I Can See Queerly Now. Queer Perspectives On Project Work

Leo Hosp

Leo Hosp (Center Research Focus) widens our perspective through her contribution "I Can See Queerly Now. Queer Perspectives On Project Work", which is a reflection on queer working practices. Hosp intertwines her own experiences of queerness with insights from collaborative project work within the Action for Sustainable Future (ASF) hub. Hosp’s contribution refrains from defining queer research. Instead, it explores different aspects and approaches to deal with an inherently fluid term to propose a queer project work manifesto. Presented as a momentary insight into Hosp’s research, it is not to be understood as a finalized outcome but an open invitation.

What are queer ways of working together? What are queer perspectives, and how can such perspectives benefit collaboration? My research starts as a voyage into queerness, exploring not only the realms of the queer but also my own experiences on the way. I apply my findings to the logic of project work, investigating queer perspectives as sensing devices that can help reveal and dismantle normative structures: I am doing accompanying research on the Action for Sustainable Future (ASF) hub, a funding and support system established in 2021 by the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft (LBG) and the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Angewandte). I search for queer(ing) elements and how they are employed and examine normative structures in the ASF hub from a queer perspective. I inquire queer perspectives and their possible meanings and functions in the logic of such an innovative, transdisciplinary project. This article was written eight months before and revised three months before the end of the ASF hub’s duration. Thus, it needs to be understood as a snapshot of an ongoing process, rather than a completed research report. I draw preliminary conclusions on queer perspectives on project work, as well as on (my way of) practicing queering, focusing on queer ways of collaborating and doing research.

Conducting queer research on queering as a queer person is a complex, yet important undertaking. To me, queerness cannot be detached from queer people. I believe queer artistic research should avoid being “about” queer people but rather conceived as research with them or conducted by them. I consider the binary opposition of queer versus non-queer tricky and avoid it more often than I rely on it. For now, I will use it to claim that queer research and/or research on queering should at least genuinely include, if not be done by queer people. My point is that research on queerness should not be carried out in an objectifying or utilizing way from an outside perspective. However, as queer people, it is not our responsibility to do queer research. My concern is not with the wording, defining queer research explicitly as being done by queer people. It is about acknowledging the embeddedness of such research. Queerness itself, as I will show in this article, is not explicit or concrete: it leaves room for ambiguity, interpretation, and imagination and can be fleeting or even imperceptible.

When it comes to my own queerness, it is both impossible and undesirable to do this research objectively. Still, I deem it necessary to reflect on entanglements and keep the strands of my queerness and my research on queering distinguishable, even if they overlap and entangle. I love that I am queer. I love calling myself queer. Nevertheless, I sometimes hide my queerness, trying to be or appear less queer. I get scared that I am too much, too odd, too complicated – too queer. In the first weeks of my project, I was doing accompanying research on the ASF hub as a project that had already been running for about a year, and I struggled to fit my project into the existing structures and dynamics, trying to make my research beneficial. While doing so, the insecurities I as a person experience occasionally became mixed up with my research: I found my research too queer. I attempted to make queering useful by squeezing it into a toolbox where it can be extracted and used as a ready-made guide to improve collaborative processes in the ASF hub. I wanted queering to be a tool to foster intersectionality and sustainability. Thus, I demanded of queering the educational responsibility that I actually spoke out against. I tried to make my research less queer to be understood by non-queer people, drawing the binary distinction of queer versus non-queer that I wanted to avoid in the first place. All those actions were, in fact, re-actions to internalized fear and experiences of oppression. Every time I talk about my project I out myself. Even though I chose this research, I still find it scary to unapologetically be queer and do queer research, even in supportive environments such as the one I am privileged to work in.

I constantly remind myself that my queerness and the queerness of my research are not too much. Rather, queering is necessary for project work. A queer perspective can be a new way of looking, it invites us to question the given, break structures, and rethink the way we work together and view each other. It is beneficial and liberating for everyone. I believe that queering as a practice or perspective, understood in its norm-challenging, departing, changing character, can be done or taken by anyone. You do not have to call yourself queer for doing that, but you might find yourself orienting yourself toward queerness or even becoming queer in the process (cf. Ahmed 2006, p. 554). If that scares you, I suggest you question your belief system.

