a reminder of the visual framework of hatred featured in Lars von Trier’s Dogville. Voichit, a leads Alina towards the monastery and, before entering its premises, she ties her headscarf around her head: a shift from the secular world onto the religious, at least on a symbolical level. The confining character of the space is signalled by the entry plate that forbids access to individuals of other religions. Voichit, a asks Alina to wait in the kitchen together with the nuns twice in the movie. In the first sequence, she is regarded with curiosity by the others, whereas in the second, she is regarded with fear. When Voichit, a tells the priest that she was given the option of going to Germany with Alina because the latter “does not want to be alone anymore” and that they are used to being together, the priest warns her that was she to return after leaving, she would not be admitted back. After all, the monastery is seen as a refuge for individuals with low incomes that would not allow them to live independently, but places are limited—one of the women in the city has been expecting the departure of one of the nuns in order to take her place, considering

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that it had been a year since she reached the age that would oblige her to leave the orphanage. The issue of the place is reiterated multiple times throughout the movie, including during Alina’s hospital release, motivated by its congestion and by the recommendation that the peacefulness of the monastery would be better for her. The scene from Alina’s first meal with the nuns and priest is marked by visible tension and by her disdainful glances afforded to the priest as he describes the Occident as having lost its touch with true faith, noting that “in the name of freedom, everything is permitted, men marry other men and women marry other women”. The moments of intimacy shared by Alina and Voichit, a unfold in Voichit, a’s cell, but their previous closeness is now replaced by restraint, to Alina’s surprise: “Aren’t we sleeping together?”. Alina becomes jealous and questions her friend about one of the nuns, whom she considered to be looking at her in a peculiar manner. Alina’s fear and fury regarding the possibility of having been replaced manifest themselves in her reactions to the priest as well, whom she accuses of sexual misconduct with the nuns. Voichit, a is faced with a choice; during one of her visits to the city, she requests her visa for Germany, but her course of action lacks finality, given the events to come. In spite of this, the influence of the priest is palpable, as she comes to reiterate his words: Voichit, a: Alina, I have spoken to the priest, and if I were to leave he would not have me back. Alina: And so what… Didn’t we say, Voichit, a, that this is it, from now on we stick together no matter what? What is there for you to return to? Voichit, a: Alina, I have started on this path, I cannot simply leave everyone and break free. Alina: And what path is that? Voichit, a: On this path I would never be alone again. Alina: But you would be with me… Voichit, a: I would be… Alina, if you don’t carry God in your soul, no amount of worldly company would make you feel less lonely… (Dup˘a dealuri 2012).

Alina’s outbursts take place inside the church, and its first occurrence is during stormy weather. This is her first openly confrontational moment with the priest, when she stresses her expulsion from the church, a space

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which, according to her, belongs to all. When she ends up being hospitalised due to a nervous breakdown, she is questioned on the same matters concerning her stay in Germany and the reasons behind her return. Shortly afterwards, she is released on the basis of the doctors’ belief that the monastery might be more beneficial than the hospital; an important moment, which suggests that certain medics equate religious practices with medical care, is when the doctor prescribes pills and encourages the nuns to read out Psalms to Alina. At Voichit, a’s request, the priest temporarily accepts her back into the monastery: “This is neither a hotel nor an asylum”. The only sequence with humorous tones unfolds when Alina is being read the list of 464 sins in order to record the ones she committed, to give penance and finally, receive her Sacrament. This acknowledgement unfolds in a space devoid of intimacy, which places Alina under the curious and disapproving scrutiny of the nuns as she seems to be checking off all the sins that she is being read. Her behaviour undergoes certain changes, suggesting the relationship between the Church and the medical system; a sequence presents Alina as she swallows her medication and makes the sign of the cross. In order to be together with Voichit, a and following the priest’s advice, Alina decides to donate all of her belongings and give her money away to the monastery. An essential element inherent to the circular system entered by people who offer to help those recently released from the asylum is revealed when Alina claims to have paid rent to her host family after leaving the system. Incidentally, the reality of the fact that the hospital recommends that she join the monastery, and the monastery staff are reluctant to accept her among their own, highlights the difficulty of finding a place to live when one comes from certain social backgrounds. Alina ends up being tied to a cross and her final breakdown occurs during an exorcism ritual performed by the priest and nuns. After her demise and death pronouncement at the hospital, medical (mis)conduct becomes correlated with the deed committed by the monastery staff. Nuns argue that Alina had been tied down during her hospital stay as well, as they condemn the doctors’ bigotry and their decision against her hospitalisation. Alina and Voichit, a might represent, to a certain extent, a reference to all situations that precede their story, reminding one of how it is only queer people who, once either abused or murdered, make the subject of news headlines, and this only accentuates the mass-media penchant for

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subjects deemed sensational and with a potential to spike audience ratings. Of course, there is no information concerning the sexuality of the people that inspired this movie and its other related products, and the queer component remains fictional. In the absence of data regarding the sexuality of the persons who engendered the female characters, and taking into consideration the recurrent disregard for the experience of queer women within the Romanian space—especially from a historical point of view—, one can note that given its representations as well as its reservations concerning the real sexual identities of the female protagonists, the present movie subscribes to “an archive of emotion and trauma” (Cvetkovich 2003).

Love Sick Starting from Cecilia S, tef˘anescu’s novel, in 2006 director Tudor Giurgiu made the first Romanian film featuring two women in a lesbian relationship. The director’s choice of adapting this particular story can be explained by the novelty of the subject matter, not yet part of Romanian cinematography at the time, and the fact that the director is a heterosexual man who chooses to discuss queer women will be noticed throughout the analysis and was also criticised by some of the interviewees. There are important differences both at the discursive level, as well as regarding the construction of the adaptation. The first visible difference is that, unlike the novel, the plot and the chronology of events are more clearly defined, giving coherence to this cinematographic product, somewhat lacking from the literary product. Possibly with the purpose of maintaining the coherence of the story, the director and screenwriter (the novel’s author herself), decided to blur the references to the two protagonists’ love affairs, centring the narrative on their relationship. Additionally, Kiki’s brother Sandu, who is sporadically and little referenced in the original text, becomes in the film one of the main actants in the secondary narrative about incest: he takes on negative connotations, being the one who brutally reveals to Alex’s parents the relationship between the two girls, which leads to their separation. Arguably, similar to Mungiu, Giurgiu chooses to alter the original story in order to increase audience appeal, especially given his desire to be the first filmmaker to deal with this theme. In the film, Kiki and Alex come from different social backgrounds; Kiki’s parents are middle-class city-dwellers, whereas Alex comes from

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a rural background. The emphasis on their background reflects itself in Alex’s subordinate relationship with Kiki, particularly in the scenes where she discovers Bucharest and receives fashion advice from her friend. Sandu also has a contemptuous attitude towards Alex and mentions her origins at times. Incidentally, the camera lingers on Alex in her car during her move from the dormitories to her tenement; her gaze appears to be amazed by the hustle and bustle of the city. The film opens with Kiki and her brother in what is intended to be an erotic scene. What follows are images and events from the beginning of Kiki and Alex’s relationship, as well as excerpts from Cecilia S, tef˘anescu’s novel. The brother appears constantly throughout the film and is the heteronormative, prejudiced voice against the relationship between the two. The conflicts between Kiki and her brother are both rooted in jealousy, and their relationship is portrayed as destabilising, with repercussions for those around them, especially Alex. The idea of Alex taking Sandu’s place in relation to Kiki is reiterated throughout the film, when Alex is referred to by various characters as “Sanda”. Sandu’s powerful influence over his sister therefore spills over into their relationship. The narrative thread contains elements that render manifest the incestuous relationship: from Sandu’s more or less subtle insinuations about his sister to his successful attempts to make his sister jealous when she announces that she is leaving with her friend for Switzerland, to scenes that hint at the relationship between the two, all converge towards the moment when Alex confronts Kiki about the incestuous relationship. This confrontation takes place in the form of a dialogue that seems incongruous with the language of the other scenes, a kind of analysis of Chateaubriand’s novel René, about the desolate René and his sister Amélie’s incestuous love for him, used in a symbolic key to discuss Kiki’s relationship with Sandu. The artificial language in some parts of the film is also noted by one of the participants in the interviews I conducted (N.B.: this applies to the film and not necessarily to the novel): What infuriates me the most is that the dialogue is not natural. It seems far too elevated for the level, the upbringing of these characters. It sounds like this person is only speaking from books and only parroting quotes, a kind of insufferable gibberish. That’s what I don’t like about heteros writing books about us. They don’t get it right. (excerpt from interview with Adrian Newell P˘aun)

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The forced elevated dialogue contrasts with others such as: Alex: And how does my skin smell? Kiki: Heavy. Alex: What do you mean heavy? Kiki: You smell like, you know, like a flower that’s neither alive nor dead because no one’s changed its water for weeks (Love Sick 2006).

In another moment, the artificiality of the lines even creates unintentional humour, perhaps in an attempt to build intimacy, romance and authenticity; the two women arrive, at night, at a stadium, lie down on the cool grass and Kiki asks the other, “Will you take your top off? I want to see your breasts in the moonlight”. The director’s motivation for shooting the film is, as its product page states, related to his heterosexual experience, devoid of queerness: I wanted to make a sensitive and clean film. A film that reminds you of your first love story, which always ends badly. […] I can remember my first love, which was consumed in long letters on the platforms of a train station. The girl was from another town, the initial upwards momentum of our relationship ended at the same pace of an express train headed for the next destination. That’s pretty much what my film is about. I wanted to make a Romanian film that is as personal as possible, disconnected from social or political matters. […] I read Cecilia S, tef˘anescu’s book and I liked it, it activated many of my senses because it’s a book with a unique perfume and ‘taste’ (the film’s official website).3

Starting from a personal heterosexual story, the director works with a heterosexual writer to create a queer story, a far cry from his own experience and level of understanding of the chosen theme. Moreover, given that the film is the first of its kind in Romanian cinema, the director’s confession that it did not have a societal or political concern may seem problematic, particularly in relation to the normative society in which this product appeared.

3 http://www.legaturibolnavicioase.ro/ro/node/237/.

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In other words, the film seems designed to provide an appealing, poorly constructed story, without reference to the wider social context and the forms of discrimination against queer individuals, especially when their sexuality becomes public, as in the scene when Sandu, learning that his sister does not want to come with him, calls Alex a lesbian in front of her family. The subject is tabooed, and Alexandra’s parents hilariously skirt around the subject of sexuality: “You’re our little girl and we trusted you […] we thought you’d behave yourself in Bucharest […] you embarrassed us. We brought you up nice and then you went to Bucharest and pierced your ears for earrings. Tell me why, my girl, why? Because I don’t understand” (Love Sick 2006). Alex breaks up with Kiki, despite the latter’s insistence against it. In the end, she imagines their future, for Kiki a relationship with a man, and for her a relationship with someone else. One of the opening scenes is also replayed in the film’s finale, Kiki and her brother smoking on the balcony, without speaking, overlooking the surrounding blocks. As for the title of the novel, which is also used as the title of the film, the word “sick” pathologises both the incestuous relationship and the relationship between the two protagonists, thus reinforcing stereotypes against queer people. Indeed, in an interview on the film’s official website, the two actresses express reservations about the word and its association with the story: Ioana: From the start I would like to say that I don’t like the title of the film very much, precisely because of the “sick” nuance that hovers over the story right from the poster. I would have liked this verdict to be given, or contradicted, by the viewer after watching the film. To me the liaisons in question are not sickening, but rather courageous in the context of the characters trying to get to know themselves and each other. Maria: It seems to me that each of us has moments of confusion, when all sorts of things can happen to us, without any personal need to label them “sick.” (Idem.)

The director manifests his own heteronormative and masculine filter (male gaze) throughout the film, which can give rise to certain incongruities: the characters appear disconnected even during their erotic scenes, and the dialogues between them do not reflect as strong an emotional connection as portrayed in the novel and come across as artificially constructed. Moreover, the two protagonists seem to be based

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on a male heterosexual fantasy, reminiscent of the classic love triangle formula found in films such as Jules and Jim (Francois Truffaut, 1962), The Dreamers (Bernardo Bertolucci, 2003) or other American films of the 1990s with titles such as Three of Hearts or Threesome (Dima 2016, 50–51). As for the visual materials used in the presentation and promotion of the film, there are some differences between those meant for Romanian and foreign audiences. Sandu is present in the Romanian version of the poster, together with the two women protagonists, but not in the international English version. From a marketing perspective, it can be said that the team felt that the Romanian audience needed the reaffirmation of a male presence, while in other contexts audiences might have been more interested in the story between the two women. It was also clear from the comments on the film that many reactions emphasised that incest and the lesbian story were represented in a system of comparative correspondence. As for the way some interviewees perceived Love Sick, it can be observed that most of them referred to its poor construction and the problematic treatment of its queer characters: “[…] I thought about it years later and it seemed to me that it was very superficially approached and that it was pretty much the first film that introduced this subject and yes, a super bad one at that” (interview with Mihaela Dr˘agan). “It literalises the dialogue. And it becomes an unnatural dialogue, almost theatrical, it doesn’t flow like a normal dialogue between two people. It’s unavoidable because they, straight people, don’t live in our environment and don’t really have access to the way we talk to each other” (interview with Adrian Newell P˘aun). “That story annoyed me, I didn’t get a thing from it” (interview with Roxana Marin). […] in general I notice a reluctance to document and to understand the subject in depth, not only in the queer area, but in general… There is a larger irresponsibility not only on this subject. Yeah. It’s hard. Sure, but there’s also this difference between the National Geographic approach versus the authentic ethnographic anthropological approach. (interview with Patrick Br˘aila)

Director Tudor Giurgiu’s perspective is present throughout the entire film, as white, cis men make their voices heard even in those cases when their narratives are not reflected in their own identity constructions (Mikdashi & Puar 2016).

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Soldiers: Story from Ferentari This feature film, made in 2017, had its Romanian premiere on 25 January 2018 at Cinema Union (Bucharest), as part of the Cineclub Queer project4 which is dedicated to the screening of (local and international) queer films in Bucharest. I attended the screening, and the official launch took place on 2 February 2018. Based on the book of the same name, the film is written by the author of the novel (Adrian Schiop) and the director (Ivana Mladenovici). They chose to keep many of the scenes from the eponymous novel. Thus, the narrative thread of the film is broadly the same as that of the novel; some new elements have been introduced and some scenes were removed from the film’s script. Also, one of the main roles, that of the researcher writing his doctoral thesis on manele, is played by the author of the novel. The result is a film which, by virtue of its production style—scenes are predominantly shot in natural light, local people play extras—is reminiscent of documentary films. The filming takes place in Ferentari, specifically in one of the poorest areas of the neighbourhood. By not relying on artistic effects, the aim was to achieve a sense of authenticity, although in the discussion following the screening the director mentioned that all the party scenes were directed, so there is no spontaneity in some of the scenes. However, considering the way it was produced, it is not possible to tell what proportion of the scenes were directed, as opposed to the minimally modified shots. There are numerous scenes filmed in the street, with local people as protagonists, which also reminds one of the way documentaries function and are made. Interspersed between these scenes are those in Adi’s rented apartment, displaying intimate moments between the two men. As the filmmakers suggested, the choice of the two protagonists was an attempt to deviate from the style of homoerotically themed mainstream films where protagonists are often chosen based on their attractive appearance. The emphasis on the poverty of the local people is more prominent in the film than in the novel. Some new scenes are permeated by a kind of voyeurism about poor people wishing to overcome their condition. Inside

4 The project was initiated in 2017 by Georgiana Madin and Andrei Luca (both UNATC graduates); the aim of this project is to look for pre-1990 classic films with queer themes in the National Film Archive and present them to the public in order to initiate debates on non-normative sexualities and the cultural scene.

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the office of the manager and composer Dan Bursuc, Adi and his friend Alberto, played by Vasile Pavel, witness a discussion between the manager and a young vocalist; the latter is repeatedly encouraged by Bursuc to recount his family and their poverty on camera, and discuss how the event of being discovered as a musician subsequently changed his life. The narrative continues to unfold through the filter of Adi’s identity, and the way he perceives the events and encountered characters is realised in close connection with his own personality and ideology, and this is also transferred to the level of narrative construction; thus, according to Michael Bamberg, Adi in turn confers meaning upon those around him, supplying his own critical filter, this time on screen (Bamberg 2012). Returning to the location of the narrative, the director chooses to show a small part of the neighbourhood; scenes are filmed mainly in a bar, in the surrounding streets, and in the researcher’s room. Although Adi’s motivation is to research manele, the focus is on poverty and people’s relationship to the place. The film centres around the relationship between Alberto and Adi, and the episodic characters that appear throughout the film do not have a clear role and there is no clear motivation for their introduction into the story. For example, one of the characters recounts how he used to send children to beg for him, then mentions that he, too, could have sex with Adi. This mixture of documentary and fiction, as well as the camera’s insistence on aspects of the everyday lives of people regarded as marginalised, emphasises the novel’s exoticisation of Roma and poor people. It also preserves the depiction of the power relationship between the two protagonists and highlights Alberto’s dependence on Adi, mainly on a material level. Criticism of NGOs which, in the researcher’s opinion, fail to help their target groups is maintained: in one of the scenes, a friend of the researcher who works in such an NGO refuses to help Alberto to get his ID. However, Adi, too, fails to procure Alberto’s ID, and the related scenes seem to be inserted to underscore—as someone in the audience mentioned—the cynicism of class difference and the failure of those who wish to offer their help in certain situations that involve the authorities. Both Adrian Schiop and Vasile Pavel are first-time actors. Despite the reactions of those around him to watching Vasile Pavel on the screen— who is mentioned in an interview5 that appeared on Scena9 as being

5 http://www.scena9.ro/article/eu-N-am-mai-fost-niciodata-aplaudat.

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Roma, heterosexual and the father of three children—the director chose him for the role, and his naturalness, coupled with his embarrassment during homoerotic scenes, represents one of the film’s strongest points. In order to note the contrast between anthropologists that infiltrate different types of communities, and to legitimise the presence of the researcher in Ferentari, an unnamed character of Japanese origin is introduced, simply called “japoneza” (the Japanese woman) by the other characters. She does not speak Romanian and is positioned at odds with the subjects of her study. The process of interacting with her subjects, whose world she barely seems to understand, is mediated by Adi’s rough English translations. Thus, an attempt is made at obtaining a contrast between various anthropological approaches: the one represented by Adi, portrayed as the correct approach, and that of the outsider who perceives reality in a superficial manner (the Japanese researcher). But this construction, too, is merely an anthropological insertion in itself. One of the remarks in the room referred to the cynicism present in both the novel and its adaptation: the subject of class difference is particularly highlighted by one of its messages, that even if those outside the community, of different social status, attempt to help those in the community, in the end their attempts are doomed to fail. At the same time, the negative view of NGOs dealing with human rights issues and their ineffectiveness in certain situations is stressed. One difference from the novel is the absence of Adi’s plans to turn the Ferentari neighbourhood into a place that people from the centre, especially those considered “hipsters”, can visit and discover, in a blatant show of exoticisation of the place and its people. The erotic scenes between the two were, as the director claimed during the Q&A session, more inclined towards the idea of attachment, and friendship, which was particularly influenced by the limits imposed by Vasile Pavel during his interaction with Schiop. This resulted in scenes of intimacy that are unprecedented in Romanian cinema, where the naturalness of Vasile Pavel’s line delivery and gestures was the main point in the success of the artistic construction. The character Alberto states in several lines that he does not consider himself gay. He can thus be included within the term used by researcher Eve Sedgwick, “male homosocial desire”; from this perspective, their affective relationship can also be regarded as a friendship marked by the social differences between the two, and Alberto’s degree of dependence on Adi on various levels (Sedgwick 1985).

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Rodica Is a Good Boy Unlike other cultural documentaries, the story of Rodica Morosanca, a trans folk singer, is narrated by herself, with the filmmakers (Gheorghe Dinu & Marian Ilea 2005) intervening only with questions not recorded in the movie. Rodica is filmed in the village where she lives, and much of the interview unfolds in her home. The folk singer recounts moments of her life, and her narration is interspersed with short interviews with people from the village, some conducted in her presence, with some of the questions being asked by her. The producers of the documentary choose to minimise their presence throughout the film, leaving room for the protagonist to speak for herself, which rarely happens when it comes to constructed queer cultural products around other people’s stories, narrated either through a heteronormative perspective or capitalised by other queer people. Rodica lives in a village in Maramures, , where she has come to be respected and accepted as a trans person, an important factor in this process being her musical talent. Throughout the film, Rodica is shown singing pieces of her repertoire, and the accompanying images are either of her in folk costume or landscape shots of the area. The close-up shots, focused on Rodica’s figure, contribute to the intimate and truthful atmosphere in which the story of fragments of her life unfolds, often with an emphasis on her physical appearance; she is shown applying make-up before going for a walk. In some scenes, the operators objectify her by displaying her walking, in slow motion, with shots moving upwards from the ground, including vertical fragments of her body. Rodica’s voice is heard in the opening credits, she introduces herself with her name from her ID and states her age, and then the first shots of her speaking to the camera appear. We learn that even as a child, her mother called her Rodica instead of Vasile, and her fellow villagers quickly adopted the former. Rodica’s career began while in a bar in Bors, a, where she asked permission to sing with the local band and was invited to sing on other nights. A short interview with the bar owner follows, which reaffirms Rodica’s talent and appreciation by the audience. As Rodica discusses the men in her life, there are inserts of interviews with other villagers who answer questions about the way she dresses. The filmmakers’ emphasis on clothing and physical appearance may seem off-putting, particularly in terms of the coherence of the story, but also

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because it suggests that physical appearance is a sensational and essential aspect to reiterate throughout the film. Rodica’s love stories are characterised by the violence of both jealous men and the wives of those she did not know were married, the trauma she was subjected to in her departure and flight from Spain, where she had been forced into commercial sex; Rodica sometimes gives details such as the full names and addresses of people in her life. Centering Rodica as the only person to tell her story represents an alternative model increasingly present in the Romanian space as well, whereby the people in question relate their own experiences and relationships with those around them, highlighting the stereotypes and power relations to which they are subjected. The interview with her mother is marked by her diffidence in front of the camera. In fact, she praises her daughter’s artistic qualities, but does not seem inclined to continue the interview: she shies away from the camera: “What else can I say? That you’re well-behaved, that you’re good [masculine in Romanian], you sing, you work, do you want me to say more? […] Fine, good and kind, the good [feminine in Romanian] Rodica”. This fragment also provides the idea for the title of the film. The duality inherent to how her mother and some of the villagers relate to Rodica suggests a process of acceptance that is not yet fully assumed. Male pronouns alternate with female ones, but at no time is Rodica judged by those around her, at least not on camera. In the voice of a child, Rodica’s outfits are again commented upon, following questions from the documentary crew: “she’s dressed nice, she’s got a skirt, her hair’s nice, and she’s got a nice jacket, she’s got a nice purse”. In her accounts of the men she interacts with, Rodica partly regards her condition as a “defect” that she reveals to those she falls in love with, and most of the time they have no problem with her identity. One of the scenes in which this is mentioned follows Rodica as she agrees to perform a striptease in a bar, and the owner understands her reluctance and offers her the opportunity to wear a non-revealing costume, so that she feels comfortable and does not give the customers any clues about what Rodica calls her “defect”. In one of the interviews, one of her neighbours affirms that “man will be what man wants to be, not even God can change man’s desire”, before referring to Rodica’s much-desired surgeries. Upon her return to Romania, Rodica is admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Cluj-Napoca and, after seeing her papers, the doctors admit her “to the confined, upstairs, to younger, older boys”. In addition to

