Queer Ping Pong will be a guest at the Gropius Bau for the last time on Sunday, December 15: the participatory project combines table tennis with queer club culture and creates a social space that eliminates the supposed contradiction between play and discourse.
Image above: Photo: Queer Ping Pong.
Accompanied by DJ sets, newcomers, professionals, artists and children can come together in a playful way at the Gropius Bau. As part of Rirkrit Tiravanijas’ solo exhibition “Happiness is not always fun”, eight table tennis tables have been set up in the atrium – free of charge and accessible to everyone. Bats and balls are provided so that everyone can play, but you can also bring your own bats. FLINTA* and allies are particularly welcome.
Queer Ping Pong adapts to the respective location and integrates movement, music and post-migrant discourses. The normative setting of club culture is reinterpreted: The events take place during the day and are free of charge. Everything is very relaxed, the only thing that counts is the fun of the game and the community – from early afternoon until sunset – including the obligatory round of ping pong.
Queer Ping Pong was created on the initiative of music curator Yeşim Duman, who played in international championships as a teenager but searched in vain for FLINT*A playing partners. With this format, she also wants to enable young, queer people to come into contact with other people and build a community.
Yeşim Duman is a music curator, organizer and works transdisciplinarily and in collaborative projects. The curatorial approach is also a mediating one that incorporates current contemporary phenomena. Through participatory formats such as Çaystube and Queer Ping Pong, she creates community spaces that suspend the apparent contradictions between play and discourse. As the initiator of various projects, she brings her sensitivity to non-profit cultural institutions and local communities and thus shapes her work. In doing so, she combines current diversity and inclusion discourses and strengthens networks through broad collaboration and an open commitment to diversity and participation.
WHEN?
Sunday, December 15, 2024, 11 am – 7 pm, from 6 pm concert Ebow.
WHERE?
Gropius Bau
Niederkirchnerstraße 7
10963 Berlin