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the many abuses committed by the psychiatric system, there is also the denial of a person’s gender identity, as in Rodica’s case. However, from Rodica’s accounts, the doctors said she was not the first trans person with whom they had come into contact. Towards the end of the film, Rodica expresses her desire to meet a “kind-hearted” man with whom she could share a home and move out of her mother’s. The ending features a crude and ordinary scene, Rodica searching for a pair of boots, under the polite and restrained gaze of the shopkeeper, and then walking away with the purchased pair. Rodica is a good boy is simple, devoid of drama elements other than those that emerge from the fragments narrated by the protagonist, and the focus is on Rodica’s story and the reactions of her acquaintances to her identity. Traces of sensationalism are blurred, the only leitmotif employed being shots that emphasise Rodica’s physical appearance and clothing. This documentary is not a serious judgement or commentary on the problems faced by trans people in Romanian society, but rather a testimony to the life of trans people, of individuals with non-normative identities living in a rural environment outside the big cities, who often face prejudices. This film inspired a play with a similar title, Ea e b˘aiat bun [She is a good boy], directed by Eugen Jebeleanu and which premiered in ClujNapoca in 2015. The play is about Rodica’s supposed internal struggle about her identity, a dilemma that does not appear at any point in the documentary; Rodica identifies as a woman, those around her also perceive her in accordance with her identity, the only ones suggesting the existence of a dilemma on this level being the creators of the play. Arguably, the theatrical show’s only connections to Rodica and her story are the name of the play and the documentary fragments that appear projected onto the actor’s body during the performance. Paradoxically, although in interviews the authors of the play claim that they aim to convey a social message (about tolerance), the manner in which the play is performed, particularly in comparison with the documentary, is characterised by stereotypes and inaccuracies. The following is an excerpt from an interview with director and trans activist Patrick Br˘aila, who recounts his experience of the performance, highlighting the problematic parts of the show:

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In every… I mean, it’s a trap that the documentary, too, automatically brings out the author’s contribution… Do you know what came to my mind while I was analysing this topic? I remembered that the only moments I liked in the show were exactly the moments when they projected moments from the documentary. At some point they project moments from the documentary onto him and that stuck with me… Somehow my big problem is that the people who made this show didn’t know its basis. They didn’t go there to meet her, to get to know whose story they are telling. Eugen Jebeleanu, Florin Caracala who is the performer… And that’s the big problem, actually. Come on, it’s in Maramures, for fuck’s sake, I mean it’s not in the middle of nowhere, she is alive, you can find her, I mean you have this possibility. And it seems to me that your first priority when you set out to create an artistic act, especially on someone who exists, is research, how you deal with this stuff. But to make a show based on a documentary about someone who exists seems flawed to me from the start, and on top of that it’s fetishisation. Just like Veda [N.A. Veda Popovici] said in the commentaries and with sensationalism. And it comes with the misunderstanding of trans identity, whether it’s fluid or whatever, because I haven’t met Rodica and I don’t know her and I don’t know this, as non-fluid or very clear or not clear or… This juggling between her and him and the confusion persists. That’s how it starts, that’s how it’s put… “thirty years later, the confusion persists”. That’s how it starts, that’s how it’s set. And all this gratuitous nudity. Yeah… To what? To show a cis man baring his dick playing a trans woman. One who plays football, climbs on her heels, takes her panties off, puts a condom on the microphone, stomps on eggs, tosses living hens on stage and… so beautiful, such art… […] The audience simpers. I saw it in Cluj. The audience liked it, they applauded, they laughed, they simpered, they were impressed. Luckily we had the opportunity to attend a Q&A afterwards with Florin Caracala, and my words didn’t reach him. And with Miki Branis, te, who I understand is the producer of the show and who basically understood what I was talking about but look, you see, it’s still being performed. That wouldn’t be the problem, on the other hand I don’t see that the solution would be, we meet, we do the performance exactly the same, then we sit down, we discuss, we make a fuss and then leave and the same thing happens over again. Because I can’t do that every time, go and discuss and tell them, you see, this is why this is not right. OK, next performance. And they don’t understand the responsibility that they carry. Understand that you’re talking about the most fucking vulnerable community. Those people, whether there’s thirty of them or fifty of them, they walk away with an impression. Which they’ll automatically pass on and that’s how

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that message gets spread. That’s where people get their information from, from events like this. From the press, first of all, from the media, and the majority… I was reading a study in the U.S. that said 84% of people get their idea about trans people from the media. And the media does this and then we see that look, a trans person is killed every 21 hours. And we don’t get it. And especially in this context with Laura.6 (excerpt from interview with Patrick Br˘aila).

Patrick raises the issue of responsibility in the creation of artistic projects, particularly when they concern vulnerable people and communities— in this case, trans people who are victims of transphobia manifested in various forms and degrees of aggression. The director deplores the way in which some producers choose to inform or not inform themselves about the subjects they tackle. Similar to what happens in the media, the same mechanism of misinformation and the search for the sensationalist component operates in the case of certain thematic cultural products. This tendency becomes all the more problematic since the author of the play is a cisgender gay man and, consequently, might have a different approach to the subject compared to a heterosexual person. But of course, his life experience does not coincide with that of the trans person he chooses to represent and expose in his play. Although it takes the form of an interview with anthropological connotations, the purpose of the documentary Rodica e b˘aiat bun is not, as we have shown, to test hypotheses, but is instead revealed by how the protagonist relates and tells her personal experiences, and the reflection of her biography in the context of current society takes the place of a possible “evaluation” of the problems faced by trans people in Romania.

After School R˘azvan Popescu’s short film, awarded in 2011 at the Serile Filmului Gay (SFG) [Gay Movie Nights] festival in Cluj-Napoca, is based on the coming out stories of two young gay men. The two stories mirror each other, leaving the initial impression that they are two separate stories, with no obvious connection; this impression is maintained until the end of the

6 Laura Ursaru, a trans woman living in Rome, was murdered in November 2017 by a man who had found out that Laura was a trans person.

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second part when the character’s name is marked and the connection with the first part of the film is made. We will observe and discuss the heteronormative elements suggested within the narrative of this product, closely related to the dimension of queer identities and queer gaze at work in the construction of the short film. The first scene, which also stands for the first part of the film, shows the mother as she questions her son about his form teacher’s complaints. The two are in the kitchen and the dialogue takes place in that small, enclosed space, where the camera hovers insistently over the faces and gestures of the two, and these details stress and validate the emotions of the characters. The plot of the film follows Adi and his friend Victor, who are caught kissing in the school toilet. The mother begins her plea by showing her willingness to have an open dialogue with her son, much less intimidating than if the task had been left to the father. In this film, too, as in other queer-themed cultural products, it is suggested that men do not show the same openness as women, but instead, they respond with aggression. The two discuss without looking at each other, the mother makes her point by looking down and sighing. The mother’s words reveal a different approach that could be taken by parents when discussing sexuality with their children. She understands that her son is at an age of experimentation and search for self-identity, but considers the gesture of the two as irresponsible and immoral: “masturbating is normal, maybe we all do it once in our lives, but making out with a boy in the bathroom after school is wholly devoid of morality and responsibility”. As is often the case in such situations, the mother sees the event as one in which one party is to blame. She structures her speech as such, demanding to know all the facts before accusing her son’s boyfriend, but also reinforces that she will defend him. Guilt is a leitmotif of their dialogue, and it references the common reactions among queer parents who want to know “who started it”, looking for the “culprit” in others, and finally, wondering what they themselves did wrong in the relation to their children. Throughout the dialogue, guilt takes a back seat, as the mother seems to understand certain aspects that have nothing to do with guilt of any kind. The son tells her about his meetings with their common group of friends and how their relationship began with their first kiss. The desire to find out the culprit is again apparent: “Mother: Who initiated it, you

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or him?/Adi: Both, in a way”. Once she is clear about the reciprocity, the mother continues to ask her son if he likes Victor; her son’s silence, visibly bewildered and ashamed, is broken by the mother’s speech, in which she states that she does not want anyone to take advantage of him. At the same time, she suggests that her son’s sexuality is in the making and that “nothing is certain at your age”, in a final attempt to deny that her son is gay. At the same time, the mother supports her idea that being true to himself and at peace with his own choices—not imposed by someone else—is beneficial for her son. As she repeats her question about Victor, the son replies silently, visibly confused and embarrassed, that he likes his friend. In reaction to this answer, the mother continues to view their relationship as an experiment and blames herself. Adi comes to regret his kiss with Victor in the toilet and assures his mother that he is continually examining his identity and that he is enjoying the support of colleagues who, in part, know that he is gay. The fight between the two comes to an end with the following statement: “I’d feel like a shrewish mother if I knew you were sad because you aren’t doing what you love and what makes you feel good”, followed by her gesture of sitting down at the table and taking his hands in hers. This process of acceptance that occurs in the mother contains many stages, all overcome during the discussion between the two. The screen darkens and the second part of the film begins, opening with a scene in a school; young people are coming out of their classrooms and the camera focuses on five characters, each belonging to one of the three narrative sequences that make up the second part of the film. One of them, whose name is not mentioned graphically when he appears, is a young man regarding the school sternly as he makes his way home. The second narrative thread features two friends, Mirel and Ionut, , who end up stealing a wallet and running away from their pursuer, and the third narrative thread concerns Radu and Vlada. Radu and Vlada are together and are the characters offering clues to the first young man’s story. There are elements of intertextuality: Radu asks Vlada if she wants to go to the premiere of a Romanian film, she tells him that she has read the book and offers to lend it to him. At the same time, the young man whose name, Victor, is only revealed at the end of the film, is shown at first reading a book with concealed covers, which intrigues the man sitting next to him on the subway and who was reading along with him. Arriving home, he

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learns that his mother had made a reservation for that Romanian film and tells him she will go to the park to finish the book that inspired the film. The action moves to Vlada’s room; she is looking, hidden in boxes, for the book Radu wants to borrow. The glances between the two as they find the book replace the dialogue, the boy trying his best to look composed, but his eyes appearing to demand whether his girlfriend is suggesting something by her insistence on his reading the book. As the two kiss, a close-up of the cover of the first edition of Love Sick appears. It is not the only reference to it; once home, Victor drops the white paper cover and the audience learns that he was reading the same book, and the film that had just premiered was Tudor Giurgiu’s. While Victor is reading, an excerpt from the film is introduced, the one discussing relationships and their (im)morality. Victor’s name shows up written in the penultimate scene, thus creating the connection between him and Adi and between the two parts of the film. Unlike the scene between Adi’s mother and his son, Victor and his mother who cancels the reservation are shown sitting at the table in silence; the mother looking worried, he avoiding her gaze. This final scene is another, less happy example of a relationship between parents and their queer children. The film has the merit of presenting two facets and the affective reactions following the coming out of queer teenagers, which constitutes a subject less represented within the sphere of queer cinema in Romania. The following two short films included in the analysis are also related to the experience of queer people and their relationship with their own families.

Letters to God As the title of this short film (2016) suggests, the story is constructed as a letter to God, narrated by director, visual artist and protagonist Ruth Borgfjord. She chooses to film herself in black and white, within a narrow shot that focuses on her figure. Her recorded voice plays as the background sound; filmed in a minimalist manner, the short is built around the author’s story, suggested by various fragments of her letter. It emphasises that God knows her and that she has lately distanced herself from him (or him from her). Her coming out story and its sense of guilt are revealed: “I was afraid when I realised I had feelings for someone I knew I shouldn’t have”.

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Her inner struggle, which she discussed in the conducted interview, is suggested by the fact that for many years she blocked out this part of her identity, prayed to be heterosexual, all of this because she lived with the impression that her identity was wrong. Guilt is replaced by the desire, which comes from accepting her own sexuality, to be accepted by friends and family. The religious themes addressed in this short film are closely connected to the artist’s personal experience: I think that at least what I do both as art and as activism has been influenced by my own journey. I grew up in a very religious family, so I attended bible studies, youth camps, I think at one point my dream was even to be a priest, not a priestess (priest’s wife), but a spiritual leader in that sense. OK, so as an artist I create my reality, as an artist, with regard to my artwork, I will build my church. (interview with Ruth Borgfjord)

Fear of rejection from others is another dominant theme in most cultural products that deal with the coming out process. In fact, the very idea of publicly affirming one’s non-normative sexuality, to certain people or in small circles, is constantly constructed in relation to the outside world and those with whom queer people come into contact: And once you admit that to yourself, after that, how do you come out? That one took a bit of time, when I thought I would lose my whole family. Fortunately, I didn’t. I just told them what the deal was and they were pretty ok, I mean I know these aren’t their beliefs, but I wasn’t excluded, I mean I didn’t lose my family. I see them, we see each other on holidays, birthdays, visits. […] One of the things I wrote in my diary a few years ago was that if I had a gay child, right up front, I would support the whole movement openly and I wouldn’t be afraid. And I started to think, if I would do this for my gay child, why is it that I think I don’t deserve this, why don’t I take this step for me? Why not show open support, even if it means losing friends, my friends? It’s OK. (interview with Ruth Borgfjord)

In the film, the protagonist rarely speaks, at times looking directly into the camera, creating an intimate setting that matches the text. One of the contradictions at stake is that, although from a religious perspective queer people are seen as unacceptable, the God that the author herself addresses allows her to be gay. As with Patrick Br˘aila’s short film, the notion of self-representation is the central mechanism of this product. The artist’s monologue is itself

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a form of resistance to heteronormative factors and the social, religious, and cultural expressions that normalise individual sexual identities.

Mom, Dad, I Have to Tell You Something Another coming out story is, in the case of the 2016 short film created by Paul Mures, an, a gay artist from Cluj-Napoca, represented both by the subject matter and the very motivation behind the creation of this animation. From the interview with the artist, we learned that the whole concept of the film was also a way of telling his parents that he was gay: And it was interesting, my coming out basically took place in the cinema, on stage. It’s an animation made specifically for my parents, to make them understand what I’m going through and the craziness going on in my head trying to tell them that they birthed a monster. […] It’s fascinating, the power of film, how many things it can solve, how many topics it can open up. Seeing that I’ve drawn 8,000 drawings for this animation, they saw that I put in a lot of work, it wasn’t like that, just something to turn a blind eye to, and they wondered: what is this kid working on? And then they saw. Aaa! Aaaa! That’s what he had to say (Interview with Paul Mures, an).

As in the case of the short films Pieptis, or Letters to God, the autobiographical component is important in deciphering the message and analysing Mures, an’s short film. The animation is drawn in a childish style, given that the author wanted to convey a graphic message as close as possible to the idea of a simple relationship between parents and children: “I used to make quite complex animations from the point of view of drawing styles, and then I said to myself: let me make one without that drawing pretentiousness, let me draw as a child would draw, to try to place a whole lot of pressure and see what the audience gathers from it” (Paul Mures, an). Thus, the simplicity of the drawing and the ironic undertones of the message contribute to its effectiveness. The short film opens with a scene in which the main character is sitting at a table in front of his parents, who are smilingly awaiting what he has to say to them. With nervous gestures, the character begins a sentence that he does not finish, given the pressure and importance of the subject: “ Mom, Dad, I have to tell you something. I’m… (sighs) I can’t. Let me start this differently”. The lines succeed each other in line with the narrative thread, the character appears in the school toilet with other boys, then

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walks off to class, deep in thought. His classmate, drawn as a werewolf, is a metaphor for non-normative sexualities and the way the author imagines gay people to be regarded by his parents and society at large. One of the drawings depicts the two of them holding hands inside their desk; the character’s transformation into a werewolf, like his friend, inserts a line of interpretation in keeping with the message of the film. The social pressure experienced by the main character is illustrated in scenes that show him chasing people with placards, behind a fence painted in the colours of the Romanian flag. It is a reference to the public outings of far-right groups who oppose queer rights. The two are shown embracing, alone, in night shots, hidden from view. Towards the end of this short, the action returns to the main character’s home, and the parents begin to speak, in a made-up language (there are English subtitles throughout the short), asking him about what he has to say to them. The character continues, in the same language: “Well… that I’m a werewolf” and later in Romanian: “And… that I’m in love with my desk mate”. The parents repeat the question, but this time his reply is cut short by a slap from his parents. In the final scene, we see the blackeyed main character, his boyfriend, and a girlfriend asking him “So, how did it go?”. Humour is employed in this film as a de-escalation mechanism between the young man and his parents. The film also provides an opportunity for young queer people to find themselves in the story, especially if their parents have trouble accepting their identities. As for how the short film was received, Paul told me that it was generally received with openness: It was interesting to see the discussions afterwards in the cinema, what people were asking: why did you associate this thing with a monster. And I said: listen, that’s how you made me feel all along. And people seemed to start to empathise […] and from the LGBT+ side, from what I understand, I helped some of them understand that there are more aliens like them in this world, that there is life after high school and stuff like that. (Interview with Paul Mures, an)

It is important to note that the artist emphasises his and his cultural products’ interaction with the public, in an educational and sometimes explanatory approach aimed at dismantling some of the societal stereotypes about queer people.

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By bringing together films made by both heterosexual and queer people, the purpose was to highlight how queer identities are constructed and self-constructed and self-represented within them. Still few in number, Romanian queer film productions manage to bring into the discussion various topics from different perspectives. In addition to films that aim to present stories that do not belong to the authors, in order to educate or shock audiences, there are also local productions in which the authors wish to tell their own stories. The latter are characterised by naturalness and sincerity and are constructed in relation to the reactions received by the authors from the outside world, with regard to their own sexualities. Referencing one’s own experiences clearly distinguishes the existence of various modes of construction, of conveying messages, and the messages themselves remain distinct from those to be found in productions created by heterosexual people. While in contemporary queer film productions, the messages are largely tied to the lived experiences of the filmmakers, particularly given their statements in various contexts after the premiere of their work, in contemporary art products it is more difficult to establish a relationship between the affective and experiential dimension and the finished product. The particularity of contemporary artworks lies, as we shall see, in their ephemerality. In turn, the messages, although in some cases more incisive and direct than in other artistic media, tend to dissipate with the passage of time; a special effort is thus needed in preserving and archiving thematic exhibition materials. At the same time, unlike other types of cultural products, the visual arts have the advantage of being methodologically well-grounded, not infrequently based on research and theoretical perspectives rarely found in film or queer literature.

References Bamberg, Michael. “Narrative Analysis”, In Cooper, H. (Ed.), APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology, APA Press, pp. 77–94, 2012. Borgfjord, Ruth. Letters to God, 2016. [Film]. Br˘aila, Patrick (Director). Pieptis,, 2016. [Film]. Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics. The Basics. London: Routledge, 2002. Cvetkovich, Ann. Archive, Feelings, Trauma: Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.

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Dima, Ramona. “Screening Queerness: Moral Agency and Representation in Two Romanian Movies”, In Revista Român˘a de Jurnalism s¸i Comunicare, 11(2/ 3), pp. 45–52, 2016. Dinu, Gheorghe, Ilea, Marian. Rodica e b˘aiat bun, 2005. [Film]. European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication. Special Eurobarometer 437: Discrimination in the EU in 2015, 2015. Available at: http:/ /data.europa.eu/88u/dataset/S2077_83_4_437_ENG [accessed 6 February 2023]. Howe, Cymene. Queer Anthropology. Amsterdam: Elsevier Ltd, 2015. Kress, Gunther, van Leeuwen, Theo. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge, 2006. Legaturi bolnavicioase website. “Leg˘aturi boln˘avicioase prin ochii Mariei si Ioanei”. Available at: http://www.legaturibolnavicioase.ro/ro/node/236/ [accessed 6 February 2023]. Legaturi bolnavicioase website. “Tudor Giurgiu dezleag˘a Leg˘aturi boln˘avicioase”. Available at: http://www.legaturibolnavicioase.ro/ro/node/237/ [accessed 6 February 2023]. Lotz, Amanda. “Postfeminist Television Criticism: Rehabilitating Critical Terms and Identifying Postfeminist Attributes”, In Feminist Media Studies, 1(1), pp. 105–121, 2001. Marinescu, Delia. “Eu n-am mai fost niciodat˘a aplaudat” in Scena9, online article, 2018. Available at: http://www.scena9.ro/article/eu-n-am-mai-fostniciodata-aplaudat [accessed 6 February 2023]. Mikdashi, Maya, Puar, Jasbir. “Queer Theory and Permanent War”, In GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 22 (2), pp. 215–222, 2016. Mladenovi´c, Ivana. Soldat, ii. Poveste din Ferentari, 2017. [Film]. Mungiu, Cristian. Dup˘a dealuri, 2012. [Film]. Mures, an, Paul. Mam˘a, Tat˘a, trebuie s˘a v˘a spun ceva, 2016. [Film]. Niculescu-Bran, Tatiana. Spovedanie la Tanacu. Ia¸si: Polirom, 2006. Niculescu-Bran, Tatiana. Cartea judec˘atorilor. Ia¸si: Polirom, 2008. Niculescu Bran, Tatiana. Scrisoare deschis˘a c˘atre Cristian Mungiu. Contributors.ro, 2012. Available at: https://www.contributors.ro/scrisoare-deschisacatre-cristian-mungiu/ [accessed 20 July 2023]. Niculescu Bran, Tatiana.Spovedanie la Tanacu. Ia¸si: Polirom, 2013. Pickering, Michael (ed.). Research Methods for Cultural Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Popescu, R˘azvan. After School, 2011. [Film]. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

CHAPTER 5

Romanian Queer Contemporary Art

Preamble Given that the existence of Article 200 throughout the 1990s prohibited public forms of “homosexual propaganda” even in its amended forms until its repeal in 2001, there were extremely few Romanian visual art manifestations to be found in public records. On the other hand, after 2001, they began to slowly appear and after 2010, relatively large-scale projects in this field were being carried out fairly consistently. Although there is no clear quantitative difference between visual art, cultural products and the literary, theatrical or cinematic, one of the remarkable differences we have identified is that, especially after 2010, the majority of authors of queer cultural products in the visual art field are people with a queer identity, who often interweave this identity with the conceptual content of their work. From the analysis of some of the most important and visible products, it can be observed that, unlike many of the literary, theatrical or cinematographic products analysed, in the case of the exhibitions or artists the texts that accompany their projects—statements, as they are known in the field—benefit from a clear discourse that affirms queer identity, criticises discrimination, normativity, and gender preconceptions, while also actively assuming an activist role.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Dima, Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38849-1_5

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Internationally, queer art is highly visible and has recently benefited from large-scale events dedicated to it, such as Queer British Art 1861– 1967 , an exhibition that could be visited at the Tate Britain from 5 April to 1 October 2017,1 or the 9th edition, in 2016, of the prestigious and alternative Berlin Biennale, whose title was The Present in Drag and which attempted to propose a queer theoretical framework for reinterpreting present society. Queer art, with the support of queer theory, is generally sensitive to issues of intersectionality and, internationally, often succeeds in bringing up various topics such as racism, migration, poverty, disability, different bodies and their representation in public spaces. In Romania, these local cultural products are visible for a short period of time (maximum one or two months), usually in the semi-public space of a gallery, rarely in the public space, and are not as visible and do not reach as wide an audience as the other fields of analysis. Queer visual art products have the advantage of theoretical support and paradigms at the intersection of queer theory and contemporary art theory, and their authors—and this is generally specific to contemporary art—make equal use of text, either as a statement or as an integral part of the cultural product, together with signage and visual semiotics, in order to convey their message. This concise book will analyse contemporary visual art products characterised by and coming from extremely diverse practices and media, ranging from multimedia—video art, photography, sound art, net art, digital collages or collages created with traditional materials through traditionally established media and forms of expression (graphic art, painting, sculpture)—to installations, design elements and certain forms of performance art related not to the theatrical arts, but to the field of visual art. In Bucharest, contemporary art with a queer theme or undertone began to develop especially after Romania’s official accession to the European Union and especially with the emergence of alternative institutions or spaces that provided queer cultural productions in the visual, sound, performative fields with a stable place—such as the CNDB (National Dance Centre Bucharest), the gallery Atelier 35, Salonul de Proiecte or Spat, iul Platforma (Platforma Space), for a short time in 2011 the project C˘aminul Cultural, the Control Club, more recently the Replika Theatre

1 https://www.tate.org.uk/art/queer-british-art-1861-1967#:~:text= February 2023].

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and the Macaz bar, but also with the emergence of independent initiatives where, in turn, many people from the art world or the activist world of Bucharest developed their practices, such as the case of Biblioteca Alternativ˘a [The Alternative Library], which hosted the first queer and feminist library in Romania. Major institutions, such as MNAC (National Museum of Contemporary Art), have also hosted queer visual or performative projects, but until the years 2017–2018 they did not include large-scale exhibitions or events centred on this theme. Finally, it is worth noting that people from the field of visual and performing arts are also behind a series of multimedia club events with a long tradition in the world of Bucharest, held under the names Gray Party and Queer Night.

The 1990s and 2000s One of the earliest references to an artistic event at the intersection of performance art, sound and contemporary dance is tied to a 1994 event, when the mayor of Bucharest at the time, PNL (The National Liberal Party) politician Crin Halaicu, banned a gay and lesbian art festival organised by Gay 45 magazine. I have discussed those events at length in previous chapters, but I return with a brief acknowledgment here because, although the event itself is not strictly related to visual art, it was intended to become a part of the conceptual framework of contemporary art, and it is mentioned as a point of reference especially by people employed in the field of visual art. This is also probably due to the fact that the person who is considered to be the initiator of the festival, R˘azvan Ion, was and continues to be active in this field. Another early mention concerns the gay Romanian painter Vasile Mures, an Murivale, who often approaches themes or visual modes of representation with queer themes or connotations. In an interview2 given by the artist in January 2013 to a local weekly newspaper in Motru, Gazeta de Mâine, the artist mentions that “In 1997 I exhibited a piece of art with a homoerotic character at the “Eforie” gallery at the erotic exhibition “S, i nimeni nu s-înecat de necaz” [And spite never drowned anyone]. It was about Gilgamesh’s love for his lover Enkidu”. With the correction that the Erotica exhibition took place in Bucharest in 1998 at a now-defunct gallery, Eforie, which belonged to the Union of Fine Artists, 2 http://www.gazetademaine.ro/eveniment/nu-sunt-excentric-sunt-adevarat.html [accessed 16 February 2023].

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more precisely its younger and more experimental wing, Atelier 35, this painting by Murivale is probably one of the first public manifestations of a queer message in Romanian visual art. Vasile Mures, an Murivale has an archival and auto-archival presence on the internet, both through his Facebook and YouTube accounts, and he considers himself a sort of memory-keeper of local art. Sixtina lui Murivale [The Sistine of Murivale], his most famous project, is a multimedia installation made of tens of thousands of photographs that exhibit his ambition to capture and archive the image of almost every visual artist in Romania over more than twenty years. Filmed and edited by Murivale, hundreds of videos can be found on his YouTube account, including a few that review, unfortunately in low resolution, his 2004 solo gaythemed exhibition called Rai Cocoshneth. In his introduction to the short presentation video of the exhibition that took place at the Art Jazz Club in Bucharest—another important place for experimental art in Romania, used as an exhibition space by Atelier 35 and then rented for a while to a jazz club where various cultural events were organised—Vasile Murivale mentions that: When I was an art student, my professor Teodor Moraru suggested to me that I research this area, because in Romanian contemporary art this territory remains unexplored. This was around 1995. In 1997 I exhibited such a work at Erotica, with the title Amorul albastru – beau petit ami [The Blue Amour – beau petit ami] at the Eforie gallery. Years later I returned, looking at a plethora of artists from around the world. I have been reproducing drawings by eroticising and recomposing them on elongated vertical or horizontal surfaces. Some of them were seen in the studio by collector friends and Corneliu Antim, who suggested I hold an exhibition at the Art Jazz Club. I timidly held it, I didn’t blow a hole in the sky, nor did I call the press, it was an opening with friends, and the exhibition went unnoticed but didn’t horrify anyone.3

As a visual artist dedicated to experimental painting and approaches known in the literature as mixed media, Murivale employs a wide range of expressions—from figurative to abstract—and types of support—from classic canvases to doors, fences, garbage cans, shoes, walls and so on. The house that he lives in, located at Kilometre 0 of the capital, is itself 3 The video by Vasile Murivale is available on his channel: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ov4IsIQDJ6s [accessed 16 February 2023].

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an art object and part of the artist’s narrative. It is an old house filled with flowers and adopted dogs, which I had the opportunity to visit one evening in 2015. The relatively large drawings and paintings that were part of Rai Cocoshneth are far from coy, featuring—in an almost figurative manner—embracing, chained male figures that carry some religious references both visually—a work appears in the film that seems influenced by iconostasis—and in the choice of title, in which the cocoshneth/cocos, net, i 4 are Murivale’s invented labels for gay men. The film presenting the exhibition includes a recording of the speech given by art critic and publicist Corneliu Antim at the opening of the event. Antim considers Murivale’s work to be “a professional and very coherent plastic discourse on a heroic theme, which presents nothing ostentatious, […] nothing provocative, […] nothing instigating”, a theme in line with the normality “that God gave Murivale and others like him”. From Murivale’s YouTube archive we also learn about the artist’s contribution to a master’s thesis at the National University of Arts by the artist Ana B˘anic˘a in 2004, which culminated with the thesis Homosexuality in today’s plastic art and the exhibition Opus Murivale,5 which took place at the Atelier 35 gallery in Bucharest. The exhibition consists of a series of photographs in which Murivale is the main hero, posing nude and covered with flowers in a bathtub on the roof of his house, and at the time, as he mentions in the same aforementioned interview, it prompted plenty of critical reactions. Also dating from the early 2000s are two other exhibitions whose online memory has been almost entirely lost. Both are solo photography exhibitions by R˘azvan Ion. Both took place in the S.P.A.C.E. gallery of the CIAC (International Centre for Contemporary Art) in Bucharest. The first, an almost identical paraphrase of singer Björk’s Venus as a Boy (1993) was called Venus is A Boy and it took place between 16– 26 April 2002. It consisted of a series of extremely daring photographs, only one year after the repeal of Article 200.6 The second exhibition, Identit˘at, i ascunse/Hidden Identities, took place in May 2003. It displayed 4 Translator’s note: the term cocosneata , , ˘ refers to a pretentious lady in what is perceived as ridiculous clothing, and with a ludicrous behaviour. 5 Video made available by the artist on his channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=QCOe_PSowNg [accessed 16 February 2023]. 6 https://web.archive.org/web/20030205102658/, http://razvanion.com:80/venus. html [accessed 16 February 2023].

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photographs with a queer sensibility: men more or less “hidden” under various scenographic, photographic or framing devices, anatomical details, and people in drag. In 2006, the HT003 gallery in Bucharest hosted the photography exhibition Trans, signed by visual artist Raluca Ilaria Demetrescu and organised in media partnership with, among others, the Accept Association. The exhibition took place two years after the first Gay Fest and the first Diversity March (in 2004) which had continued to take place annually in a climate of street aggression. As mentioned in another chapter, trans persons and people in drag were among the first to take part in these marches at a time when participation implied taking a real risk of physical violence. Somehow this exhibition is the only one that remains as a testimony to this early visibility. It consists of a large number of photographs of trans people and people in drag taken during performances, in public spaces, or in some degree of privacy. Through the title of the exhibition, the author, who does not identify herself as queer, creates confusion between separate categories and identities which, unfortunately, are still too often confused in the Romanian cultural landscape. Trans is the commonly used abbreviation within the LGBT+ community to refer to trans people, while the artist writes, in the text accompanying the exhibition, that “the subjects are the transvestites — spectacular, marginal and scenographic beings — and the fascination they exert on us (me)”. Transvestites, as the author calls them, are cis or trans men, predominantly gay or bisexual, rarely heterosexual, who choose, in private or in public, to appeal through drag to an alter ego, and the most recognisable public presence of the transvestite is also found in the performing arts, under the title of a drag queen. The use of the term “transvestite” to describe a trans woman is a transphobic act. In a first article in the column on Queer Culture in Romania, published by Revista Arta Online in December 2017, art critic and activist Valentina Iancu writes, among other things, about the importance and nuances of this exhibition.7 Referencing Raluca Ilaria Demetrescu from an interview given by email to the author of the article in November 2012, Valentina Iancu mentions that the artist’s concern for queer issues predated the Trans exhibition, as she had organised a private performance during which she had moulded in 7 https://revistaarta.ro/en/column/queer-culture-in-romania-i/ [accessed 16 February 2023].

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plaster a MTF trans person before her transition. Because the terminology used in the interview is highly problematic for trans people, I choose to avoid direct quotations, but the interview, like the title of the exhibition versus its content, marks the fundamental confusion perpetuated by the artist. From a social point of view, people who choose to cross-dress in public spaces consciously place themselves in a form of over-visibility and the performative presence of many of them is in itself an artistic gesture, meant to maintain gender blurring and stimulate the imagination. On the other hand, the Trans exhibition is an example of benevolent instrumentalisation, in which identities are poetically confused and the subjects of the photographs are not agents, but rather pretexts for the author’s emotional quests. In the course of the interview with Valentina Iancu, she recalls that the first cultural product that remained strongly in her memory, from the visual and performing arts, is the performance made in 2008 in New York by choreographer and dancer Manuel Pelmus, , one of the most important representatives of the contemporary Romanian dance scene. At the time, the project stirred up some media controversy, though not nearly as much as the discussions that shook the local cultural world in the well-known case of the “pink pony”, which took place around the same time, also in New York. From a short informative article published on 18 August 2008 on the website of the newspaper ziare.com (“A gay version of Brâncus, i’s ‘kiss’ shocks New York critics”, by M˘ad˘alina Ionescu), nearly the only trace of that event that can still be found on the internet, we learn that Manuel Pelmus, , together with the Norwegian Romania-based queer dancer and choreographer Brynjar Brandlien and in collaboration with the artist and curator S, tefan Tiron, created Poarta S˘arutului [The Gate of the Kiss], inspired by Constantin Brâncus, i’s work. The three were in artistic residency in New York at the contemporary dance and performance organisation Chez Bushwick, and they presented a series of performances to the public, including one that paid tribute to Brâncus, i. The sculptor’s name and works have come to be often used conceptually in local contemporary art as a critique of traditionalist cultural discourse driven by normative “values”. The article notes that “At Chez Bushwick, the speech was delivered by four specialists who knew they were participating in a tribute to the great Romanian artist. They also knew that they represented the Infinity Column, and the audience, seated in a circle, ‘re-enacted’ the Table of Silence. And nearby, they choreographed

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a reconstruction of the ‘kiss,’ which they consider ‘a symbol of procreation and of straight love originating from Adam and Eve’. Following the kiss between Pelmus, and Brandlien, the four critics left the stage, one of them saying, according to the artist, that “this is the kiss of death”. According to the same short article, the action of the Gate of the Kiss was also staged in Bucharest, with only one guest critic. Valentina Iancu, in her interview, recalls that the New York story was discussed in a lecture given by the Romanian critic Erwin Kessler at the National University of Arts in Bucharest: I remember I was in the Master’s programme, I think, in my first year, and I had some discussions with Erwin Kessler on this subject. He was completely revolted by Pelmus, , in the meantime he has recovered, I think… I think… At least then, after the lectures, he had recovered. And what did your colleagues say? Everyone was stunned. Absolutely everyone was stunned: is this art, is it not art, how do we relate to art? What is a transgression? In our master’s classes we questioned the matter of the transgression: was it a transgression or not? Should I start to get into Foucault and the Preface to Transgression? Kessler’s course was on modern and contemporary Romanian art and he came up with this example: what is not art, how far artists can go because they are allowed anything. Manuel Pelmus, was presented in this sense, and the controversy began. From my point of view, if we take into account Foucault’s text, Preface to Transgression, Manuel followed all the steps. (interview with Valentina Iancu)

Post 2010 Between 7 and 31 July 2011 the Contemporary Art Gallery8 of the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu hosted Desire is War, a group exhibition of great importance for its implausibility in relation to the local cultural landscape of contemporary art. The exhibition, curated by Dragos, Olea and Anca Mihulet, , with a design made in collaboration

8 The Contemporary Art Gallery of the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu operated for several years, in the first half of the 2000s, under the coordination of curators Liviana Dan and Anca Mihulet, . The programme of this gallery was held in a building of the museum located at 6 Tribunei Street, a space from the beginning of the twentieth century, partially renovated and adapted to the exhibition of contemporary art.

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with the architect Laura Paraschiv, brought together artists from various backgrounds. In the curatorial text9 that accompanies the exhibition, cultural and social activism is clearly assumed: “Desire is WAR is a statement-exhibition and a form of cultural activism that aims to provoke a debate around a certain type of desire that often ignites intense conflicts, even “wars” in families, groups of friends, neighbours, schools, at work or at home: same-sex desire”. Starting from the very title of the exhibition, the norm-questioning cultural discourse does not shy away from underlining something rarely affirmed in the local contemporary social space: the fact that queer desires, queer identity in an oppressive or heteronormative context, when asserted in the public space, are subject to a perpetual declaration of war by society. The exhibition’s scenography, so extremely visual in nature that the works themselves sometimes seem to be hidden in it, signifies that all the objects in the space are assigned roles as ammunition or as a kind of war declaration. These kinds of narratives that deconstruct public space and heteronormative societies (Gelder 2007) have had their authors’ own queer identities as their main focus, which is particularly important in the process of their reception. The themes addressed by the participating artists are as diverse as possible, as the exhibition text underlines: Desire as a source of inspiration, the struggle for the right to public representation and expression of the LGBT+ community, alongside the analysis of the public rhetoric around civil rights, the recontextualisation of stereotypical heterosexual icons from a queer perspective, the ‘theatrical’ aura of the queer imaginary and associated mythologies, the dilemmas and confusion caused by the self-acceptance of asexual orientations, which are so often socially condemned, nostalgia, the narrative possibilities arising from the overlap of so-called ‘normal’ life with ‘other’ existence, the associations between virtue and sin, compromise and guilt, the power of seduction, homosexuality as a means of aesthetic expression, etc.10

The manner of the writing of the exhibition manifesto, the selection of works and the whole exhibition design denote the presence of voices

9 https://veiozaarte.ro/evenimente/desire-is-war-galeria-de-arta-contemporana-A-muz eului-national-brukenthal.html [accessed 16 February 2023]. 10 Idem 77.

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“from within” or highly empathetic to queer discourse. In addition to the photographic, video, textile and sound installations, and text inserts, Desire is War also includes an improvised corner in the reading room, provided with materials that, in turn, place the exhibition in the contemporary Eastern European artistic context. There on a table, there are, among other things, various copies of DIK Fagazine, initiated in 2005 and coordinated by the Polish queer artist Karol Radziszewski (also present in the exhibition with a photo installation), which is joined by anthology volumes of contemporary queer art or with feminist references to the idea of the body, such as Gender Check, Butt, or Body and the East. Gender Check, Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe was a very large-scale exhibition, installed in Vienna at MUMOK (November 2009–February 2010) and accompanied by a catalogue raisonné of the works11 and a reader with theoretical texts,12 interviews and excerpts from the writings of artists—a project coordinated by Serbian-born curator Bojana Peji´c and carried out with the contribution of 25 researchers from 24 countries that were under Soviet influence before 1989. This exhibition is the first large-scale and high-profile effort dedicated to exploring gender roles and forms of gender representation in both formal and alternative art in the countries located between the Baltic Sea and the Caucasus, starting from the 1960s and up to the time of the exhibition.13 The exhibition also included queer artists from Eastern Europe, although the selection for Romania was rather conservative and did not explore this niche. Butt is a quarterly gay magazine published since 2001, edited in the Netherlands by Gert Jonkers and Jop van Bennekom and distributed internationally. As a mix of cultural material and erotic imagery, the magazine has also released two anthologies published by German publisher Taschen, the first of which is included in Desire is War. The volume Body and the East is the catalogue of the eponymous exhibition held in 1998 at Moderna Galerija, the museum of modern and contemporary art in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The curator of the exhibition and editor of the volume, Zdenka Badovina´c, is interested in studying how, beyond gender dimensions, an Eastern European otherness can

11 Gender Check. Exhibition Catalogue, 2009. 12 Gender Check: A Reader. Art and Theory in Eastern Europe, 2010. 13 http://gender-check.erstestiftung.net/ [accessed 16 February 2023].

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be constructed and how it is reflected by artists who work with the representation of the body or use their own body in their projects. This selection of publications attempts to take heed, even if fragmentarily, of the fact that the presence of queer people and queer bodies in the context before and after the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc has a specificity that requires its own history to be studied, related to the post-imperial context of the various countries of the region. The QueerFemSEE conference is dedicated to this very issue. Some of the artists to be found in Desire is War are from Romania or have multicultural ties with Romania, such as Katja Lee Eliad, they are locally active, or, if established in other countries, maintaining connections with the local scene—such as S, tefan Botez, an artist based in Switzerland. Apparatus 22,14 an art collective working at the intersection of design, fashion and politically charged meanings, brings to the exhibition a series of images, representations of “icons of fashion and academia — unidentified modelling objects” alongside the image of Deirdre McCloskey, professor of Economics and Communication History at the University of Illinois, as well as activist for the rights and image of trans women. Katja Lee Eliad, in her textile and sound installation Explain, “elegantly reconstructs, through image and sound, the moments of a relationship, the uncertainties and fears, the fond memories and disappointments”. S, tefan Botez, in an equally intimate key, exhibits the photo installation Mi-e dor de tine [I miss you], dedicated to an ex-lover in Geneva and made up of photographs of fragments of public space through which they have probably both passed, a park in front of a block of flats, fragments of a platform, street signs and urban billboards, a corner of a botanical garden greenhouse, where the artist discreetly intervenes by leaving postcards with written messages, short notes in case his lover would miss him too and would retrace the route. The works that strike a personal note are contextually framed by others that aim at a more generic social commentary, such as the transcription

14 Apparatus 22 is an artistic collective founded in 2011 by Dragos Olea, Erika Olea, , Maria Farcas, and Ioana Nemes, (1979–2011), as a result of a previous experience in

the world of experimental fashion design. The same people are behind Rozalb de Mura, a brand that operated in the second decade of the 2000s in Bucharest, having gained international recognition through Gyarfas Olah’s creations, the designer of Rozalb de Mura, also present in Desire is War.

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of the lyrics of a song by the American band MEN, Credit Card Babies — which synthesises in a dance pop version some of the realities of queer people who wish to become parents—or the very large poster by Ioana Nemes, , which, through the reproduced quote, raises the question of the status of the woman of genius. Her work is part of the long-running project Monthly Evaluations, which began in 2005 and ended with the artist’s early death in 2011. Desire is War takes place a few months after this tragic moment, therefore the present work, THE WOMAN OF GENIUS DOES NOT EXIST. WHEN SHE DOES, SHE IS A MAN also has a commemorative aspect. The quotation is a reference from the volume Old Mistresses: Women, Art, and Ideology published in 1981 by feminist art historians Griselda Pollock and Rozsika Parker. silenceKILLS—discrimination/ro/files/2011 Also in 2011, a little later, between 9 November and 4 December, the exhibition silenceKILLS—discrimination/ro/files/2011 took place in Bucharest, organised by curators Valentina Iancu and Simona Vil˘au at the private gallery Art Yourself , a newly established gallery with commercial ambitions at the time, but which lasted for a very short period in the cultural space of the capital. Unlike Desire is War, the ambition of the exhibition silenceKILLS was to bring together different forms of discrimination—both racial and sexual, thus aiming for intersectionality. The curators invited a number of artists for whom they organised workshops in partnership with various anti-discrimination associations, related to the LGBT+ community, the rights of Roma people and the situation and sufferings of the Jewish community in Romania. In the end, the result was mainly works made especially for silenceKILLS, and the list of exhibiting artists was made up of: George Anghelescu, Mihail Cos, ulet, u, Suzana Dan, Amalia Dulhan, Simona Dumitriu, Remus Grecu, Harem6, Paul Hitter, M˘alina Ionescu, Raluca Ionescu, Elena Nazare, Sorin Oncu, Dan Perjovschi, Vlad Petri & Alina S, erban, Dan Piers, inaru, Beniamin Popescu, Radu Rodideal, Carmen Sec˘areanu, Albert Sofian, Gabriel Stoian, Silvia Tr˘aistaru, Sorana T, a˘ rus, , S, tefan Ungureanu, Mihai Zgondoiu. The list of artists included, unfortunately, few queer artists addressing this theme and even fewer Roma artists addressing the sensitive issues of poverty and racial segregation. This is perhaps one of the key differences between the two major initiatives of 2011: while Desire is

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War proposed a predominantly, almost exclusively, insider discourse, in the case of silenceKILLS, with all the well-intentioned background of the curators, of whom Valentina Iancu is a constant cultural activist for queer rights, the visual message was almost entirely monopolised by outsider discourses. A second difference, on a formal level, regarding the layout of the exhibitions, is that silenceKILLS was a more conventional, less atmospheric presence than Desire is War, and the gallery space—an extremely luxurious villa in the centre of the capital—worked contradictorily with the message intended by the exhibition. The curatorial text argues that: Starting from the intimate and not at all comforting premise that, at some point and for some reason, we all discriminate, silenceKILLS is an exhibition designed to raise awareness, sensitise, and question the boundary between freedom of opinion and social, ethnic, sexual or religious discrimination. Since intention and process are to be pursued in this kind of project, the series of works proposed by the artists tries to answer the question: Will silence or inertia kill us? with a fair answer: We are here, we see what you see, we can’t solve it, but we can observe it.15

In the interview with Valentina Iancu, the curator often recalls 2011 and the exhibition she took part in organising: I have doubts about this exhibition, about how queer it was, about how queer silenceKills was, because we asked the question of how discrimination looks in Romania and we brought together artists of all kinds to discuss. They took part in workshops, with the Accept association, with organisations dealing with Roma rights, basically with all the minorities in Romania, to what extent they have a place in Romanian society — that was the approach we proposed at the time. But what came out of it...

The most interesting projects included in the exhibition’s “slice” of queerness are by Sorin Oncu and the duo Harem6. To these, Valentina Iancu adds a third project, by the artist Gabriel Stoian, a Romanian artist based in Frankfurt who has no queer identity, but who chose to create some paintings for silenceKILLS that showed emblematic portraits of several 15 http://www.acceptromania.ro/page/24/?plugin=all-in-one-event-%20calendar&con troller=ai1ec_exporter_controller&action=export_events&ai1ec_post_ids=6266 [accessed 16 February 2023].

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gay men who were victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Without speaking specifically about Romania, where there is still no research on the fate of LGBT+ people during the regime of King Charles II and during the Second World War in general, Stoian nevertheless brings attention to a tragic and, until then, rather unknown subject in the local cultural space, namely queer people who died in the Holocaust. Harem6 is a duo of female artists, Flavia Marele and Ildiko Mures, an, who live and work in Cluj-Napoca. Not only a work partnership, theirs is also a life partnership that often comes to be reflected in a discreet and self-portraying manner in their cultural products. The two artists work predominantly with ceramics and textiles, producing surrealistically nuanced art objects in painted ceramics, which they sell on the Etsy platform. Perhaps the objects most overtly queer are to be found in their series of black-and-white photographs embroidered with coloured rainbow thread,16 but their dolls—two such oversized dolls were also exhibited at silenceKILLS—or paintings on ceramics often tell personal and gender-bending stories. Sorin Oncu, present in the silenceKILLS exhibition with the installation Ah/HwTT (Antihomophobic/Halfway Through Therapy), was one of the artists who consistently combined queer activism with his art projects. In the article17 published on the adev˘arul.ro platform on 28 July 2016, an in memoriam article written a few days after the artist’s death, Florin Buhuceanu recounts that he met Oncu at one of the first Marches for Diversity in Bucharest (in 2005 or 2006), “in which the attackers’ props consisted of icons, visceral screams, traditional curses against mothers and a shower of various blunt instruments” and that he would have liked to include some of his works in a future Museum of Queer Culture. Born in Serbia, Sorin Oncu studied painting at the Faculty of Arts and Design in Timis, oara, where he also finished his master’s and doctorate degrees. As early as 2004, as he testifies in an interview with Valentina Iancu in Gazeta de Art˘a Politic˘a18 (published in 2014 and republished on 28 July 16 https://www.etsy.com/shop/DoubleFoxStudio [accessed 16 February 2023]. 17 On fragile rights, art, and heresy in Timisoara, Florin Buhuceanu, article in the ,

online edition of Adev˘arul newspaper: https://adevarul.ro/blogurile-adevarul/despre-dre pturi-fragile-arta-si-erezie-la-1725712.html [accessed 16 February 2023]. 18 https://www.facebook.com/asociatia.accept/posts/sorin-oncu-vorbea-in-2014depre-o-situatie-similara-celei-cu-care-se-confrunta-a/1298397430188209/ [accessed 16 February 2023].

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2016) he founded the LGBTeam activist group in Timis, oara and in the following years he initiated workshops in which art and forms of artistic manifestation were used within the group as collective forms of rendering identities, the need for expression, or for rights. Ah/HwTT is part of a series of four installations dealing with topics such as homophobia, the relationship with religion, the lack of diversity politics and so on, all four grouped under the acronym Ah (Antihomophobic): Ah/HwTT (Antihomophobic/Halfway Through Therapy), Ah/HwTE (Antihomophobic/Halfway Through Education), Ah/HwTL(Antihomophobic/Halfway Through Legalization), and Ah/HwTP(Antihomophobic/Halfway Through Politics). Ah/HwTT , the installation presented in 2011 as part of the silenceKILLS—discrimination/ro/files/2011, has medical connotations. On the wall of the gallery was mounted a shelf of medicines in white and pink cardboard boxes, bearing names such as homophobo STOP, 200 mg, ACCEPTANCE stimulant (TOLERANCE + ACCEPTANCE 50 gr.) or prejudice STOP. On a table, in small pots, there are pills of various colours, supposedly meant to treat the anti-homophobia of some of the world’s most notorious homophobes (including Pope Benedict XVI, James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, Gigi Becali and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). There are multiple references, as it reminds us of the medical or psychiatric treatments often undergone by queer people, but the artist’s primary intention does not seem to be too sensitive to these possible connotations, and some of the names—such as Anti Retard, for example—become problematic in the context of discriminatory Romanian attitudes towards people with disabilities. Ah/HwTE criticises both the presence of discriminatory definitions of homosexuality in the DEX (Explanatory Dictionary of the Romanian Language) and the absence of terms such as homophobia or heterosexism from the dictionary. The installation Halfway Through Education is made up of a desk and a school chair, completely covered in tar, as if to reference the systemic problem of schools nowadays, which continue to be spaces of discrimination. These are joined by an explanatory dictionary that was meticulously ripped to shreds with a razor blade. In addition, a few simple frames containing interventions on the pages of the dictionary

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that list the Academy’s homophobic definitions (rewritten by the artist in the margins of the pages) or where words such as homophobia, homophobic, for example, should be found. The installation was included in the exhibition LGBT +. Humanity, February 2012, Gallery 26 (OTA), Bucharest. Ah/HwTL—Halfway Through Legalization is an altar dedicated to the instruments of oppression, in Oncu’s vision: from the new Civil Code to the decisive role of various local denominations in executive and legislative decision-making. The razor blade is oversized and takes the shape of a gonfalon. A pink sponge with other blades that lacerate it replaces the offering of bread and wine. Long spikes are turned into writing instruments of the type of those that make and sign laws, or of the type that can be found on registry office desks. The communion pot is a former lamp, which may bring to mind the police interrogations of suspected homosexuals in the first half of the 1990s. This installation seems to be loaded with new meanings all the more so now, in the context of the referendum proposal backed by the Coalition for the Family. The project was exhibited in 2013 as part of the Inside Insights exhibition at the Aiurart gallery in Bucharest, which I will return to briefly in the following pages. The last of the four installations, Antihomophobic/Halfway Through Politics, is considered by Sorin Oncu to be a criticism of queer parliamentarians that do not publicly assume their identity, but also of the LGBT+ community that failed to support a Parliament representative. Ah/HwTP is a rickety, upended chair with pink endings that look like dildos or oversized pills. Finally, a last cultural product signed by Oncu that is significantly loaded with queer activist connotations is the public space intervention Fragile Rights, performed on 23 May 2014 in Carol Park in Bucharest, during that year’s edition of the White Night of the Art Galleries. A tall monument pedestal was wrapped in black plastic, covered with pink stickers here and there with the message handle with care. In front of it there is a makeshift flag of the European Union made of black plastic, with white stars and shredded edges. The message that accompanies the monument speaks, in short, about the exclusion of the LGBT+ community from public space and the fragility of the European framework, permeated by the local heteronormative context that is often felt within the community itself.

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The Other Us: Workshop for Identity Re-imagining19 Ceilalt, i noi. Atelier de reimaginare identitar˘a project placed queer affects in the broader context of society, history and local politics. The project took place in 2012 at Spat, iul Platforma in Bucharest, under the coordination of artist Veda Popovici, and it consisted of an intensive workshop of several days at the end of November, with presentations and debates, a performance in the public space that took place on 1 December, and an exhibition where the results of the workshop were made available to the public. Many people contributed to the project, from different cultural areas: the Feminist Reading Circle, Irina Costache, Florin Poenaru, FRRFan Clubul Reus, itelor Românesti (Claudiu Cobilanschi&S, tefan Tiron), Cristian Cercel, Ovidiu Pop, Veda Popovici, Simona Dumitriu, with resources (reading materials, videos) provided by the Alternative Library, the h. arta group, Ger Duijings and flags made by Irina Botezatu, Larisa David, R˘azvan Dr˘agoi, Simona Dumitriu, Ileana Faur, Veda Popovici, Jean-Lorin Sterian, Alexandra Terzi, Daniel Tristan and Roxana Vasile. The Other Us dates back to a time when the Alternative Library, mainly organised and managed by the group of queer feminists who had also initiated the Feminist Reading Circle, still attracted diverse people with various activist discourses. In the following years, due to some problematic situations that took place within the rather multiform grassroots collective the Alternative Library, the space separated. A large part of the people who organised the Feminist Reading Circle and managed the library itself formed CFSN (Sofia N˘adejde Feminist Centre), and some of the other participants in the Library project created a collective called Claca. Both CFSN and Claca opened new spaces, which functioned for a while and were mainly dedicated to activist activities. The Claca collective, restructured as a cooperative, later set up the Macaz bar, which occasionally hosted performances and plays. The Other Us started from the thesis that the nationalist threat was becoming more and more present in the Romanian public space, and that the cultural discourse based on the concept of elites only fed and maintained it, under a normative and generic “we”—we, the people. On the other hand, many people and many identities do not find their reflection in this “we” that was to be festively celebrated on the 1st of December (Romania’s National Day). That is why the artistic, visual component of 19 https://platformaspace.wordpress.com/?s=ceilalti [accessed 16 February 2023].

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the project consisted of a flag-making workshop, in which each participant had time to reflect on alternative flags, to articulate a critical visual discourse on the symbolism of the flag. The resulting flags were very diverse—a tricolour with altered chromatic proportions, an entirely pink flag, a transparent flag, a white flag with a circular hole in the middle, a white flag with black borders, etc. On the 1st of December, the workshop participants put on a performance in which they chose to wave these different flags in the University Square, in the park facing the National Theatre, an emblematic place occupied each year by various demonstrators. During the hour-long performance, the participants interacted with passers-by, and towards the end they were joined by a few citizens with tricolour flags who were protesting against something else. The flag deconstruction workshop was held in parallel with various presentations and debates, which collected multiple perspectives on the bodies usually excluded from the generic “we”: women’s power over their own bodies, queer people’s bodies, the bodies of people who, in often precarious conditions, struggle with HIV/AIDS, all of them opposed to the body that is deemed healthy, fertile and heterosexual, the symbol of the Romanian nation. Also in 2012, the LGBT+ History Month set off in Bucharest in February. Initially coordinated by ACCEPT, LGBT+ History Month annually brings together queer-themed cultural events, workshops, debates, and parties, in various locations in Bucharest. One of the key people behind the beginnings of LGBT+ History Month is Dani Pri, who was in charge of organising this large-scale event during their years at ACCEPT. This event was particularly representative of the relatively large number of young queer people, often still in college in those years, who came to form a new wave of LGBT+ activism, more diverse in its spectrum of identities and somewhat more oriented towards creating cultural products than the “old guard” of ACCEPT had been. These attempts to recover the past of queer people by using stereotypes and presumptions that operate at the level of society, but also in close connection with the relationship to their own identities and bodies, represent, in contemporary Romanian art, necessary steps in the queer artistic and cultural history.

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LGBT: Humanity and Inside Insights Within the framework of the LGBT+ History Month, Valentina Iancu organised, in 2012 and 2013, two exhibitions of art with queer subjects (even if only partially made by queer authors).20 The two exhibitions and the artists’ works appear in the LGBT + History Month. Visual Art catalogue, published by Accept in 2013. Thus, in February 2012, LGBT +. Humanity took place at Gallery 26 (OTA), where Andrada Bes, liu, Harem6, Sorin Oncu, Irina Simion, S, tefan Ungureanu exhibited their works. Relatively new on the Bucharest scene at the time, Andrada Bes, liu is a graphic artist and DJ from Timis, oara who, after relocating to Bucharest, started creating music under the name Admina and, together with Chlorys, Beatrice Sommer and Cosima Von Bülove, founded Corp., the only electro music platform in Romania dedicated exclusively to women, with a declared queer activist component. In LGBT +. Humanity she exhibited a series of digital collages printed on canvas, black and white images of bodies and fragments of human anatomy that do not reveal their sexual characteristics but seem trapped in conventional postures of social intimacy. In the interview, Valentina retrospectively describes LGBT +. Humanity as: “a small exhibition, in which I think I also kind of got tricked. The Accept Association recommended an undergraduate project with portraits of transvestites, an oversized painting, huge two-bytwo portraits that I barely managed to get to OTA. The girl, Irina Cumva [A/N: Irina Simion]. I found out afterwards that her boyfriend was a neoNazi from Cluj, […] one who walks around dressed as a legionnaire on the street, with a swastika on his belt…”. The author of the exhibition does not even understand how come the artist chose to portray people in drag as her undergraduate subject, besides the possible exploitation of a subject with an aura of marginality. Her paintings, oil on canvas, seem to reproduce in broad strokes photos from the internet showing drag queens walking in a Pride march. In February 2013, at Aiurart gallery in Bucharest, Valentina Iancu, in collaboration with artist Lea Rasovszky, curates the exhibition Inside Insights which includes projects by Airam & Oana Decem, Alexandra Carastoian, [EVA], Oana Lohan, Sorin Oncu, Adrian Popescu, Lea Rasovszky. Under the pseudonym Airam, Valentina Iancu advances a 20 https://artapolitica.ro/gazetapolitica/2014/10/24/de-la-experienta-personala-laarta-politica-si-activism-anti-discriminare-lgbt/ [accessed 16 February 2023].

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collaboration with trans artist and activist Oana Decem for an audio installation, occasioned by Oana Decem’s expressed desire to tell her story, an emotional journey both for the narrator, as Valentina Iancu relates, and for herself, as mediator of this life story characterised by the phobia and extreme danger faced by trans people on the daily by their mere public presence. Another interesting project comes from Paris-based queer artist Oana Lohan who returns to Bucharest from time to time. At Inside Insights, Lohan displayed seven photographs and a small drawing, all of them simply recounting the artist’s personal and social history in Paris, inside her home, in the presence of her girlfriend, or at her preferred lesbian bar, a historic bar that no longer existed at the time of the exhibition. The photographs are of Yvette in front of the Boobs Bourg bar, two of them are taken from inside the bar, two show a friend’s hands flipping through a Nan Goldin album, one is of Manou, another friend, pregnant, in front of the library where a volume of Claude Cahun’s writings can be glimpsed. Finally, the small drawing is of a bird, a sign from the “thieves’ alphabet” according to the exhibition catalogue, resting on top of the inviting houses that represent the Anne-Lise’s ex-libris, her then girlfriend. Oana Lohan’s project is meant to be a symbol of the interconnectedness of community, friendship and love, from the perspective of personal memory, of a personal history of women, so often absent from the thread of the “great” history of the struggle for rights. Bahlui Arcadia In July 2015, the project Bahlui Arcadia takes place in Iasi, created by the duo Simona&Ramona (AKA Claude&Dersch), composed of myself and Simona Dumitriu, my life partner. The project was made possible by a month-long residency at Tranzit Ias, i, and has several components: it is a text written as a poetic dialogue between Simona and myself, which becomes the soundtrack of a film, and the film in turn plays a compressed version of a long public performance by Simona Dumitriu in the field that separates the Nicolina river from the blocks in the Mircea cel B˘atrân neighbourhood of Ias, i, where Simona spent her childhood. The performance has a simple, repetitive action, a four-hour physical exercise on a stepper, performed in a landscape that is both rural and urban, with

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blocks all around, some distance away, with church spires in the background, houses, cows and horses on the other side of the river, and a sea of grass in the foreground, crossed by high voltage poles. In Simona’s childhood neighbourhood, several blocks facing and surrounding hers were thermally rehabilitated by the Patriarchate of Ias, i and then covered with huge, painted quotes from the Bible and saints. Faced with this landscape, the question that prompts the project is: what would her childhood and the rest of her life have been like had she stayed there and grown up with those words before her eyes? The autobiographical layer of the text is multifaceted, blending both of our biographies, social beliefs, activisms, and childhood moments, with moments in the present, when Arcadia acquires multiple meanings. I reproduce an excerpt from the first chapter of the text21 : That girl with a boy’s face sometimes visited us and appeared to be fond of me. The alcohol killed her, as they say, she died quickly, maybe even just after we moved. She was probably in love with my mother, but that has nothing to do with anything, any forbidden emotions were experienced one-sidedly, within an area of less than an inch by an inch, as thin as the marks left by the pen she used to write down her childish and generic dedications on the photos she would gift her, because that is probably how it was done in those days. Holy Erzulie Dantor, guide her footsteps and kill the hearts of all those who convinced her against it, all those who fathered her and provided advice, all the doctors who knew exactly what she needed, all those whose eyes burned because of her too short hair and too small breasts and her vest pantsuits. Saints Perpetua and Felicitas, pray for her from Elysium, Saint Adrienne Rich, recite her a poem even though she speaks no English. Of me remained Claude, who came back to read from the neighbours across the street that heaven better swallow all of them up, from thermallyinsulated blocks. And that abortion, theft and murder will lead those passers-by who do not take heed straight to hell. The private hospital will swallow them up and spit them out at the other end, in the form of Soylent Green, Green Product, a maceration that will turn them into food for other people, and, though forgiven, nothing will remain in the wake of absolution. If you run your hand through the uncut grass by the river’s edge you can feel, it is said, how someone else nibbles at you like you are biscuits, how you pass through their digestive tract and the

21 https://simonaramona.wordpress.com/bahlui-arcadia/ [accessed 16 February 2023].

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excess HChloride dissolves your bodily leftovers. (Dumitriu & Dima 2016, 10–11)

‘98 and SAVAGED pINK In June 2016, actor Adrian Newell P˘aun’s first solo Romanian exhibition took place at the CAV gallery (Centre of Visual Multimedia Arts) during Bucharest Pride, at Valentina Iancu’s suggestion and supported by the Accept Association. The exhibition was titled ‘98, the year of Adrian P˘aun’s permanent return to Romania, after emigrating to the United States in the mid-1980s. The drawings exhibited at the CAV were done during that year and represent a synthesis of the artist’s American life: portraits of friends, of the boyfriend with whom he was breaking up, details of the house where he lived, images of drag queens in San Francisco, the city where he lived. The exhibition contains three series of drawings and graphic interventions over printed images: Travesti, Home and Holocaust. The curatorial text, signed by Simona Dumitriu and written in the second person, opposes a well-known cliché of the queer community—San Francisco being considered a kind of gay Mecca—with the realities of the local “heterocracy,”22 in which public space is always described as conflictual for people who break the “norm”. At the same time, tracing the history of this everyday conflict is enveloped within the history—only very recently acknowledged in official terms—of queer victims of the Holocaust, the exact number of whom is probably to remain unknown. The pink triangle they wore on their camp uniforms was taken up in an activist sense in the 1980s by various groups and organisations such as ACT UP and remains a part of queer activism, albeit to a much lesser extent than the wellknown rainbow. It can also be found in Adrian P˘aun’s drawings, along with other chromatic symbols—such as the colours of the flag that begin to insert themselves with the idea of returning home, or the smoky grey of concentration camps. But the exhibition remains balanced between the tension of the serious subject and the lightness of the intimate notes; there are penises, earrings, lipstick, details of the artist’s apartment and so on.

22 The term implies a pun that combines the notions of heteronormativity and theocracy.

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As Adrian P˘aun confesses in his interview, he has stopped drawing since then, having dedicated himself to photography and to his personal archive of gay artefacts employed for the retracing of queer history fragments. Some of these artefacts, letters, and LGBT+ magazines from the 1990s, were included in the SAVAGED pINK. The history of the gay press in the 90s exhibition, which took place at the ODD space in Bucharest. The event was part of the 2017 LGBT+ Culture Month and was organised in partnership with ODD and the association Accept.23 The project is signed by Adrian Newell P˘aun, Adrian Schiop and Vlad Viski and curated by Cristina Bogdan. The gallery exhibited, in original or facsimile, copies of magazines—such as Gay45, or the magazine published by Accept, or more glossy gay magazines that have barely survived, published immediately after the complete decriminalisation that took place in 2001. Alongside them are photocopies of dozens of letters that Adrian P˘aun received from Romanian men, following an ad he had placed in a large-circulation Romanian newspaper in America. In the interview, P˘aun recounts: In 1992 I was the coordinator of the Romanian office of IGL HRC (the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission), the only international gay organisation dealing with Eastern Europe and Russia on this issue at that time. And I was desperate, because we needed information, because in our daily activities we needed information, in order to know how to best calibrate our activism for Eastern Europe. I placed an ad in a widely circulated newspaper at the time, called The Prostitution. [A/ N: as the letters in the SAVAGED pINK exhibition show, the ad ran for much longer and was also featured in other mainstream publications such as Evenimentul Zilei] [...] I placed an ad: if you’re gay and want to correspond with someone from abroad, make connections, even sentimental ones — do you still remember? — maybe even something romantic. […] I received almost 600 letters, of which I still have about half. (excerpt from interview with Adrian Newell P˘aun)

As with any endeavour that puts on view affects other than one’s own or information other than public information, the decision of the organisers to include the selection of letters is questionable. The stories came from all over the country and describe just as the author of the announcement expected, stories set in a bleak landscape, in the years following 1989, 23 http://www.oddweb.org/activity/savaged-pink/ [accessed 16 February 2023].

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featuring deeply disturbing social and personal situations. It is unclear what the activist accomplishments of this correspondence were, especially as it happened a few years before the first steps taken in Romanian activism, mainly focused on reporting police abuses, legislative transformation, and the prison release of people incarcerated under Article 200. Magazines, on the other hand, constitute valuable public material that became briefly accessible at the ODD. The author of this archive himself wonders what will become of the objects he has collected over the years, beyond their use in one-off events. The word archive comes from the Greek arkheion. In the opening note to Archive Fever. A Freudian Impression, Jacques Derrida recalls that arkheion signified a dwelling, specifically that of the higher magistrates, called arhoni. Thanks to their publicly recognised abilities, they were in charge of keeping documents in their own homes. But they were not only responsible for the physical security of the archives, “they are also accorded the hermeneutic right and competence. They have the power to interpret the archives” (Derrida 1998, 2). The terms archon and archive can intimate the fragility of the archive assembled by a single man, which is only capable of feeding another linear and monovocal history. Unlike other kinds of cultural products that are largely accessible, in physical or digital form—books can be bought, plays and films watched and then re-watched online, with the permission of the authors—there is a certain ephemeral aspect to the visual arts of documentation, and visual materials, memories and references, that contradicts what was noted at the beginning of the chapter, namely that queer discourse in the visual arts is much less diluted, more direct, more clearly mediated by curatorial texts. These artistic manifestations are often much better informed in terms of queer and gender history and theories than other thematic cultural products in other media (film, literature, theatre, etc.) Many of them refer to the historical component and make connections between various forms of discrimination and societal oppression experienced by LGBT+ people. Because of the ephemerality of this type of cultural product, the curatorial texts, images, interviews and recordings become the main source of information on their specifics and mechanisms of production. Much more visually audacious than other media products, queer artworks and exhibitions reflect many of the affects, relationships and

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intersections that occur at the artistic level around non-normative sexualities; not infrequently, these materials represent both a trenchant (sometimes ironic) response and a manifestation of strong feelings in the face of Homosexual propaganda.

References Buhuceanu, Florin. Despre drepturi fragile, art˘a s, i erezie la Timis,oara, online article, Adev˘arul newspaper, 2016: https://adevarul.ro/blogurile-adevarul/ despre-drepturi-fragile-arta-si-erezie-la-1725712.html [accessed 16 February 2023]. Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Religion and Postmodernism). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Dumitriu, Simona, Dima, Ramona. Bahlui Arcadia//s, i alte povestiri. Ia¸si: Tranzit.ro, 2016. Gazeta de Maine. “Nu sunt excentric. Sunt adev˘arat”, online article, 2013. Available at: https://www.gazetademaine.ro/eveniment/nu-sunt-excentric-suntadevarat.html [accessed 16 February 2023]. Gelder, Ken. Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice. London: Routledge, 2007. Gender Check. Exhibition Catalogue, Buchhandlung Walther König Press, 2009. Iancu, Valentina. “Queer Culture in Romania (I)”. Online article, Revista arta, 2017. Available at: https://revistaarta.ro/en/column/queer-culture-in-rom ania-i/ [accessed 16 February 2023]. Ionescu, M˘ad˘alina. “S˘arutul lui Brâncus,i în varianta gay s, ocheaz˘a criticii de la New York”, online article, Ziare.com, 2008. Available at: http://www. ziare.com/constantin-brancusi/stiri-constantin-brancusi/sarutul-lui-brancusiin-varianta-gay-socheaza-criticii-din-new-york-388696 [accessed 16 February 2023]. ODDweb. “SAVAGED PINK”, online. Available at: http://www.oddweb.org/ activity/savaged-pink/ [accessed 6 February 2023]. Peji´c, Bojana (Ed.). Gender Check: A Reader: Art and Gender in Eastern Europe Since the 1960s. Wien: Buchhandlung Walther Konig, 2010. Platforma space. “Ceilalt, i Noi – atelier de reimaginare identitar˘a, 20.11– 9.12. 2012”. Online, 2012: https://platformaspace.wordpress.com/?s=cei lalti [accessed 16 February 2023]. Razvanion.com website. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/200302051 02658/http://razvanion.com:80/venus.html [accessed 16 February 2023]. Simonaramona.wordpress.com. “Bahlui Arcadia”. Online. Available at: https:// simonaramona.wordpress.com/bahlui-arcadia/ [accessed 16 February 2023]. Veiozaarte.ro. “Desire is war @ Galeria de Arta Contemporana a Muzeului National Brukenthal”, online, 2011. Available at: https://veiozaarte.ro/eve nimente/desire-is-war-galeria-de-arta-contemporana-a-muzeului-national-bru kenthal.html [accessed 16 February 2023].

CHAPTER 6

Performance and Theatre

There are both numerous overlaps and certain differences in the way in which performance products occur in the theatre versus contemporary visual art. These differences, as well as the boundaries between these two types of performance become increasingly blurred in the Romanian cultural space. For example, there are many situations in which independently produced plays are staged in informal spaces, from cafés to art galleries. Within these spaces, we can now find diverse means of expression, from different backgrounds, multimedia décor, experimental sounds and music, and different forms of lighting to the interaction with the audience and their transformation from mere observer to participating or intervening party, or even into a moral faction. Institutions such as the National Centre for Dance Bucharest (Centrul Nat, ional al Dansului Bucures, ti) or the Replika Centre for Educational Theatre (Centrul de Teatru Educat, ional Replika) are two important examples when it comes to blurring the boundaries between different forms of performance. Thus, the plays enacted by the National Centre for Dance Bucharest occur at the intersection of theatre, contemporary dance, and embodied expression that is more often than not linked to performance art. At Replika, on the other hand, a frequently interactive component is added to these factors. The main differences that persist between theatre or contemporary dance performances and performance art are as follows: on the one hand, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Dima, Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38849-1_6

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in the former two instances, the shows, no matter how experimental they may be, are enacted by professional actors and/or dancers and they are characterised by a sense of repetitiveness. They are often staged repeatedly, with some smaller or greater variations within the same or other spaces. On the other hand, within the domain of visual arts, performance art is characteristic to project spaces, galleries, or public space interventions, and it is more often than not enacted by the artists who conceived the works—though there are some cases in which other performers enact a scenario envisioned by someone else—and it focuses on the body as object, often placed at the intersection between arts of movement and sculpture. Moreover, unlike performance products that belong to the realm of theatre or contemporary dance, performance art can manifest either directly as an independent event or within an exhibition, or as a recording, particularly in the form of video art or photography, in some cases. One such example of performance art under discussion here is Bahlui Arcadia,1 which perfectly illustrates this duality of the event performance versus the video performance. Insofar as queer cultural products are concerned, issues pertaining to the body are crucial, as all the cultural products analised in this book are focused on the body as an identity, as mode of expression of personal experience, oftentimes in connection to that which is normative or discriminatory, whether it concerns the bodies of queer or straight Roma women, those of trans people, those that contest binaries and the social expression of gender, or those that intersect queer issues and issues of age, disability, corporeal memory, the body as symbol within the public space. To establish the difference between performativity (of language and the body) and performance, one can argue that if the queer body, whether in the public or the private space, is engaged in constant performativity, to a never-ending mixture of connotations and denotations, all the noisier and the more dangerous the less that body submits itself to norms, performance products represent conscious forms of critical manifestation of the queer body in the public space, forms that this body is able to control, as they are predefined and intentional (Sedgwick 2003, 3–8).

1 https://simonaramona.wordpress.com/bahlui-arcadia/, https://ro.tranzit.org/en/ project/iasi/2015-07-19/bahlui-arcadia [accessed 10 February 2023].

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In order to define the presence of queer bodies in social spaces, their presence through performance, regardless of the type cultural of cultural product through which manifests, the artist and theorist Renate Lorenz uses the term “drag” epistemologically. The word itself is untranslatable in Romanian, and it is thus used in English in the domain of queer cultural and media products. A partial and relatively incorrect translation of this word into Romanian might be “travesti” (roughly, “cross-dressing”). Cross-dressing as a form of theatrical expression, as spectacle, has a very long history that sometimes includes the queer component, but, unlike cross-dressing, drag is a political concept, exclusively associated with queer thought, which is defined through the sublimation, often exaggeration of enclothed expression and of the behaviour that society associates with it so as to normatise the two genders. Drag is conceived in this way to criticise and undermine binaries and social norms. Lorenz extends this concept to include the type of performance that is the focus of this book—that of non-normative bodies, which criticise social clichés, as well as the norms with which they do not identify. She describes two main categories: “radical drag” and “transtemporal drag”. In the researcher’s view: “[r]adical drag is thus a practice of visualization that invokes and reminds us of practices of power while at the same time refusing the option of merely repeating them” (Lorenz 2012, 56). This type of drag “on the one hand produces a chain of objects, bodies, and meanings – a chain that invokes meanings without being dominated by them – which are ‘other’ without it being possible to say ‘other than what’. At the same time, however, it produces a configuration that focuses on how the production of knowledge is dependent on social practices” (Lorenz 2012, 57). One example of radical drag is found in the show Parallel, which is built entirely around the idea of bodily expression that manifests its difference, the clothes of the two performers going through different phases, each of which are an affirmation of the non-identification with the norm of gender binaries—going all the way up to classical drag king outfits, a form of spectacle that is typical to queer women, which ironically overemphasises “masculine” social behaviours and clothing as a symbol of what they believe to be gender oppression. Transtemporal drag, on the other hand, is a much more complex epistemic category, and Lorenz refers to the notion of chronopolitics in Elizabeth Freeman’s conception. Time, according to postcolonial criticism, is, of course, extensively normed by the authority of a certain place and a certain era—this includes all forms

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of time, from work time to the time within which a person ought to structure their life, split between childhood, youth, the time to build a family, old age, and death. History itself is organised in relation to these temporal structures, as a narrative decided upon by the authority of the place and the era (Freeman 2010). Of course, queer individuals have never had a place within this narrative, as they are not easily integrated into these structures. On the other hand, through various mechanisms—some related to the art of spectacle, others to that of writingqueer authors have inserted themselves into history, manipulating time, searching for historical references that they might be able to read through a queer gaze, inventing such references, or choosing to narrate certain historical moments from the point of view of their non-normative identities. Lorenz refers to such instances through the umbrella term of “transtemporal drag”. A classic example of transtemporal drag are the shows “After Trajan and Decebalus. Fragments of Gay History in Romania” (Dup˘a Traian s, i Decebal. Din filele istoriei Gay în România) and “At the Institute of Change” (La Institutul Schimb˘arii). The former is a reinterpretation of history from a queer perspective, and the latter deals with an uncertain temporality, set between the present and the future, in which bodies can easily step out of socially imposed chronologies. At the same time, the structural specificities of these types of media products were taken into account in this book, in which the bodies of the performers are one of the main elements; the interaction between the performers and the audience, a dimension that is not found in the other works under scrutiny, was also included. From a traditional perspective, performance productions have evolved to often include a political aspect alongside the notion of bodily, psychological or artistic exploration; this fact is emphasised by references to the cultural contexts within which the artists function, and one can frequently observe intersections of the mundane and the artistic planes. This tendency to politicise the personal sphere began to take shape predominantly in the ‘50s in the West-European and American spaces. The differentiation between art and everyday life increasingly faded within performance art. The same thing applied to performers who both act their roles and begin to represent their own, real-life experiences within a performance. Considering the ephemeral nature of these types of productions, I requested and obtained audio-video recordings of the shows from those who were involved in the process of producing them. Ephemerality is a

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key aspect of these shows, and it is captured particularly in the interview fragments in which we can observe the key points of the productions. These are noted, detailed, critiqued by the interviewees, and they are markers of the impact of these shows, particularly what was memorable and how their messages were perceived.

After Trajan and Decebalus: Fragments of Gay History in Romania Many of the people who oppose queer rights use the term “normality” to describe what they believe to be socially acceptable; queer individuals do not relate to this paradigm. In the book The Gladiator Butterfly (Fluturele Gladiator), the theatre critic Cristina Modreanu dedicates two brief chapters, mostly meant to offer an overview of a selection of examples, to a few works placed at the intersection between performance and Romanian theatre with a queer theme. In her view, artistic expression should become more open to tackling topics that are considered taboo in the public sphere, if we wish to truly bring local culture into contemporaneity (Modreanu 2016, 81). Speaking of the show After Trajan and Decebalus. Fragments of Gay History in Romania, Modreanu asserts that it is “a perfect act of normality, […] a good tool to awaken slumbering conscience. When such a class will be taught in all the high schools in Romania, only then will we be able to say that we have begun our journey towards ‘normality’ (if this wasn’t a word with too many connotations)” (Modreanu 2016, 81). The link between context and ideology (Herman & Vervaeck 2005) is the defining component of this show: both the communist ideology referring to non-normative sexualities, and the legislative context that surrounds it are reflected in the narratives presented therein, even when it comes to stories set in the post-1989 era. This show takes the shape of a performative reading in which the scriptwriter Mihaela Michailov and the queer choreographer and activist Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker are teaching a lesson that begins with historical documents, legends about Wallachian rulers presumed to be gay, such as Radu cel Frumos (Radu the Beautiful), Ilie Rare¸s, or Petru Cercel, and the makeup of the Romanian Criminal Code. To these are added four stories about queer individuals whom the artists interviewed, set in the pre-1989 era. Some of the gay men who were interviewed recount instances in which the police harass them and blackmail them into becoming informants

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in exchange for freedom and being able to maintain their professional careers. These narratives are presented as “case studies”, matching the general frame of the show, and each instance is marked by interludes in which documents obtained from the National Archives are presented. One of these refers to a gay man who was excluded from the Communist Party and laid off from his job due to his sexual orientation. There are also statements from Romanian Orthodox Church representatives given in Parliament, in which they condemned queer individuals, along with the 1998 amnesty through which some of the individuals who had been incarcerated on the basis of Artice 200 were released from prison. These fragments are followed by reminiscences about the first queer march that took place in Bucharest and the reactions of the ultranationalists which included, among others, throwing stones and other objects at the participants of the march. The history lesson to which the audience is invited to participate is held in the name of Trajan and Decebalus, an ironic evocation of those held as the “forefathers of the Romanian people”, contradicting the concept of what the public space increasingly refers to as the “traditional” family. Of course, the metaphorical nature of this image sets up an ironic motif repeated throughout the play. Another relevant point is that the majority of queer Romanian historical or public figures are men; this corresponds to the historical tendency to focus on male figures among persons of importance, allowing men to make and then write about history, and leaving out other individuals. One might say that the use of the word “gay” in the title of this show functions in the same way. The producers chose to use this term even though two of the stories presented therein are the stories of lesbians. As a matter of fact, the tendency to minimise and silence the voices of other members of the community is also noted in some queer works, as well as in mass-media coverage: see the references to Bucharest Pride as “the gay parade” or commonly describing the queer community and queer individuals through the umbrella term “homosexuals”. Therefore, queer history is often seen as gay history, with few references to people who do not identify as gay men. Building a history, even in the early phases, should occur in agreement with the diversity of identities, materials and opinions present within the queer community, and tendencies to monopolise the discourse are similar to the paradigm “majority discourse – minority discourse”.

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The opening of After Trajan and Decebalus. Fragments of Gay History in Romania took place in 2012 at Salonul de Proiecte (Projects’ Salon), a contemporary art gallery, which, alongside Spatiul Platforma (Platforma Space), functioned in the building of the MNAC (the National Museum of Contemporary Art of Romania) Annex. These spaces used to facilitate programmes that were run independently from the MNAC, and they were among the first to host queer-themed artworks at that time. The play is set in a minimalist setting, the audience is seated at school desks in front of the teacher’s desk, and on the walls, there are posters featuring information about Romanian historical figures. These elements suggest a traditional dynamic between teachers and students, which is maintained throughout the play. Mihaela Michailov and Paul Dunca/ Paula Dunker start by thanking the members of the audience for their interest in the launch of the textbook After Trajan and Decebalus. Fragments of Gay History in Romania, and alternative textbook that does not follow the traditional format of schoolbooks and about which they ironically point out that it will be available in bookstores. In order to render the historical topic into a history lesson, the artists begin by presenting some information about Romanian rulers whose nonnormative sexualities are known. Using a teacher’s pointer stick Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker goes from poster to poster, asking the members of the audience if they have heard of the rulers under discussion, and narrating brief anecdotes about their lives; for example: about Mehmed II’s erotic attachment to Radu cel Frumos (Radu the Beautiful), about Ilie Rares, ’s parties attended by Ottoman youths, and about how Petru Cercel becomes Henry III’s protégé. To these brief anecdotes, the artist attaches ironic endings, such as “he had intense sexual activity and died very young” or “he died of a broken heart”. The show is built on the alternation between the life stories of the interviewees and interventions in which Mihaela Michailov reads fragments of legislation or public statements on homosexuality, with the purpose of offering a context to the personal experiences narrated by Paul. The first year in which the subject of homosexuality was breached in the Romanian Parliament (1936) is mentioned following which, in chronological succession, the first instances related to the criminalisation and decriminalisation, respectively, of same-sex relationships are also brought into discussion. The show also features selections from Homoistorii (Homohistories) and from press coverage.

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In order to differentiate the individuals whose stories are being narrated, the artist uses distinctive clothing items each time. The first story, in which Paul Dunca wears a beret, is that of a gay man who asserts that he did not feel guilty for having relations with boys rather than girls, particularly as (when he was young) there was no sex education, and those around him did not talk of homosexuality. It was only when he was 20 years old that he found out that his sexual orientation could land him in prison, and that for the authorities to start an investigation they had to obtain two statements from different individuals declaring that he had had intercourse with them and these witnesses would not be sent to court. This story also notes that one of the man’s friends had gone to prison for two years, and his homosexuality weighed against him, as he was incarcerated with those sentenced to life in prison, and he experienced abuse. It goes on to describe the clandestine world of gay men in Bucharest, their meeting places, and the fact that they did not trust just anyone with their true identity, since the Securitate (Secret Police) also had voluntary collaborators who would frequent these known meeting places so as to catch gay individuals red-handed. There were meeting places outside Bucharest, as well. The story’s main character recollects episodes from holidays spent at the seaside resort Mamaia, and the role that certain bars and restaurants played in socialisation. These spaces would facilitate connections both between people hailing from different Romanian cities and between Romanians and people travelling from outside the country. In this way, the main character recollects his first relationship, with a foreign journalist, and meeting him again in Budapest, in 1973, in a gay bar. It is important to note that Hungary decriminalised same-sex relationships in 1961; up until 1978, the age of consent for queer individuals was 20 rather than 14, the age of consent for heterosexual persons, and in 1978 it became 18.2 Shortly after the fall of the communist regime in Romania, the main character was granted political asylum in France, on the basis of his sexual orientation. About the impact of state authorities on the personal lives of queer individuals, he asserts that: “Our fear of the Secret Police was much greater than the efficiency of the Secret Police; that is to say, they were efficient because we were afraid”. What follows is a brief note on a document from the National Central Historical Archives, which tells the

2 http://www.glbtqarchive.com/ssh/hungary_S.pdf [accessed 5 January 2023].

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story of a gay man who ends up in hospital due to a sexually transmitted disease, which leads to his being outed gay, excluded from the party, and side-lined. “Case study number two”, which Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker recounts while wearing glasses and using an occasionally naughty tone, is the story of a surgeon who, after breaking up with his fiancée, meets another man in Eforie Nord, a seaside resort, and starts an affair with him. Another important moment in this story, which takes place years later, in 1982, is that of the man being searched by the authorities and forced to offer statements; the man refuses to comply and is eventually set free. One inaccuracy in the show narrative is that of the year in which the Orthodox Church addressed an open letter to the Romanian Parliament. The show places this open letter in 1994, but in reality it only dates back to 2000, and it starts as follows: “The Church rejects impure love in order to promote holy love, as God, the Creator of Humans, wills it; It rejects the tyranny of passions selfish and barren in order to protect the freedom to live virtuously; It rejects that which is against nature, in order to protect human nature in its dignity”.3 However, seeing that the position of the Church on this topic has been relatively consistent and that, throughout the fight to repeal Article 200, the other state authority have frequently turned to consult the Church, the year in which this open letter was sent is of little importance, as discussions around same-sex relationships bore the same tone even before 2000. The third “witness account” is that of a lesbian woman, differentiated by the performer through their wearing earrings, who has divorced after 20 years of heterosexual marriage after she has met the ex-husband’s cousin, with whim she has a brief relationship. Following the announcement about her sexuality made to the entire family, the woman is faced with their reticence regarding her sexual orientation, and their hope that this is just a temporary situation. The woman and her child move to Bucharest, where she uses the personal ads sections of newspapers—such as the Purple criminal (Infractoarea roz) or Hot sensations (Senzat, ii tari)—to meet other women, and she starts receiving letters predominantly from married women. The reactions she receives from her family and loved ones have a humorous side to them in hindsight: while she was writing to one person, she received a letter stating that she had actually 3 https://www.sufletortodox.ro/arhiva/carti-documente/Hristotom%20de%20Etna% 20-%20Homosexualitatea%20pacat%20sau%20virtute.pdf [accessed 5 January 2023].

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been writing to her husband. Another example is when the main character’s mother places a padlock on the door of her apartment, which she nevertheless manages to pick; then she has a conversation with her mother, explaining that she needs to be accepted for who she is. At the same time as she comes out to her family, the woman also becomes affiliated with the movement for queer rights, and in the story she briefly recalls the fact that, at the first queer march she called her cross-dressing friends from all over the country to join her. As a matter of fact, the visibility of cross-dressing individuals was affected over the years following the first Pride marches, given the position of certain individuals from the community who were against welcoming them to these events. “Case study” number four is about the activist David, who begins a research project on Romanian prisons and meets up with queer persons who are imprisoned because of their sexual orientation. In this way he comes to meet Mariana Cetiner, who exhibits the marls of physical violence experienced while in prison; the performer gives out handouts featuring Mariana’s photo and a brief text about her to members of the audience. At this point, they emphasise the fact that, from a legal point of view, there were no differences between the ‘90s and the years 2000, even though every year the legislators came under pressure to modify the Criminal Code. Through simple mise-en-scènes, the show attempts to put together various fragments of what one might call queer history, at the same time personal and political. The show did not lack for reactions, as Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker recalls in an interview after one of the show’s productions, held at the National Superior School of Political and Administrative Studies in Bucharest; some of the volunteers at the festival that presented this show were attacked by a group of 10 men who accused them of organising “a conference about gay people”).4 After Trajan and Decebalus (Dup˘a Traian s, i Decebal ) reflect a local tendency to get to know Romanian queer history, and the need to build this history that includes information from various backgrounds that have not yet been collected into a unified whole. Recently, certain voices from the community have raised the issue of the absence of the personal history and histories of queer individuals in the public discourse before 1989. In

4 https://www.vice.com/ro/article/ypgn87/in-romania-esti-batut-in-strada [accessed 5 January 2023].

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fact, the greatest part of Romanian activism for the rights of queer individuals was formed after 2007, when Romania adhered to the European Union, whether independently or as part of the Accept Association. Until not long ago, the only voices that made themselves heard within these circles were those of gay men, while the perspectives of cisgender women and trans people were lacking entirely. Recognising the fact that personal experiences play an important role in the processes of building cultural histories in permanent connection with power relations and elements of authority found within society (Pickering 2008), the authors of this show use the artifice of plural voices precisely in order to reflect the polyphony of queer identities that have been overlooked by local history.

The Institute of Change and at the Institute of Change The two shows were staged in 2014 and 2015 at CNDB (National Dance Centre Bucharest) by the same Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker, who this time focused on the image and experiences of some trans individuals in Romania. They form part of a series and they will be discussed by comparison, seeing that there are some similarities but especially differences in the way in which their topic is structured and approached. These differences derive from the distinct evolution of the two shows and from the feedback received from members of the trans community. Patrick Br˘aila speaks of this process in the interview he gave for this book: What I really liked was the fact that Paul asked for our opinions from the very beginning, from The Institute of Change. And we were able to chip in with opinions and feedback and I thought this thing was wonderful and I believe that it led to the creation of At the Institute of Change and I think it’s wonderful that this happened. I know that Paul intends to produce yet another show that will include trans individuals. In a way, if we take these three stages and set them to a timeline, it seems to me like it’s a beautiful evolution and we should appreciate that [Paul] understood that you can’t create anything about something that you don’t have a firsthand understanding of, and I thought it was beautiful what he did, that he included us in an open manner and that he listened [to us]. Practically, that was it. He listened and he understood. (interview with Patrick Br˘aila 2017)

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There are very few cultural products in the Romanian space involving the individuals they speak of, taking into account other perspectives, especially since they build on discriminated individuals and individuals in vulnerable situations. One positive example is the entire work of Roma activist, actress, playwright and director Alina S, erban, who, in theatre plays such as Declar pe propria r˘aspundere (I declare at my own risk, 2011), narrates and performs her own experience of racism and poverty. There are numerous counterexamples in which the artists choose to enact “social problems”, capitalising on other people’s experiences and contributing to the exoticising process without making a real difference to the lives of those whom they describe or use as “research material” for the products they create. Often plays of socially engaged theatre, such as several of the plays of Stagiunea de teatru politic (The Political Theatre Season)5 may fall in this category. The ethical process of working with interviews in a socially engaged way, and creating from that cultural products aiming to activate a sense of involvement and understanding in the participating audience, is very nuanced and important. Since these cultural products with an activist undertow are created in order not only to bring an issue to light, but also to receive funding, and need to receive funding in order to be developed and presented publicly, it is very important to see whose experience is used in them, and what effect has the cultural product on the persons whose experience it embodied or translates. Of course, there is no implicit need for artists or cultural producers to be socially involved, but in the above-mentioned examples, just as in the Institute of Change series, the activist purpose is clearly stated and is part of the essence of the cultural products. Within the two shows under discussion, one can speak of the interactive-performative dimension (Bamberg 2012) that is built, as we will soon see, both on narratives presented as performative acts and on interactions with the audience and elements of movement (corporality) or which pertain to the dynamic of the stage (light play, décor elements). The first show, The Institute of Change, is produced entirely in English, a choice that might seem somewhat uninspired, seeing that it limits the access of those who do not speak the language. The show’s atmosphere 5 The Political Theatre Season is a yearly season of plays which engage topics of social injustice, often based on research and interviews, with the activist goal to bring these topics to light. It is organised from 2010 onward by an independent theatre group and hosted by independent cultural venues.

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is created using music, which has a gradual character and used in such a way as to suggest change and evolution; if the musical pieces used at the start of the show are current songs with sexist connotations, the theme later switches to classical music, and the final songs speak of love and acceptance, notions that the performers also aim to guide the audience towards. The differences in approach between the two shows are obvious and deepened by the interactive component (interactions with the audience), which is a lot more emphatic in the first show. In this show, members of the Institute of Change, armed with pistols in the colours of the Romanian flag, take the members of the audience hostage, with the stated aim of “changing” them. The performers’ lines are shouted, and the artists create a mix of tension and hilarity through their presence in the audience and the orders they give out. The Institute of Change is described as a clinic that specialises in sex reassignment surgeries, and its members ironically embody the stated fears of homophobic individuals who claim that the affirmation of queer rights will negatively impact them, modifying their own sexuality. This defective “argument”, frequently evoked in the public sphere, is augmented by the ideals of the Institute, which include “castrating the authoritarian system”. These ideals are twinned with ten “principles” that recall the biblical commandments. In this same show, the members of the Institute—trans and intersex individuals—are pictured ironically, with emphasis on the biological component of their identity, as well as their physical appearance. The notion of change is the leitmotif of the play and it is expressed without subtleties, in continuous interaction with the audience: in one of the play’s scenes, the artists choose a volunteer from the audience, whom we are told will undergo a change. During the show’s opening, one individual was asked to come onto the stage, where they stayed for a long while, having their hair styled. The dances performed by the characters break up the show, facilitating a coherent transition between different stories, and suggesting the notion of common bodies dressed in similar elastic outfits, while the light play directs the audience’s attention to different places, being essential to the participatory aspect of the play. In this show, there are also certain elements that might appear problematic when it comes to the representation of trans individuals, though these elements were eliminated in the second show. One example of a problematic element is that of asking trans men questions about their

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identities up until they started transitioning and whether they miss that identity or not, as well as alluding to their reproductive organs. Towards the end of the play, the interactive component becomes the main mode of conducting the show; members of the audience are asked or, more precisely, summoned to interact with those around them by shaking hands, they are questioned as to whether or not they own a Bible, whether they enjoy being Romanian, whether they were the outcome of unplanned pregnancies, what kinds of sexual organs they have, whether they are married, etc. Some of these questions and the ensuing labelling can, of course, be sensitive for some—end especially so for the trans individuals who are the focus of this show. At the same time, getting members of the audience to step outside of their comfort zone is the premise on which this initial version of the show is built. At the end of the play, the audience find themselves on stage and is split according to their sexual orientation. This is another sensitive issue, seeing that the notion of coming out, especially when it takes place in a theatre, surrounded by strangers, should occur out of one’s own initiative rather than by coercion, because of injunctions such as: “Don’t be shy, it’s 2014!” This issue was also discussed by my interviewees, some of them pointing out that this approach was rather problematic. For example, Ruth Borgfjord points out: “I find it interesting that some people said this [the show] was a pleasant experience, while others said that it was extremely unpleasant, being asked to come up on the stage and self-identify. I don’t think I would have found it OK”. Stories of trans individuals and the transitions they undertook are transferred to the audience and their reactions in front of artists that aptly relay moments of change and interactions that gradually lead to the desired outcome; of course, one could say that the audiences that frequent CNDB (National Dance Centre Bucharest) productions already have some experience when it comes to contemporary art and they find it easier to participate in performative shows characterised by interactions (between the artists and the public). The artists left these (problematic) elements out in their second play, At the Institute of Change. Several people from the trans community in Romania were involved in the creation of this show, though only insofar as they agreed to be interviewed to inform it. This play is performed in Romanian, and the performers’ lines are based on mixed selections from the interviews with trans men and women. The differences in approach

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between the two shows are discussed by some of the interview participants. Commenting on the activist side of these shows, and on one of aims of some of the queer cultural products under discussion, to represent queer identities by offering support to individuals who had not, thus far, been represented in mainstream cultural products, Simona Dumitriu notes: […] they do occur in certain situations, especially when it’s the case of people from the queer community who also create them [these cultural products], or in the case of cultural products created in close collaboration with people from the community. It seems to me that this idea of mutual support, of building a history that could then become useful to others in one way or another does exist. […] On some level it seems to me that this idea is also put forth by the two plays, The Institute of Change and At the Institute of Change, because in them, one of the main organisers, Paul Dunca, is a queer artist and activist, and at the same time at least the second [show], well, the first… whatever. But the second [show] seemed more interesting because practically there they actually worked with people from the trans community and at least, well, I can’t know for sure how well those individuals felt that their experiences were reflected [by the show] and so on, but in fact it [the show] goes both ways, it could also function as a support for other individuals, I can’t tell, I have a lot of questions about this project. (interview with Simona Dumitriu 2017)

The artist’s wish to educate the public via bits of information sprinkled throughout the show is translated by Vava S, tef˘anescu and Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker, who play the roles of presenters. Unlike the first version of this play, the second takes the shape of a “bio-info-show”, in which the didactic component is at the forefront; the performers explain, throughout the show, what the terms “cisgender” and “trans” mean, the difference between gender identity and sexual identity, they offer information about the effect of hormones etc. These informational moments are doubled by the experiences of those who were interviewed at the research stage, and they are interpreted in line with the identities and biographical elements of the people who form the basis of this story. The discourse regarding the activity of the Institute is maintained, by and large, with the addition of the fact that, in this show, it does not aim to “turn women into men and vice versa”, but to fictionalise the social statuses and gender roles linked to these two categories. The discourse is

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much more fluid than it was in the first play, and it occurs at the same time when the characters perform slow, synchronised movements of contemporary dance. This play keeps the uniformly coloured bodycon outfits, but throughout the show, the performers change their clothes in ways that suggest the identities of the different characters; at the end of the show, they all change back into the initial outfits. Compared to the first version of the show, in the second play there is also a change in the “principles” of the Institute, which formerly featured ironic elements; this time around, the 10 principles chiefly refer to love, affirming one’s identity and maintaining it regardless of external factors, facing fears and renouncing hate, seeing gender as fluid. The interaction with the audience also undergoes some changes, as the interactive component is drastically reduced and only plays a minimal role, when the performers hand the members of the audience photos from the childhood and adolescence of the trans people whose stories they are performing. The hate that trans people experience from those around them is suggested through moments to which non-binary people can easily relate: the ways in which they are treated by those who knew them before their transition and who deny their gender identity, feeling othered due to the reactions that society at large has to the identity of a transgender individual, due to the harassment and offensive words trans individuals experience. A second theme addressed in this show is that of religion, and the ways in which the religious choices of others impact trans individuals, as well as these individuals’ own thoughts about religious topics. The show performs a natural transition between this topic and the way in which its six characters were received by their families. Some of the characters have parents who easily accepted their gender identities and respected their decisions, whereas others recall moments that suggest the opposite: some parents sent their offspring to the psychiatrist, and others refused to accept their children’s gender identities, choosing to use the wrong pronouns when referring to them. Insofar as the beginnings of the gender identity search are concerned, the show portrays childhood scenes that reflect the characters’ wish to affirm their true identities: from trying on mother’s clothes to rejecting the inflexibility of gender roles (“When I grew older, the boys no longer let me come to football games with them. They said that football was for boys only”), some instances of acceptance (“My parents allowed me to

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express myself. They didn’t make me wear specific clothes or play with specific toys”), the process of minimising a gender the character did not align with (“I was in first or second grade. The boys would beat up the girls, and I felt like a girl, but I was forced to be a boy”). These social pressures, even in the early phases of development and the search for identity, can have repercussions; this show mentions suicidal ideation as part of the story of a trans boy who falls in love with a girl in high school, and the fear of rejection because of his gender identity leads him to attempt suicide. Yet in the end the character does confess his feelings to the girl and she understands and accepts him: “It was OK, because these things don’t matter at that age anyway”. But this is based on one personal experience that cannot be generalised. The show then tackles the issue of the Romanian healthcare system and the processes that trans people have to undergo in Romania in order to have their identity recognised. Healthcare practitioners play an important role in these processes, since in order to get one’s data amended on a national ID card and to obtain a personal numeric code that features the correct gender-coding digit,6 one needs to obtain, first and foremost, a diagnosis from a specialised medical doctor. At some point during the show it is pointed out that, after 1989, only about 15 individuals have been able to request and obtain an amended personal numeric code reflecting their correct gender identity. The terminology used by medical professionals when issuing the necessary “diagnosis”, and changes to this terminology, are portrayed ironically: “The diagnosis used to be ‘gender identity disorder’. Now they call it ‘dysphoria’. Now we’re no longer disorderly, we’re just sad”. The show recalls fragments of discussions with doctors that emphasise the arbitrariness of these diagnoses, as well as a poor understanding of gender identity among healthcare practitioners. One example of a doctor’s reply is: “Why do you want to do this thing? As a girl, you’d be just as pretty”. The show also emphasises the existence of a double standard in discourses around mastectomy in the context of affirming one’s gender identity: it is portrayed as mutilation, while breast implants are not seen in the same way as long as the person asking for them is a cisgender woman.

6 In the Romanian system, the personal identification number begins with the number that shows the persons’ assigned sex: 1 for male and 2 for female.

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A dearth of medical specialists, the fact that they are not accountable when they prescribe or administer hormone replacement therapy to a trans individual, or even yet their reticence or ill will manifested in medical practice7 contribute to the creation of an oppressive system that minimises the opportunity of trans individuals to have their correct gender recognised. The pathologizing of trans individuals’ gender identity is also worsened by the intervention of the judiciary system. Thus, at various points in this show, the audience finds out that trans individuals undergo numerous psychological and psychiatric tests and hospitalisations; at the same time, before being granted permission to start hormone replacement therapy, they are required to live for a year in conformity with their own gender identity but without undergoing any body modifications, which leads to heightened pressures from those around them and experiencing the obligatory transphobic comments. All through these years, trans individuals must put together a file, to finally depend entirely on the will of a judge who will decide whether or not they are allowed to obtain official documents reflecting their gender identity: “After the Institute of Legal Medicine (Institutul de Medicin˘a Legal˘a) grants its approval, a judge decides: ‘No, better not’”. The problematic attitudes of those on whom this process depends on come across from the witness statement of another character in the show: “Legal, there’s no such thing as legal. I tried it 10 years ago. The judge asked me: ‘Miss X, we only recognise the male and the female genders. What are you? What’s hidden in your underwear, eh?’”. Based on all these experiences, some trans people are able to transform their fight on the activist side. The character who stands for Patrick Br˘aila asserts that he wishes to publicise the process he underwent and improve visibility in the press; this is, of course, one way of contributing to the activism of trans people. The legislative fight is followed by the story of some experiences with hormone replacement treatment, its effects recounted in a personal manner, as well as the difficulty of accessing HRT (hormone replacement therapy). The price difference of these treatments from pharmacy to pharmacy is emphasised in the case of testosterone, which is sold at prices that 7 One of the stories in the play recalls a dialogue between a trans man and a medical practitioner who, after the man’s ironic answer to her question about available funds for gender-affirming surgery, noted on the diagnostic sheet that he counted on the fact that he would win the lottery.

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are forbidding for most trans men, versus similar products sold online and classified as steroids, which are much more accessibly priced. Some of the themes of the show, which relate to trans individuals’ choice whether or not to undergo surgery, and to their romantic relationships, are followed by some final questions and thoughts regarding the necessity of transition in a world in which sexes might not exist, regarding the fact that an individual can choose not to reject their pre-transition period, as well as to other people’s perception of trans bodies. The end of the show is also different from that of the previous play, and the voice of Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker stands for an epilogue that addresses rhetorical questions to the audience, such as: “Have you enjoyed each part you have discovered up till now? Are you still exploring? Are you still exposing yourselves?”. The two shows, and especially At the Institute of Change, use the means of research and methods derived from social theatre and combined with contemporary dance with a clear and well-defined purpose: that of educating the public and offering perspectives that people may not have previously had access to on a topic that is still widely regarded as taboo, even in creative circles. The approach of the show’s creator has also shifted as they became more sensitive to the topic at hand following their discussions with members of the trans community in Romania. Following the approach of researchers Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, one can note that the first show, especially, was built not just as a form of critique of, and resistance to the norm (Hall & Jefferson 1975), but by using certain normative elements, also as a means of offering an alternative norm, formulated in an authoritative way, similar to the heteronormative norm characteristic of Romanian society. Here are two of the reactions to the show coming from interviewees who contributed to the research work at hand. Valentina Iancu emphasises the fact that, for her it was important to find out what happens within the trans community, to find out more about the personal experiences of trans individuals, seeing that she knew little of the realities they faced. Ruth Borgfjord places this cultural product within the wider sphere of queer-themed products: I find interesting what happened to plays with queer themes. First of all, they clearly intend to educate and inform, telling somebody’s story in order to sensitise the public. They have a clear audience, and there’s a hope that they’ll get something out of it. Insofar as their aesthetic is concerned, they

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have to have a presence or something extra. I liked The Institute of Change because it managed to combine these two things, that’s what it seemed like to me, as opposed to that play about gay history in Romania. (interview with Ruth Borgfjord 2017)

Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker also spoke to me about the motivations that drive them in their creative practice, and about the way in which they work to build their queer cultural products: I have always worked with my own identity and my own body. I was lucky that I didn’t find it difficult to assume my identity. My activist and artistic pursuit is a physical one. It is overwhelming at times, especially for me, but my aim is that my every act on stage bring some extra queerness into the Universe. Keith Hennessy with his cu theory of queer performance helped me to become aware of the fact that I am part of and I represent this side of culture. The greatest stake of my activity is to render the local queer community visible. (interview with Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker 2017)

In this fragment of our interview, the artist mentions their theoretical background and emphasises the strong link between the personal and the activist dimensions that drive them, noting that this correlation also appears within the cultural products in which they participate or which they initiate. One could say, using Gelder’s concept of subcultural geography (Gelder 2007), that the two shows manage to break into the niche of queer productions both from a thematic point of view and from the point of view of their structure, as well as thanks to elements that differentiate them from similar so-called mainstream productions. Coming back to Gelder, the space in which the two shows are performed, CNDB, has in time become both a space for contemporary art, and a place for queer cultural products, opening the opportunity to watch media products with this theme in a safe environment that rejects the homophobic tendencies of society at large.

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Gadjo Dildo Gadjo Dildo (2015) is a show by Mihaela Dr˘agan, Roma activist and feminist actress. Alongside her colleagues, the cofounders of feminist Roma acting company Giuvlipen,8 Elena Duminic˘a and Zita Moldovan, created a play with cabaret influences that revolves around issues such as the racist exoticisation of Roma women by non-Roma men, and sexuality in relation to the homophobia that sometimes occurs in Roma communities and, by extension, in Romanian society. The play includes the stories of three women and their lives in a patriarchal and heterosexual context. Each character is based on a real individual, and they are built on various life stories set in contrast to the cultural and media clichés that frame these personal experiences. The play opens with the voice of an anthropologist welcoming the audience to a show that celebrates “diversity and exoticism” as stereotyping and offensive words and phrases used to describe Roma people in the public discourse are projected in the background. The classic anthropological gaze, which assesses from a distance and offers a normed view of whole social groups, ignoring individualities and strengthening stereotypes is thus satirised. With manele (Roma pop folk music specific to Romania) playing in the background, the show presents the stories of three Roman women that emphasise the ways in which they are presented in the media, and the ways in which other people relate to them based on their ethnicity. “I’m from Lupeni. How exotic is Lupeni?” The moments of irony play into the criticism targeting this type of gaze. One of the three characters is a lesbian woman who, after a disappointment in love, is fighting to start a new romantic relationship with another woman. This fight, this effort, is rendered more difficult by the fact that her own community rejects the notion that a woman can identify with any orientation other than heterosexual. Through the voice of Mihaela Dr˘agan, the character recalls how, when she was sixteen, some men wanted to rape her to “correct her tendencies” and she got away only because she had learned to fight to defend herself—and since then she has continued to fight. The story of Stela, a Roma lesbian woman, which stands at the core of the character played by Mihaela Dr˘agan is intertwined, much like the

8 An imagined Romani term for “feminism”.

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other two stories, with live musical performances by the artists, and interventions of the anthropologist’s voice, which capture the ways in which non-Roma men view and sexualise Roma women, wishing to hear that they are “nomadic”, expecting these women not to talk too much and at the same time to fulfil their “most exotic fantasies”. These moments can be a reminder of the hundreds of years of Roma enslavement on the territory that we now call Romania, and especially the sexual abuses perpetrated by slave owners against enslaved Roma individuals. Stela is also sexualised in a heteronormative context, being referred to as a “mean and sexy crook”, and her sexuality is viewed as a novelty and a turn-on by heterosexual men. Some of her romantic pursuits are recounted, including her childhood crushes, sprinkled with humorous elements that reflect the ignorance of the people surrounding her with respect to her identity as a lesbian. Her gestures of affection are viewed as akin to those shared between friends: “Get a clue. A hand on the thigh when we sit next to each other? A kiss on the lips rather than the cheek, eh? And they all think ‘how warm she is!’”. This implicit negation of her sexuality is accompanied by brief suggestions of homophobia experienced within the Roma community: “You’re a dyke […] the gypsies will kill you”. The homophobia of the people that Stela interacts with is emphasised in her story about a work colleague who rejects her flirtations and wonders at the fact that a Roma person can be queer: “I never thought that a cute little gypsy like you could be an invert”. Facing a series of stereotypes about Roma women, the show brings up the issue of the stigmatisation of lesbian women, at the same time ridiculing the homophobic reactions of mistrust, rejection, and continuous sexualisation that some Romanian queer women go on to experience. Gadjo Dildo is unique in Romanian theatre, as it is not just a play about racism, but also about misogyny and homophobia, a play created and acted by Roma women who speak of themselves and other Roma women. The racial and gender identities featured therein contribute to the authenticity and the strength of the show, which is why the play is set apart from other contemporary cultural manifestations that usually only manage to weakly mimic the notion of experience, real life, and their consequences. The strength of Gadjo Dildo also comes from the unfiltered, “witness testimony” approach through which the three performers narrate the life stories of their characters. As Arlene Stein and Ken Plummer noted, “[t]here is a dangerous tendency for the new queer theorists to

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ignore ‘real’ queer life as it is materially experienced across the world, while they play with the free-floating signifiers of texts” (Plummer 1994, 184). In other words, although narratives about the subject, connotations and various interpretations that a text may have are welcome, we ought not to forget to refer to the wider context and the intrinsic links between lived experience and its presentation. The homophobia present in the Roma society that she inhabits, which is subscribed to the general homophobia characteristic of the Romanian society forms an important part of the experience recalled by the Roman lesbian, but the play also tackles another subject that has never before been approached in an intersectional manner in other cultural products: the way in which racism affects those who identify both as Roma and as queer, and the fact that Roma individuals, be they queer or straight, can and do experience racism at the hands of queer white Romanians. Woodcock examines the exclusions brought about by the “LGBT+ ” community in Romania starting from the reactions to Madonna’s statement from her 2009 concert in Bucharest, in which the singer was condemning the discrimination of Roma people and queer individuals in Romania and Eastern Europe. Woodcock notes that the reactions of individuals who self-identified as queer were in line with the reaction of the general public as a racist anti-Roma response (Woodcock 2011, 77). The present analysis was primarily based on the intersectional elements of the show, which tackles social factors such as ethnicity, class, sexuality and gender, and Gadjo Dildo is the first of its kind in the world of contemporary Romanian theatre.

Parallel Parallel is a show at the intersection between theatre, contemporary dance, performative art and stand-up comedy. It was made in ClujNapoca and launched at the Temps D’Images festival, directed by Leta Popescu and Ferenc Sinkó. The two performers, Kata Bodoki-Halmen and Lucia M˘arneanu put on an acting tour-de-force, boosted by the emotional charge of a play that stages multiple perspectives on the queer body via the bodies of queer actresses, or actresses who support the queer community. In a complex interview published on the teatrul-azi.ro

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website,9 the two performers and the directors of the play explain that Parallel was built on a collaborative process, generated and inspired from the very beginning by Bodoki-Halmen. Multimodality is key to analysing this show, alongside the operational concepts of heteronormativity and queerness. The intersectional dimension is poorly represented, seeing that the gender and sexual identities that the show refers to are tackled separately. The study of the two performers’ movements, of their gestures, the tonality of their voices, the scenography and use of lighting all contribute to defining and transmitting the play’s core message (Kress 2009). I watched the show in 2014 at the National Dance Centre Bucharest; the reactions from audience members were mixed—some of the scenes, such as the jokes about lesbians from the stand-up comedy segment had the opposite effect to the one the play was aiming for. One such reaction came from the artist Ruth Borgfjord: […] the play Parallel, which was in some way important to us because it was made in Cluj, and we want to support the endeavours of LGBT women from Cluj, but its subject is obviously a self-acceptance story. Both from a visual and a poetic point of view I thought it was really cool, it won Lucia [Lucia M˘arneanu] the Uniter prize. But interestingly, when I got to watch it it blew my fuse; there was a bit where they were telling sexist, homophobic jokes and I found it curious that everyone around me was laughing. Maybe some were aware of this, some not, but this perfectly described, at least for me, the internal fight with hate for oneself, internalised hate that leads you to deride your own personality, your own being. In terms of the production, I found it very interesting that it was the vice fear, that is, the director and the actors worked on the text and on the entire play together, they all gave their input, the lines were written by each of the actresses. And I found interesting what Lucia wrote about what it means to be lesbian, and how she concludes by talking about her father, drawing some parallels with god, with god the father and so on, in a way I felt that they were describing my own trajectory, and on another level I found what Kata was doing, visually and performatively, stunning. (interview with Ruth Borgfjord 2017).

9 https://teatrul-azi.ro/interviu-pe-mai-multe-voci-lucia-marneanu-kata-bodoki-hal men-leta-popescu-si-ferenc-sinko-in-dialog-cu-mirela-sandu/ [accessed 5 January 2023].

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The play’s title is brought out by the mise-en-scène: a screen divides the space in two, each of the actresses occupying one of the “rooms” thus formed. The first few moments of the play show the performers doing aerobics, sometimes with synchronised movements. The music combines strong moments with electronic tones, and the protagonists’ movements imply strength most of all and they suggest the fight with their own bodies. The décor is minimalist, and the centrepieces in the first part of the show are two urinals incorporated into the contemporary dance sequences. Their use in the play is a metaphor for something that is taken as belonging exclusively to cisgender men. Other attributes of masculinity are suggested by the scenes in which the two performers play football and show off their muscles through slow movements and by contorting their bodies. The transition to the second part of the play is done via a simple play of lights (lights are alternately turned on and then off on the two halves of the stage, revealing parts of the two characters’ actions); the two performers get ready for two drag king acts that are going to take the shape of stand-up comedy moments. The transactional action is unidirectional (Kress & Leeuwen 2006), as the two characters, Bon, who notes that he can also be referred to as Alice, and Fabian alternately perform their monologues, with their voices occasionally blending and overlapping. Bob/Alice’s performance style is characteristic of comedy or variety shows, while Fabian maintains an arrogant and stern complexion, embodying the self-sufficient type; much of his speech has sexist undertones and focuses on the relation with women around him. On occasion, the lines of the monologues are structured as replies to each other. Fabian’s tirade of homophobic, racist, and sexist jokes is accompanied by Bob/Alice’s songs about loss, suicide, about the multiple identities found in the lesbian sphere. The jokes’ ambivalent nature is explained within the monologue: if heterosexuality is the “normal” state, then jokes about straight people are not funny; on the contrary, jokes about queer people suggest that they are not viewed as belonging in the sphere of “normalcy”. Simona Dumitriu spoke about the impact of the jokes featured in the play in one of our interviews: I found it very interesting and very cool, and in fact the two girls’ performance seemed quite exceptional. At the same time, however, I thought that the way in which they worked with certain topics was wrong and

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overcomplicated. That is, as long as they didn’t speak, everything was generally very neat. But when they spoke… for example, one of the scenes that stuck with me was a series of jokes about lesbians, the types of jokes you find online and that were delivered in a deadpan manner by one of the performers, which, oh well, although they probably intended this to form part of a difficult and tense situation in which she [the performer] faces all these clichés and sometimes mean words within these jokes that were sometimes inside jokes, the kind of jokes that queer women might exchange between themselves. Yet I found them extremely damaging delivered to the audience at the National Dance Centre Bucharest, a very mixed sort of audience, primarily made out of straight people, of course, who laughed, guffawed, it was a moment that probably, in the actresses’ or the director’s vision should have been… I’m not entirely sure what it should have been, but it was certainly not OK for me as someone who identifies as a lesbian. For me it was a moment of torture. I remember this scene and the play because I think that was the first time in my life (and I’m not exaggerating) that I realised how tricky it is to utter certain words in front of an audience that doesn’t have the same decoding tools for the same words as you do. At the same time, I found it an interesting play, that’s why it stuck in my memory. (interview with Simona Dumitriu 2017)

The lines are in English and, towards the end of the play, the Romanian translation is projected in the background. The producers chose to translate these final lines that capture the essence of the show: souls that cure themselves of their diseases but can a body cure itself of its own soul? our Father, Who art in heaven - maybe? our Mother, Who art in the kitchen - maybe? our most-wiping mother most-scrubbing most-slicing most-grating most-disinfecting, most-brushing [...]

It goes on to list other stereotypes found within the traditional family, in which gender roles appear to be well established, and which this show tackles from a critical perspective. The show’s ending goes back to the theme of corporality and sexual identity: “what is the name of this disease that doesn’t allow me to love my body? that makes me ashamed of every crumb of love I feel?”.

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Ending on this note, it ties the homophobic elements found in society to certain forms of internalised homophobia; it also suggests the internal struggles of some trans people who do not identify with the bodily image imposed on them at birth. In fact, the relationship between the language used in the play and societal issues adds to the significance of the core message of this media product and the ways in which it can be decoded by the public (Chandler 2002). This show is an instance of tackling and combining the themes of sexism, homophobia, and transphobia and that of different sexualities into a coherent endeavour, a feat that only very few productions from the queer sphere manage to successfully attain. Focusing particularly on the research component that led to the creation of these forms of artistic expression, the products selected to be analysed in this chapter are some of the first to bring issues such as homophobia, transphobia, and the fluidity of gender roles into the space of theatre and contemporary performance. With some exceptions, one can observe therein a tendency to minimise the décor and window dressing in favour of the words, texts and emotions they set out to pass on; in each case, real people and real stories form the basis of these shows. The selected media products under analysis belong to the sphere of shows with a profound social element, offering an alternative to audiences who either find their identities reflected in these products, or wish to learn more about the themes tackled in these shows.

References Bamberg, Michael. “Narrative Analysis”, In Cooper, H. (Ed.), APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology. APA Press, pp. 77–94, 2012. Buhuceanu, Florin. Homoistorii. Bucharest: Maiko, 2011. Chandler, Daniel. Semiotics. The Basics. London: Routledge, 2002. Freeman, Elizabeth. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Gelder, Ken. Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice. London: Routledge, 2007. Hall, Stuart, Jefferson, Tony. Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Hutchinson, 1975. Herman, Luc, Vervaeck, Bret. Handbook of Narrative Analysis. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Kress, Gunther. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge, 2009.

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Kress, Gunther, van Leeuwen, Theo. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. New York: Routledge, 2006. Lorenz, Renate. Queer Art. A Freak Theory. Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, 2012. Modreanu, Cristina. Fluturela Gladiator. Teatru Politic, Queer & feminist pe scena româneasc˘a. Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2016. Pickering, Michael. (Ed.). Research Methods for Cultural Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Plummer, Ken. Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds (1st ed.). New York: Routledge, 1994. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Touching, Feeling. Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Woodcock, Shannon, “A Short History of the Queer Time of “Post-socialist” Romania, or, Are We There Yet? Let’s Ask Madonna!”, In Kulpa, Robert and Mizielinska, Joanna (Eds.), De-Centring Western Sexualities: Central and Eastern European Perspectives, pp.63–84. Ashgate, 2011.

CHAPTER 7

Issues Raised by the Interviews

The interviews were meant to complement the present analyses by providing a sample of the current state of so-called Romanian queer culture. At the same time, the interviewees offered not only details about their own cultural products but also criticism of other queer media products with which they came into contact. A good part of the discussions focused on the general dimension of the queer cultural movement and on both the impediments as well as the implied strategies of opening up queer discourses. Regarding the question of the existence of a local queer culture, most of the respondents consider that the last few years witnessed the laying of the foundations of such a culture, still in its early stages, and characterised by the historical recovery and the reinterpretation of important historical moments regarding Romanian queer people. Another mentioned component is the theme parties organised in various clubs which have contributed to the construction of a queer social scene but which, of course, are not defining for all queer people; this scene is mainly found in Bucharest and some of the big cities (Cluj-Napoca and Timis, oara). Valentina Iancu (2017) touches upon the dynamics of this cultural scene: It’s difficult, because these are isolated initiatives, and there are more and more isolated initiatives that are important and which put things into motion and do things, but in order to talk about a culture, I feel that we need more than that. Perhaps also some institutions that produce and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Dima, Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38849-1_7

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support such a thing. In the absence of an institution and an infrastructure to support the development of a queer culture, it’s rather difficult.

These “isolated initiatives” are in fact one of the characteristics of the analysed queer products. From the perspective of correlating their coherence and dialogue, it can be observed that not often, certain media products tend to create new lines of discussion without appealing to or referring to previous artistic instances that had already set out to address them. In order to obtain a typology of queer culture in the local space, it is necessary to link artistic and media products, and to place them in various thematic and representational planes that are constantly in conversation with contexts and research currents that bring them together. Valentina Iancu suggests such an approach by appealing to the institutional dimension, which could facilitate the process of shaping a queer culture that goes beyond the patterns of categories understood as subcultures (Gelder 2007). The curator also refers to the lack of strong cultural policies that can support alternative initiatives. Queer-themed cultural products are often funded as a part of larger projects which obtain funding from the state or from various private or own sources: There are people who put in the work, that’s for sure, but from what I see, there is a tendency to migrate. In the community, people who work in culture don’t want to stay and live here because it’s difficult. Nobody supports you, you have no money, you have to fund your projects with your own money. You have to work in another field to produce culture and it’s not realistic. Volunteer for the country until when? After all, all the cultural actors who have produced queer projects here have done it out of pocket, with very few exceptions. (Valentina Iancu 2017)

Because local artistic production is often underfunded, this aspect became a leitmotif in the discussions conducted in this part of my fieldwork. An often-stated issue is the impossibility of artists working exclusively in the field; in fact, most of the people involved in artistic, queer and other media productions end up resorting to external resources such as a second job, not related to their domain, to finance their endeavours. In this sense, we can also speak of a typology of self-employed artists. Additionally, still on the matter of funding, the artist Ruth Borgfjord captures the inconsistency between homophobic public discourse and the reluctance of state institutions to discuss queer issues and the fact that, at

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the same time, some queer projects end up being funded through these very institutions: “[…] all my projects have been funded through the City Hall, I don’t know if they comprehend these things. And these children’s books, or books for girls, or empowering books, all my books that feature LGBT couples, all were funded through AFCN and the Cluj City Hall” (Ruth Borgfjord). The paradoxical way in which certain cultural products get funding from institutions that have not so far shown support for human rights and LGBT+ issues is also discussed by Simona Dumitriu: And then the question is to what extent the political context will continue to ensure the funding of such projects. That’s why I’m saying that the political context will likely step back from funding them, not that they are massively funding them at the moment, and probably now they actually only get funded because they are masked under other words. I can’t know for sure, but I can imagine this happening, and most likely, yes, they will operate underground more and more. […] One thing that is quite interesting, if we were to go back a year or two, when Bucharest was in the middle of a campaign for the city of culture, is that somehow, through the committees and commissions that were set up at that time to create the identity and image of Bucharest, and through the projects that were organised at that time, in fact, some projects that were initiated by people who had experienced various forms of discrimination, managed to emerge and slip in: LGBT people or Roma people, among others, something that quite amazed me back in those days. At the moment, for example, I’m not sure about how open they still are towards funding such projects. Probably if things continue at this nationalistic pace that manifested itself, in 10 years’ time we will probably see more and more Romanian queer cultural products made from… I don’t know, Uppsala or from... whatever Finnish island or who knows where, where [the artists] had decided to go or can go. Sure, probably from here too, but I don’t know. I realise that I’m contradicting what I was saying before, yes, I think that there will be more of them, they will probably be more insistent about the social, and the geographical context in which we find ourselves, and which will also change, and probably the social context will change, too. At the same time, yes, I’m trying to think… what it’s going to look like, I don’t know, I don’t know if there will be less money. Probably in 10 years’ time there will be less funding, the underground scene will probably be larger. (interview with Simona Dumitriu 2017)

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This fragment articulates a nuanced opinion that captures the two directions of the answers: the optimistic one, which consists in luring funders towards queer-themed projects, but also the pessimistic one regarding the tendency of marginalising such projects, with the strengthening of radical discourses and policies against minorities. The emergence of the majority of queer cultural products depends on access to funding and, implicitly, on the policies of the institutions and people who make up the decisionmakers in the process of selecting projects, in the competition for funding. Thus, one can draw some parallels between local plans for public institutions and their openness to non-heteronormative cultural elements. In this respect, we have followed, through constant reference to the sociopolitical context, the evolution of these products, both in terms of their content and in terms of the possibilities that led to their emergence. In terms of the existence of queer culture, Ruth Borgfjord mentions the importance of local (formal and informal) queer associations and their role in building queer people’s sense of belonging and safety, as well as providing platforms for discussion, or creating various projects. For the artist, queer culture also encompasses “the lifestyle and identities in the community”. In the interviews, one witnesses a broadening of the understanding of the term queer, a dimension that was not emphasised in the section on defining and problematising operational concepts. As Ruth Borgfjord and Roxana Marin also pointed out, the idea of queer does not only refer to non-normative sexualities, but also includes life experiences, ways of relating to society or to one’s own styles and choices, whether cultural or stylistic. Here is a suggestive association regarding the idea of queer identities and the way they can be perceived and shaped: [queer] is not something that I associate only or primarily with sexual orientations, it is a thing that I associate with the contestation of a state, of an order that is based on the idea of the existence of certain prescribed roles, a normality of social functions, of men and women, and this gives rise to or maintains or increases some very nasty social inequalities, and I associate the idea of queer primarily with this. The idea of fighting the inequity that arises from gender norms and rules. (interview with Roxana Marin 2017)

Throughout this book, the term queer has been used in a narrow sense, referring to sexuality. Of course, meanings such as the one used by Roxana

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Marin are not unique and provide a starting point for a broader discussion on mechanisms of oppression, power relations in society, and their intrinsic connection to gender roles. This intersection of inequities that are established according to the identities and backgrounds of individuals, is an important point also addressed in the cultural products analysed, albeit on a factual level, in close relation to the actions depicted and the typologies of the characters. In an extension of her argument, Roxana Marin believes that lately there has been an important growth within the local cultural scene. A possible reason for this growing trend in the sphere of queer culture, as suggested by Roma artist and activist Mihaela Dragan, may also be the increasing number of reactions, as well as the need to express and counteract the discourse of the Coalition for the Family. Paradoxically, this initiative is seen as one of the coagulating elements of the queer community, if only in the sense that more and more people are beginning to express their support for the community. The same somewhat laxer perspective on the term is to be found in the view expressed by Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker, for whom: “the term queer is still an open one that can encompass everything that is identified with the non-normative (anti-heteronormativity or antihomonormativity). Queer culture is everything that those who identify themselves under its umbrella display and pass on in this sense”. Therefore, one can speak of a local queer culture that has local features and elements. Naturally, even if Romanian queer studies are inscribed within the broader field of gender studies in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and post-soviet spaces, the local nuances given by the history of queer people in Romania are, of course, to be found at the level of culture or the construction of queer products. Patrick Br˘aila encapsulates how queer culture represents an artistic outlet and means of identity expression. In his opinion, queer culture is a burgeoning culture which “is gaining momentum and becoming more vocal as a result. Its general history is gaining weight”. In agreement with Valentina Iancu and Simona Dumitriu, the director and trans activist considers that a milestone for the manifestation of the local queer culture was the repeal of Article 200. Although there were queer-themed artistic manifestations before 2001, as noted throughout the book, there was a much more rapid increase in queer products after that period. The term queer culture has also faced criticism from visual artist Adrian Newell P˘aun:

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I think there are people of queer culture, there are artists, painters, actors, directors who make queer works, events, films, artworks with a queer subject-matter and which display the visual aesthetic of a queer person. But as an umbrella term that covers everything, I personally don’t think there is such a thing as queer culture in that sense. I think we are part of the big culture. But we operate inside a niche. (interview with Adrian Newell P˘aun 2017)

Here is another perspective that confirms the diversity of opinions within the queer community regarding the terms used in discourses on thematic cultural products in particular. During the interview with Adrian P˘aun, we observed his tendency to place artistic productions within the general lines of culture, distinguishing himself from terms such as subculture, but at the same time maintaining that these products belong to a niche. In a broad sense, one can speak here of a contradiction, in which one appears to want to distinguish oneself from the mainstream cultural scene, but at the same time to fit into what the artist calls “great culture”. The interview with visual artist Paul Mures, an brought up the aspect of the attention given to the construction of queer products. At least from his point of view, he and other artists devise their creations in constant relation to the potential opinions of their audiences. It seems to me that we haven’t yet reached that level of trivial gay art that I see a lot in films, like “let’s get some gay people in the film to balance it out a bit”. We haven’t reached that stage yet. I’m at the stage where I have to be very careful how I express myself so that people understand what we’re talking about here, so that the common Romanian person gets it, and I think that some very cool things are coming out of it. (Paul Muresan 2017)

A frequently reiterated theme in the interviewees’ answers refers to the differences between Western media products and those from Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. The strongly heteronormative context of the materialisation of these products influences, in some cases, the way they are constructed. Thus, if in Western spaces queer discourses and themes began to manifest themselves decades ago, in Romania they are still in the stage of coagulation and search for their own expressions. If in some cultural spaces queer themes have begun to be adopted by mainstream culture, the same cannot be said about the local context. These products remain in a niche context and, in some cases, such as the one suggested

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by Paul Mures, an, they are manufactured with careful attention to the possible interpretations that audiences might convey, in an attempt to clarify the messages and adapt them to the context in which they appear. The educational and explanatory component of queer art still seems to be dominant in the local space; at the same time, not all cultural products are created with this purpose. The educational but also political values of queer culture in Romania are highlighted by Paul Mures, an. Asked about his vision of the future of queer art, he comments on the direction it is taking: A political one, as far as I can see, very much political, and that is really great, to move away from that thing about instinct — this is who I am, I can’t change it — there is a much clearer thing in this partnership, these are the reasons, it’s much clearer and it seems to me that this is the role that gay culture must play at the moment, not arguing for that area of instinct, freedom, let’s love each other, but rather that it is very important to respect each other for these reasons. It seems to me that this is what is happening at the moment. (Paul Mures, an 2017)

During the interviews, optimistic ideas about the future of the incipient Romanian queer culture were also expressed: “I think everything will be good. Already, in Cluj, when I went to that hall with 3000 graduation exhibits, there were a lot of queer artifacts and queer artists in full display. I think the future looks good, in the arts area” (Roxana Marin 2017). Another optimistic view on queer culture and its future direction in the local context is shared by Patrick Br˘aila: I think it’s heading towards a certain diversification, I think it has a tendency to expose diversity and that makes me happy. I mean, until some time ago there were no cultural products with a trans theme, for example, just as the subject did not exist in the larger discourse. And then as various things are talked about, I think that the artistic curiosity to enact them is also emerging. And yes. In the same way, I think that as more cultural products become available, there will be a counterpoint where some of them will be bad or ‘not OK.’ I think that’s the flip side that we must keep in mind: that they will exist out of this extraordinary desire for sensationalism or whatever it’s called. That this subject will always generate gossip and will be exploited in all possible forms. (Patrick Br˘aila 2017)

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If until mid-2010s the media dealt with trans issues mainly through “sensationalist” shows and tabloid press, with the appearance of cultural products that deal with trans issues from the perspective of personal stories, we can observe an opening of the public discourse towards the objective presentation of these stories. At the same time, as Patrick Br˘aila notes, as these themes come to the public’s attention, there is also a desire on the part of various cultural producers to address these themes. One of the research questions we have tried to answer in this volume has been about the differences in the construction and message of cultural products made by people within the queer community and those outside it. It is noticeable from the analysis that there is a more pronounced tendency towards the sensationalism coming from cultural producers outside the queer community, as Patrick indicated. Some interviewees also expressed their hopes for queer cultural products and their manners of production: I hope there will be more performers that are out of the closet, as I am convinced they exist but they are not out yet, and I hope they will start discussing it themselves. That seems problematic to me, that they must exist. If there are no trans actors, how can you have a voice? I mean in collaboration with trans people, right? I mean the least you can do is have that, you consulted them, so that you don’t talk about them without knowing about them, you know? You should at least be a gay person. Yeah. That would seem important to me. To create an enabling environment for more performers to be out. (interview with Mihaela Dr˘agan 2017)

Therefore, the involvement of queer people in artistic approaches concerning queer issues is considered to be particularly relevant and important. It underlines the need for the contemporary performance and theatre scene to open up and become a safe environment for the expression of non-normative sexualities, leading to a better correlation between life experiences and the queer themes addressed. It is also worth noting the influence of the socio-political context on queer media productions, which is also reflected in the professional environment. The interviewees were asked to mention a few cultural products that have stuck with them and to detail the reasons why they think this has been achieved. I received varied and interesting responses, a few of which will be mentioned. They are closely related to the differences between

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heteronormative and queer approaches that we employed at the level of analysis. Queer studies note the importance of common reading keys, particularly in relation to the sexuality of the people receiving the messages. In this case, similar to other groups, themes and reading keys, certain texts may function in different ways for people with different sexual identities (hetero-, non-hetero-). The problem of exposing elements pertaining to queer identities or individuals is particularly topical and little discussed in artistic circles. The same can be said about historical research that can raise ethical issues, particularly when it concerns people who did not disclose their sexuality and who were imprisoned during the communist regime: […] I can say that I have done research at the CNSAS (National Council for Studying the Securitate Archives), starting with the Anton files, to Petru Comarnescu who informed on many queer intellectuals to the Securitate, I have started conducting more research on these files and uncovering the underground nature of the community during the communist years, how they met, how they were followed, what they risked, basically the terror in which they lived then. I don’t know what’s going to come out or if I’m going to do anything with this project. Maybe not, I’m thinking maybe not, because there are so many details about their personal lives, so many people who are not out of the closet and it would be outrageous if I outed them now at 80 years old. […] It seems to me that it’s not moral to do this thing, but at the same time it seems to me that it might be necessary at some point to do something like this, I don’t know, I don’t see how you can reconcile these things. After all, you want history, but if you’ve got some stuff that can you at least start with…? […] And in order to write history, it seems to me essential that we find a way to talk about it. But at the same time there are too many people who are put in vulnerable positions and this is not the time. (interview with Valentina Iancu 2017)

It is desirable that approaches to queer issues, regardless of the fields that they come from (academic, artistic, etc.), are grounded in a well-founded ethical framework. However, given that researchers who are interested in the historical study of non-heterosexuality often have only official perspectives at their disposal—reports from institutions, archives, etc.—and not the views of the people concerned in these sources, one can speak of the existence of a paradox within the construction of such research. This concerns the fine line between the necessity of the research approach, in

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which any source available to researchers will be used, and the personal integrity of those who cannot be consulted about their own experiences for various reasons. These sources could be treated as points of intersection of social contexts and personal histories; they could also provide a bridge between personal histories obtained from interviews and factual data, which can then be verified and linked to the historical contexts referenced by the interviewees. In this respect, these documents could be used, ideally as a suitable research framework, but only with the formal agreement of the persons concerned and their permanent consultation. The subject of good practices in these cases could be an analysis in itself, perhaps even a starting point for further research.

The Distinction Between the Western and Romanian Queer Art Scenes An important point of discussion concerned the differences between Western cultural spaces, characterised by a higher degree of emancipation and much more consistent sources of funding, and the Romanian space, in the broader context of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. The participants in the interviews expressed their general experiences of the two contexts in relation to the queer cultural scene. For example, Valentina Iancu captures the mainstream nature of queer cultural products in the West, but also the degree of discrimination that leads to the divide between these cultures and socio-political contexts: In the Western space, queer culture has entered the mainstream, it is clearly no longer a problem since retrospective exhibitions are held at the Tate. It’s clear that you’re not fighting anymore, you have open territory, you produce culture and you’re on full display. Basically by the time queer culture was established, struggles had already been fought 50 years ago, identities had already been affirmed, a place had been made in society. Of course there are and there always will be homophobes, but I think the positions are different. Their space is safer. In opposition, in our country, if certain people assert their identity, it becomes difficult to walk down the street, let alone produce culture, find money, support themselves, get into museums... I’m thinking of B.G. who was beaten, and who now lives in Berlin. Of course you don’t want to stay here anymore. (interview with Valentina Iancu 2017)

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Everyday realities are superimposed and sometimes represent challenges that reflect themselves in queer artistic productions. Similar to the episode mentioned by curator and art historian Valentina Iancu, there are numerous attacks, both physical and verbal, against queer people and even during the market launch of queer productions. In this regard, we reiterate the need for queer products to be viewed not only from the perspective of cultural analysis, but also from the perspective of the contexts that affect both the place and the creators. This underlines another essential difference between Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and Western spaces: that of personal security, of the space that is conducive to the development of queer cultural creations. Of course, Western spaces are not free of more or less violent reactions to nonnormative sexualities, but they continue to be seen by some as much safer than their local contexts. At the same time, the subject of funding is again raised by Roxana Marin; she also pleads for the involvement of politicians in the mechanism of supporting art produced by people belonging to various minorities: The issue of the artist in Romania right now is a super tricky thing. It’s tricky to be an artist in the West too, but there you have some local authorities that fund local artists a lot, basically if you are a person who learns to write simple 3-4-page-proposals, you can somehow get on a trajectory that allows you to produce, to work, to express, to perform, to explore. OK, I guess that’s barely getting by, you need more money than what you have, you don’t idealise this lifestyle, but in the West you have it as an option. I have artist friends who live abroad and they do something else, they get some money from the town hall, they get some money from whatever arrondissement… In Romania we haven’t reached that model yet, because, you see, corruption, politics, various interests. I think that what could make things better would be, for example, and this is still unfortunately related to politics, which I think is capable of the greatest impact, the same way you have funding for Roma cultural projects, or cultural projects of the Hungarians in Romania, or of the Jews, to have queer cultural projects, to create a bubble, to have some kind of budget, either central or local. Probably local. Do you think this idea is feasible in the next few years? No. It seems to me that until we witness the end of what is currently happening with the referendum [A/N: the initiative taken by the Coalition for the Family to modify the Constitution], it’s hard to predict anything else. Personally, it is impossible for me to think about what will happen in five years on issues related to the presence or rights of LGBT people in

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Romania, because it is impossible for me to say what will happen with the referendum. (interview with Roxana Marin 2017)

The issue of national minority policies appears in this fragment in connection with the non-existence of cultural policies dedicated to queer art in Romania. However, the opening towards the cultural sphere related to minorities has been gradually achieved and is in a continuous process which, in turn, is influenced by political factors. In turn, the issues addressed in the political sphere are often understood as interconnected with public opinion. Thus, it can be argued that as long as political actors in Romania do not assume non-discrimination policies in their programmes, using the argument of society not being sufficiently open to issues of non-normative sexualities, the obstacles faced by the local arts scene in accessing funding for queer cultural products will continue to exist. Returning to the gap between Western and Eastern cultural spaces, Patrick Br˘aila draws a parallel that concerns the specific issues of trans people and how their identities are reflected in the cultural products that concern them: The essential differences I think will be the following: the desire to affirm identities will persist, only that in the East there is a gap, somehow, a rather big gap. I mean, we’re talking about several decades. I see that at least in the trans community the anger, the discontent are, I don’t know if I’m saying something stupid, more prominent in the West. Because there’s more room for freedom of expression. In the East, although things are outrageous in many more ways, there is not the same willingness to express it artistically, because you don’t have the opportunity to live it. And when it’s survival work, you focus on it and that takes up all your time, it doesn’t give you much time to create. It’s a quantitative matter, yes, I think there are a lot more queer cultural products in the West than in the East. The problem is that in the East, I tend to think that the predilection, I’m referring strictly here, again, to the trans area because I know it somewhat better, is towards dramatisation. I mean I would like to see a trans stand-up comedian from the East but there isn’t much of a chance. (Patrick Br˘aila 2017)

As the analysis of the cultural products showed, in the vast majority of cases the themes were treated with seriousness, and not infrequently the stories were tragic. Although some elements of irony and humour were

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used in the construction of some of the analysed media products, their main function was to underline the importance of the addressed themes and the extent to which the various types of discrimination operate in the stories. It can be concluded that what Patrick Br˘aila has stated is confirmed, in a general key, by the analysis carried out in the previous chapters. The possible factors leading to this tragic dimension, especially with regard to topics related to trans people, are the accentuated forms of discrimination to which these people are subjected, both outside queer contexts and sometimes within them. The precariousness that characterises the situations of many trans people in Romania is another reason suggested by the director. Still within the comparative sphere, visual artists Adrian P˘aun and Ruth Borgfjord discuss the identities of queer cultural creators and the gaps in the Romanian artistic sphere: What’s missing in this context between East and West, I think it has to do with assuming your identity… Yes, to do stuff and say openly that it’s either queer art or yes, I as a queer artist made these, I don’t know… I understand that there are big risks to do this in Romania, from violence to not having your work published, not presenting your work in any gallery. (Ruth Borgfjord 2017)

This typology of responses regarding the public assumption of nonnormative identities was also encountered during the conversation with other queer culture creators. It can be mentioned that this issue is discussed in wider circles, generally by people who publicly assume their identity as queer people in spite of the risks and the different situations to which queer people may be subjected in the local space. On a generalising note, Adrian Newell P˘aun states that: We lack people of queer culture who make queer culture in a visible manner. But we find very good-quality queer art abroad. In Poland, for example, I saw very interesting magazines and exhibitions, in Serbia I saw high-quality happenings, in Hungary — well, now less and less since Orban, but I hope Hungary will recover. So there are nice things happening in our neighbouring countries. Even in the Republic of

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Moldova. I’ve seen gay plays, ROGVAIV1 being one of them. They have an alternative theatre there, Teatru Sp˘al˘atorie, which almost obsessively stages queer-themed productions. (Adrian Newell P˘aun 2017)

It should be noted that the artist and activist Adrian P˘aun was the only person to mention examples from the geographical spaces surrounding Romania in the part dedicated to the comparison of cultural spaces. Of course, it can be objected that these few examples can be seen as homologous to those from the Romanian space. In all these cases we are talking about small groups of artists and artists working with different media and often dealing with queer themes; alternative spaces are not lacking either, especially in Bucharest, but also in other big cities such as Cluj-Napoca, Timis, oara or Ias, i. Thus, although commendable, these local initiatives in the East and Central-East do not have the same advantages of the highscale production and funding as those in the West and can be seen as novel, particularly from the perspective of someone who does not work in those cultural contexts but occasionally comes into contact with them. Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker, for their part, brings the discussion back to the political sphere, stressing once again the importance of the sociopolitical context within culture: I think there is a need for many more gender products, and for a politician who assumes their LGBTQ+ identity. I think in Western Europe there is a long-standing tradition of allocating funds and supporting queer products. In our country, it’s only been about a year since the representation of the LGBTQ+ community became an argument in the allocation of cultural funds. (interview with Paul Dunca/Paula Dunker 2017)

Another answer, referring to the difference between the Western and Eastern spaces, was offered by Simona Dumitriu, who emphasises the strategies that have been used for decades in Western spaces, but also the reorientation of artists and artists from those spaces towards the East, where those stages have not yet been reached: After all, the queer cultural construction of the West is already extremely well-grounded, it is ‘established,’ to use an English term. Somehow these 1 It is worth remembering that ROGVAIV is produced by the Romanian director Bogdan Georgescu, who also directed the play Lalele, Lalele staged in Bucharest in the spring of 2018.

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stages were already overcome there, I don’t know, cycles of suffering, personal experiences, the social-legislative struggle, whatever, transformed into queer products. There, these histories already exist, these things have happened, these archives have been constituted, even if certain voices are missing or underrepresented, here, we need all of this, and at the same time in the West, probably most of the artists who have caught on to how things are going are trying to turn their gaze towards the East, towards migrants, towards things that are not at all part of their experience as Westerners, and at the same time they somehow instrumentalise them, which is somewhat sad and funny that in the end it is often enough the Western voices that end up talking about the others in the East or in other parts of the world. Whereas here, yes, if you like, the most appropriate term for what’s going on now is ‘mash up,’ because the same pot also contains extremely experimental products, some of which are still marked by, let’s say, the classic suffering of queer people that are certainly very real, but still, they are again quite… Now, because we haven’t been undergoing all these stages for a couple of decades as in the West, we end up overlapping them all in a matter of a few years. And then you can have some not necessarily sequential but rather mixed layers, I can’t even call them overlapping. That’s it. Of course, yes, there after all it’s a fairly constant practice, fairly constantly exposed, here it’s only just getting formulated, there it’s already beyond… Quite a lot of queer people have long since moved beyond the need for activist discourse, that is, a discourse for a wider audience, and can experiment in any number of ways. (Simona Dumitriu 2017)

This opinion reveals a key term that concerns the relations of Western artists with art from Eastern spaces: instrumentality. This term refers to the tendency to relate to life experiences and contexts that are unrelated to the identities of Western cultural creators, but which are used, often because of their novelty, in artistic practices. In cultural spaces where queer themes already have a tradition, one can speak of an oversaturation of the market; this phenomenon is one of the reasons behind the search for other spaces of expression, where the stages of shaping queer culture have not reached the same level. Given the different histories that operate within the European space, and of course extend to other cultural spaces, this current trend of Western producers carrying out various one-off projects in Eastern spaces may seem problematic. These few excerpts were chosen from a much wider range of answers and topics addressed during the interviews, out of a desire to highlight and investigate the state of Romanian queer culture. It was thus possible

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to place the analysis of the selected media products from the previous chapters in a broader context, which would provide new meanings and arguments for the development of the present research.

References Borgfjord, Ruth. 2017. [Interview]. Br˘aila, Patrick. 2017. [Interview]. Dr˘agan, Mihaela. 2017. [Interview]. Dumitriu, Simona. 2017. [Interview]. Dunca, Paul /Paula Dunker. 2017. [Interview]. Gelder, Ken. Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice. London: Routledge, 2007. Iancu, Valentina. 2017. [Interview]. Marin, Roxana. 2017. [Interview]. Mures, an, Paul. 2017. [Interview]. P˘aun, Adrian Newell. 2017. [Interview].

CHAPTER 8

Conclusions

The present research contributes to the broader literature about SEE culture by focusing on the analysis of a phenomenon rarely addressed in Romanian academic circles, namely queer-themed media and cultural products. These types of products, as expected, can be divided into two main categories: those inspired by real-life stories of queer people and those that are part of the fictional paradigm, often created by people who are not part of the queer community. While the overall number of Romanian queer media and cultural products continues to be relatively small, their advent is now facilitated by the legislative thaw and the emergence of artistic spaces and of a public that supports the efforts of people interested in creating and disseminating queer-themed culture. During the research process, effort was made to map out all the polyphonic elements that have contributed to the build-up of queer identity in Romanian public space, starting from the feeling and the understanding that every piece of the puzzle counts: from hardly present, almost gone in the vastness of the Internet, news and opinion pieces, to publications, artworks, ephemeral cultural products, a few lost lines in literary history books and to the words and thoughts of some of the creators and shapers of this culture. The book may seem like a palimpsest in some of its places, but this is because the process of unearthing the material that is presented often looked archaeological, like unearthing a lost civilisation, and it is important that this feeling be preserved. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Dima, Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38849-1_8

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One of the starting enquiries of this research was whether queer products produced by queer self-identified people are more nuanced and more faithful to the representation of non-heterosexual identities than those produced by heterosexual-identified authors. In most cases this hypothesis was confirmed, while it should be noted that some of the examples analysed, although produced by people from the community, fail in their approach, by perpetuating some stereotypes and presenting a low degree of nuance in the construction of identities, affects and subjects around non-normative sexualities. This discrepancy was pointed out by the majority of the interviewees who criticised the lack of social sensitivity and documentation behind these cultural products. Another aim was to create an archive of queer cultural products in Romania that might serve as a starting point and as reference material for further in-depth research in the fields of media and communication studies, gender and queer studies, or historical studies interested in lesser researched aspects of communist and transitional Romania. In this sense, we considered it necessary to not only analyse in greater detail works that are fundamental for the construction of queer culture and imagination in Romania, but to also list and point out the existence of some products that have not been extensively discussed in this book but which can open the possibility for future research. The book often goes back and forth between mass and social media products and cultural products of an artistic nature, in order to capture some of the strong connections between the two, and their reciprocal influences. If until recently there was a reluctance to present queer issues objectively in public interest outlets, such as news, entertainment and general media, in the case of cultural materials, there is a greater degree of openness; in many cases, they depict the affects and experiences derived from certain queer narratives in a more accurate manner than journalistic media. With the emergence of independent journalism platforms in Romania, as well as platforms hosted by press websites, the journalistic sphere has begun to naturalise the treatment of queer news. The analysis was based both on capturing and highlighting queer identities within selected products and on identifying ethnographic elements that provided opportunities for studying the contexts of the emergence of queer products. The degree of visibility in the public sphere of queer cultural products is increasing and some of them contain elements that refer critically to the way queer people have been ignored or overlooked in the socio-political context. Reclaiming history is a recurring motif in

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several theatrical, performance, contemporary art and literary productions and is carried out, as we have observed throughout this publication, either with the aid of official archival documents or on the basis of diaries, newspaper articles, or personal testimonies that constitute the very process of documentation. One of the main aims of the interviews was to provide details about the process of producing some of the analysed examples, as well as the interviewees’ impressions of the queer cultural scene in Romania, since this research also aimed to observe and highlight the way local queer media and cultural products are perceived. A particularity of the present study is the fact that the interviews were carried out both with producers and consumers of cultural materials, in order to obtain a large array of different opinions. The interviews aimed at correlating the biographies of the participants with the characteristics of the cultural products they created and came into contact with. Thus, it can be said that the answers obtained in the interviews enriched the cultural and media analysis, but particularly its factuality, regarding references, other examples of queer products, and historical framings. In terms of the temporal dimension, most of the cultural products analysed were produced after 2000, as it is often after the complete disappearance of Article 200 from the Romanian Criminal Code that they could emerge. It is a very young, still under formation queer identity expressing through media and culture, especially in comparison with other Western cultural spaces. What is interesting to note is that in this short period of time, cultural materials have emerged with very different themes and modes of production, and the non-discrimination-based discourse in some earlier products has undergone rapid change towards the inclusion of more elaborated topics. It can be said that the beginnings of queer culture in Romania are made in leaps and bounds, both in terms of the discourse and ideologies operating within certain products and in terms of artistic modes of expression. Thus, there is a relatively rapid shift from the period when queer cultural products were made with the sole purpose of opening a discussion about non-normative sexualities in the Romanian space, to one of the last few years in which more and more materials appear that problematise deep relations at the level of society and the queer theme is approached from an intersectional point of view. Thus, by comparing purely fictional cultural products with a queer theme with materials based on biographies and autobiographies of queer people (see Soldat, ii. Poveste din Ferentari, Pieptis, /Abreast, Rodica e b˘aiat

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bun, SilenceKILLS—discrimination/ro/files/2011, ‘98, Gadjo Dildo, La Institutul Schimb˘arii), it can be observed that stereotypes about sexuality are diminished, the emphasis being on the component of authenticity. At the same time, media products based on personal experiences have a strong educational dimension, are rooted in the social context in which they appear, and often refer to the often multiple and nuanced kinds of discrimination faced by queer people. While in some cases these media products are constructed in the form of informative artistic material, in others there is a strong emphasis on the affective component: real-life stories, reiteration of interactions with homophobic people, criticism of the heteronormative society that originated these products, criticism of gender norms, as well as of racist and nationalist ideologies. The motivations of the creators are diverse: from the desire to represent experiences with certain cathartic or activist effects, to the desire to introduce certain subjects to the public that were previously ignored or negatively chronicled by the mass media. What is interesting to note in terms of the media reactions to the emergence of these products is the rise of a new field of journalism that addresses non-heterosexual issues in a different way than twenty, ten, or even a few years ago. This type of journalistic representation takes into account the plurality of voices in their analysis process and even tends to criticise stereotypes about sexuality in Romanian society. One could even observe that these different, yet often overlapping worlds of queer-related mass and social media and cultural work feed off each other, learn from each other, and can support each other. At the same time, the appearance of a few cultural spaces in larger cities, especially Bucharest, provided queer creators with the opportunity to expose their work to the view of the general public, which remains difficult if one takes into account official cultural institutions. In the vast majority of cases, performance products or theatre performances took place in contemporary art spaces or in spaces intended for leisure, such as cafés or bars. Furthering the thoughts about building up an eventual”queer Romanian culture”, the interviews highlighted the need for an inclusive cultural infrastructure, including funding laws, spaces, and programmes for queerthemed projects. The cultural creators that were interviewed often underlined the educational dimension included in their projects. Their understanding of Romanian queer culture as a whole and its direction differed: in some cases, one could observe an optimistic view regarding the eventual openness of the authorities and funders towards the creation

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of queer cultural projects and products, while in the case of other respondents a contrary trend could be noticed, one of worry looking at the development of extreme right-wing discourses and the increase in the number of nationalist manifestations in Romanian society in recent years, in line with the general trend in many European countries. When it comes to the temporal dimension of the analysed products, except for a few examples which reference certain moments in the history of Romanian queer people, most contemporary media and cultural products are anchored within the present time, focusing more on the emotional dimension inherent to the present and less on the historical one. Although the discussion concerning the process of recounting the history of queer people before 1989 has already been initiated within the queer community, and there is a general acknowledgement of the absence of recorded history that complicates Romanian queer identities, there is still a deficit in terms of projects, be they cultural or research projects, that concern this aspect. This is also reflected in the examples analysed throughout the current publication and in its overarching aim, which is to fill in as many of the gaps in history as possible—even if sometimes this history is not older than ten or twenty years. Many of the analysed examples contain references to past situations that have affected the history of Romanian queer people and whose evocations were highlighted both in the texts and in the dedicated section which briefly reviewed the evolution of the Romanian socio-political context that influenced or inhibited the emergence of queer-themed cultural products. At the same time, the analysis focused on the arguments brought forth by each product, the elements of inter-textuality, the manner of communicating their message: elements of language, audience interaction, the deconstruction of gender stereotypes and sexual orientation, among others. In most cases, the analysed products contained elements of social criticism that were highlighted and discussed. The universes of each analysed media or cultural product were thus related to the actual social context and to the interpretations of the dominant views on non-normative sexualities, as well as how these, too, were narrated (Pickering 2008). By looking at the analysed corpus through multiple lenses, including that of queer anthropology, constant care was taken to relate the story to the message, to the context and to the personal weight of the analysed products. As in this research I had the opportunity to also interview some of the cultural producers, several of the works were analysed both related

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to their narrative and messages and in accordance with the opinions and life experiences of their authors, thus detailing the reasons and personal stories behind them, and connecting the lived experiences with their artistic reflections. In some cases, there was a critique of the exoticisation of certain categories of people, such as Roma persons, for the purpose of creating cultural products, but also a critique of other queer-themed cultural products that resort to sensationalism in the construction of queer characters. Distinctions have thus been drawn between mainstream and niche cultural elements, as this distinction also operates within another niche of sexuality and their representations. It was possible to observe a delimitation at the level of approaches between cultural products made by heterosexual-identified people who did not conduct proper and consistent documentation, and those made by people from the community, who, in addition to their personal experience, employ certain mechanisms and means of expression in their creations that confer authenticity upon the products in question, while equally providing a well-defined framework for debate on current society and how it relates to and is reflected in art, film, performance products and literature. While this is not an exhaustive opposability, it has become clear throughout our research that cultural products made by persons outside of the local queer community are often sensationalist, based on literary models or clichés, while those stemming from inside often look with more responsibility at situations that might often be autobiographical, with a cathartic and pedagogical intention. References to social theories that investigate how dimensions such as class, age, race, sexual orientation, gender, etc. are reflected in contemporary cultural products have been introduced. These provided a framework for analysing the power relations that are established in the representations of each work of fiction, film, visual or performative art. These concepts operated as means for analysis, rather than as a whole to be analysed in turn (Fusco 2012). The literary field is the most developed in terms of the number of products dealing with queer themes. Thus, fiction simultaneously deals with themes of sexuality and gender, revealing their correspondences, as well as the elements of contemporary society: racism, stereotypes, homophobia or the tendency to exoticise people understood as marginal. In most cases, the authenticity of these cultural products is achieved through sometimes explicit references to the power relations that operate within Romanian society. In the very recent years not covered by the current publication,

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queer literary works have developed the most, with a special focus on novellas, poetry and write your own experience workshops conducted by people active in the local queer community. One possible, simple explanation for this could be that producing literature is cheap, easy to implement and personal, and can engage wide audiences on social media. As far as the field of visual arts is concerned, it can be said that, in comparison to the other analysed media, queer-themed contemporary art is different in that its message and discourse on queer issues is more direct, much less diluted and closely tied to the curatorial texts that mediate the message. In contemporary art, unlike the other categories, they are much better anchored within current queer and gender theories, and their theoretical foundation contributes to the definition and effectiveness of their messages. Another characteristic observed was the ephemerality of this type of product; artworks are subject to a high degree of ephemerality compared to other products, and this limitation in our research approach was overcome by obtaining the records, images, and curatorial texts related to each exhibition. These become, with the passage of time and the completion of exhibition programmes, the only sources of documentation for visual art materials. Alongside contemporary performance and theatre products, contemporary artworks have much more direct, often highly critical, messages about society’s discriminatory tendencies, while being bolder in their visual representations than cinematic products. At the same time, they have a limited audience, both in terms of space and time. At the level of the plays and performance products analysed, a tendency towards minimalism can be observed in the presentation of the performances; produced with a few means and simple scenography, for small or very small stages, they place the focal point on the verbal and nonverbal elements with which the artists and performers operate, for the fluidity of the messages and the audience responses. As shown, the interactive component is often an integral part of these media products, and audiences are engaged in the process of creating and performing the shows. There is an underlying intention in the plays and performances with a queer content analysed in this book to place the audience within an experience that can be one of two: very familiar, or completely stranger to them. By drawing the audience in, theatre plays and performance art are the cultural products that can be placed closest to an

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embodied queer experience, no matter the gender or sexual identity of the viewer-participant. One of the steady sources of information and fragments of history throughout our research process was the internet, which was essential in the construction of a queer community in the first place. From chats to blogs and websites, this research contains a lot of internet archaeology. The web pages created before the 2000s, which had mainly an informative purpose, providing details about Romanian queer organisations, external and internal news related to queer issues, legislative information, etc., are becoming increasingly difficult to access, as they disappear more and more from the online sphere; it is still possible to retrieve some fragments with the aid of online archiving platforms. As far as websites dedicated to communication between queer people in Romania are concerned, there has been an evolution compared to 20 years ago, as expected at the beginning of the research. A certain decline can also be observed in the number of personal pages dealing with queer themes within the Romanian blogosphere. What is worrying, however, is the ephemerality of the historical events recorded on certain sites, now defunct, and the necessity of archiving and organising the information before it disappears from the online environment. While some tools, such as Wayback Machine, still drill and dig in the historical layers of the World Wide Web of twenty years ago, what they bring to the surface is fragmented, often taken out of context, and possibly not even that important. One is often left with the impression that some other, very important piece of information, lays somewhere else, unrevealed, forever lost. Perhaps this is why one can encounter, in some cultural products, the intention to compensate for the gaps or absence of history with imagination, to create alternative possibilities, facilitated by the online void that often remains quiet and does not provide its information. Where research must stop, queer imagination fills in the gaps with everything from small, hopeful suspicions to entire histories of oppression written in between the lines. Romania was often overlooked within queer regional research in the SEE. This book is a bridge of information and a key to better understanding the entire SEE region. It is informative, dense and sometimes analytical. It bears the heavy responsibility to bring forth as much as possible of the existing cultural products and fragments from the periphery of Europe to its own community and to the world.

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Funding This publication has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie SkłodowskaCurie grant agreement No 101022731.

References Fusco, Caroline, 2012, “Critical Feminist/Queer Methodologies: Deconstructing (Hetero)Normative Inscriptions”, In Young, Kevin, Atkinson, Michael (Eds.), Qualitative Research on Sport and Physical Culture, vol. 6, Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp. 151–166, 2012. Pickering, Michael (Ed.). Research Methods for Cultural Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. Rooke, Alison. “Queer in the Field: On Emotions, Temporality, and Performativity in Ethnography”, In Nash, Catherine, Browne, Kath (Eds.), Queer Methods and Methodologies: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Research. New York: Routledge, 2016.

Index

A ACCEPT, 8, 18, 19, 21, 24, 26, 28–30, 33, 34, 38, 40, 144 Activism, ix, xvii, 28, 32–35, 48, 81, 121, 135, 140, 144, 147–150, 163, 170 Anti-discrimination, 28, 34, 36, 138 Anti-gender, xvii Anti-LGBT, x, xv Anti-Roma, 175 APADOR-CH, 20, 21, 36, 70 Article 200, 7–9, 20, 21, 25, 28, 29, 41, 68–70, 127, 131, 150, 161, 185, 199 Autobiographical, 16, 47, 77, 122, 147, 202

B Belonging, 11, 23, 28, 87, 100, 104, 119, 177, 184, 191 Bisexual, 20, 24, 26, 57, 62, 132 Borgfjord, Ruth, 120, 121, 166, 171, 172, 176, 182–184, 193

Br˘aila, Patrick, 61, 91–93, 95–97, 109, 115, 117, 121, 163, 170, 185, 187, 188, 192, 193 Bucharest Acceptance Group, 21 Buhuceanu, Florin, 8, 9, 140

C Capitalism, 13 Caragiale, Mateiu, 63, 64 Centrul Nat, ional al Dansului Bucures, ti, 153 Cetiner, Mariana, 8, 9, 29, 162 Christian values, 26 Civil partnership, 31 Civil rights, 135 Civil society, 21, 32 Coming out, 24, 93, 117, 119–122, 166, 186 Communism, ix, 1, 13, 16, 46, 66 Criminal Code, 7, 19, 28, 30, 70, 157, 162, 199 Cruising, 16

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Dima, Queer Culture in Romania, 1920–2018, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38849-1

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INDEX

D Diversity March, 132 Documentaries, 32, 44, 110, 113 Drag, 29, 39, 40, 132, 145, 148, 155, 156, 177 Dr˘agan, Mihaela, 78, 109, 173 Dumitriu, Simona, 29, 95, 138, 143, 146, 148, 167, 177, 178, 183, 185, 194, 195 Dunca, Paul/Paula Dunker, 49, 157, 159–163, 167, 171, 172, 185, 194

E Eliad, Katja-Lee, 137 Equality, 28 European Union (EU), 9, 29, 33, 34, 42, 128, 142, 163 Exoticisation, 77, 82, 111, 112, 173, 202

F Family, 13, 24, 26, 31, 47, 62, 65, 73, 74, 83, 91, 94, 104, 108, 111, 121, 156, 158, 161, 162 Feminism, 40, 173 Former Yugoslavia, 28 Forums, 27 Funding, 24, 33, 35, 36, 40, 164, 182–184, 190–192, 194, 200

G Gay45 magazine, 20 Gay men, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16, 30, 34, 36, 37, 49, 66, 67, 69, 75, 117, 131, 140, 157, 158, 160, 163 Gender identity, 95, 115, 167–170, 174 Gender norms, 39, 57, 60, 184, 200

Gender roles, 100, 136, 167, 168, 178, 179, 185 Gender studies, ix, 185 H Heteronormativity, 29, 44, 67, 83, 148, 176, 185 Heterosexuality, 67, 69, 82, 177, 189 HIV/AIDS, 14, 28, 33, 34, 36, 144 Homophobia, 9, 17, 34, 38, 68, 71, 74, 84, 85, 88, 101, 141, 142, 173–175, 179, 202 Human rights, 8, 28, 30, 69, 112, 183 Hungary, 28, 77, 160, 193 I Iancu, Medeea, 42, 43 Iancu, Valentina, 49, 132–134, 138–140, 145, 146, 148, 171, 181, 182, 185, 189–191 Identit˘at, i, 38 ILGA Europe, 19 Informal groups, 11, 35 Inklusiv magazine, 40 Intersectionality, 34, 73, 80, 128, 138 Ion, R˘azvan, 20, 21, 37, 129, 131 Istrati, Panait, 60–63, 73 J Jebeleanu, Eugen, 115, 116 L Ladyfest , 34, 35 Legionary movement, 66 Lesbian community, 38 Lesbianism, 10–15, 17 Les Sisterhood, 32 LGBT+ History Month, 144, 145 Lupu, Lorena, 41, 43

INDEX

M Male gaze, 43, 108 Marcus, Manole, 44 Marin, Roxana, 10, 109, 184, 185, 187, 191, 192 Marriage, 10, 24, 31, 36, 58, 68, 69, 75, 83, 95, 161 Masculinity, 56, 69, 75, 177 MNAC (National Museum of Contemporary Art), 129, 159 Morality, 22, 56, 118 MozaiQ , 30, 31, 33, 36 Mungiu, Cristian, 98, 100–102, 105 Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina, 67–72 Mures, an, Paul, 122, 123, 186, 187 Murivale, Vasile, 129–131 N Nationalism, 63, 73 National-socialism, 12 Negoit, escu, Ion, 8, 64–67, 71 Nemerovschi, Cristina, 79, 85 Nemes, , Ioana, 137, 138 Newspapers, 10–15, 29, 30, 161 Niculescu-Bran, Tatiana, 42, 98, 100 Non-binary, 40, 168 Non-normative sexualities, 3, 14, 16, 23, 25, 45, 56, 57, 69, 86, 110, 123, 151, 157, 159, 184, 188, 191, 192, 198, 199, 201 O Oncu, Sorin, 138–140, 142, 145 Oppression, 74, 76, 79, 81, 142, 150, 155, 185, 204 P Papadat-Bengescu, Hortensia, 59, 60 P˘aun Newell, Adrian, 18, 20, 32, 106, 109, 148, 149, 185, 186, 193, 194

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Pelmus, , Manuel, 133, 134 Poland, 28, 35, 193 Police abuse, 19, 68, 70, 150 Popescu, R˘azvan, 117 Post-Soviet, 185 Power relations, 2, 70, 73, 79, 80, 88, 114, 163, 185, 202 Pride, 29, 33, 40, 81, 145, 148, 158, 162 Propaganda, 7, 12, 13, 127, 151 Protests, 35

Q Queer art, 47, 128, 136, 187, 192, 193 Queer gaze, 60, 84, 118, 156 Queer identity, 127, 135, 139, 197, 199 Queer magazines, 18, 40 Queer parents, 118 Queer studies, ix, xv, 23, 27, 185, 189, 198

R Racism, 13, 14, 34, 68, 71, 73, 74, 77, 85, 88, 128, 164, 174, 175, 202 Referendum, 31, 32, 142, 191, 192 Religion, 12, 21, 36, 47, 102, 141, 168 Republic of Moldova, 194 Right-wing, 15, 75, 201 RiseOUT , 32 Roma, 71, 73, 74, 76–80, 82, 88, 111, 112, 138, 139, 154, 164, 173–175, 183, 185, 191, 202 Romanian Constitution, 31 Romanian Orthodox Church, 8, 21, 35, 98, 158 Russia, x, 11, 26, 28, 149

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S Schiop, Adrian, 46, 76–79, 82, 110–112, 149 Securitate, 9, 15, 42, 66, 68, 69, 71, 160, 189 Self-representation, 84, 121 Sexism, 34, 179 Sexual orientation, 8, 28, 135, 158, 160–162, 166, 184, 201, 202 Simona&Ramona, xvii, 146 Sofia N˘adejde Feminist Centre, 18, 143 South-Eastern Europe, xvii, 185, 186, 190, 191 Spat, iul Platforma, 128, 143 S, tef˘anescu, Cecilia, 82, 105–107 Stereotypes, 1, 22, 44, 69, 77–79, 83, 85, 88, 89, 95, 108, 114, 115, 123, 144, 173, 174, 178, 198, 200–202 Subcultures, 76, 77, 182, 186 Surveillance, 12, 15 T Teodoreanu, Ionel, 55–59

The Coalition for the Family, 31, 47–49, 142, 185, 191 Tolerance, 23, 37, 72, 79, 115 Traditional family, 178 Trans, ix, 1, 10, 16, 25, 30, 32, 46, 76, 91–96, 113, 115–117, 132, 133, 137, 146, 154, 163, 165–171, 179, 185, 187, 188, 192, 193 TransForm, 170 Transphobia, 117, 179

U United States (US), 13, 14, 18, 72, 148 USSR, 13, 14

V Violence, 27, 34, 35, 37, 40, 45, 57, 63, 69, 114, 132, 162, 193 Visibility, 37, 40, 49, 132, 133, 162, 170, 198