What helps me to embrace queerness in all its incomprehensibleness is community. After feeling stuck at the beginning of my process, I reached out to other queer people to exchange experiences and thoughts. Via my personal Instagram account and the email distribution lists femail,1 queer_f,2 and critlist-vienna,3 I sent out a call for interview partners with a short explanation of my research on queer perspectives on project work. 13 people reached out to me and I interviewed six of them.4 My primary goal was to exchange different meanings of and experiences with the term queer, and then shift to a discussion on what the term could mean in the context of project and collaborative work. Thus, lived experiences and expertise of queer people with the use of the term queer both aside from and in diverse collaborative processes were the focus of the conversations. None of the interviewees was familiar with or involved in the ASF hub. The interviews took place in different locations, such as my office, the yard of the Angewandte, or via Zoom. Their length varied between 30 minutes and two hours. I asked for consent to record the interviews, which three of the six people agreed to. I transcribed their content mainly summarily translated from German to English. The interviews took the form of conversations. We exchanged our definitions and implications of the term queer and its variations, namely queering or queerness. We talked about what queer perspectives are, what it means to take them, and whether and how this could be a fruitful undertaking. We shifted back and forth between exchanging personal, emotional, and often sensitive experiences as queer people, and thinking about queerness in a rather conceptual way. In addition to our conversations, I offered modeling clay to play around with. Some participants readily engaged with the clay, which led to a 3D map of queerness (see Fig. nr. 2).

After it was clear that I would publish this article, I first decided to anonymize all interviews since three people wished to stay anonymous. However, when contacting all interviewees again to get their consent on publishing their statements, one of the other three interviewees, Frederik Marroquín, pointed out how explicitly citing scientific authors and articles while rendering interviewees anonymous was not appropriate. He emphasized the relevance of giving proper credit to all involved, especially in queer, collective work. His generous and constructive feedback made me aware of how I operated with the illusion of protecting sensitive data but was instead patronizing the interviewees, making queer experiences invisible, and reinforcing the hierarchy between scientific and published knowledge and lived expertise. I was doing exactly what I critiqued from a queer perspective on research and collaborative processes. As I will elaborate on later, next to the six interviews on queerness I conducted seven other interviews with people involved in the ASF hub, the project I am accompanying with my research. Since the ASF hub is a funding organization, and many of the interviewed people are financially dependent on the ASF hub, those interviewees will remain anonymous, in agreement with all participants.

This current chapter neither provides nor aims at providing a stable definition of queer, since this would go against the core meaning of the term itself. However, it still forms the basis for this article: I interweave the interviews on queerness, my thoughts, and insights from literature to approach the term. Hence, the interviews on queerness and the interviews with individuals involved in the ASF hub cannot be lumped together in how they are handled – as I was originally planning to do with the easy way out of anonymizing them all. Thanks to Frederik Marroquín’s feedback, I reconsidered the anonymization of all interviewees on queerness and queer perspectives. This means that those who wanted to or were okay with being named and whom I initially wanted to anonymize, are now being named. Naturally, the three people who wished to stay anonymous will remain so. The other three, Frederik, Élise, and Noah, will be cited by name.5 By doing that, I aim to appreciate them and the time and resources they put into this article by participating in the interviews and providing me with feedback afterward. Since I will also address themes like burnout and unpaid work in this article, it is noteworthy that none of the interviewees got any compensation for their work and agreed to talk to and share their knowledge and experiences with me voluntarily. Finally, I also need to mention that I reached out to the collective MYCKET,6 since their way of working (queerly) has always been a central point of reference for me in finding my own style and practice of queering. They generously agreed to have a conversation with me, providing me with helpful feedback and thoughts. Thus, even though I am authoring this article, it is the outcome of a co-creation: People contributed on different levels by providing and sharing their expertise, experiences, or feedback.

I use queer in two different ways: First, as an umbrella term for LGBTQIA+ people, and second, as a feminist and political term that reaches beyond sexuality and gender. A queer perspective is intersectional: issues around gender norms, racism, transphobia, ableism, misogyny, colonialism, or homophobia – the list could go on – are intertwined (cf. Mary Nardini Gang 2014, Vaid-Menon 2020). Queering is about challenging and disturbing structures of the colonial construct of heteropatriarchy, which is connected to, amongst others, ableism, misogyny, or white supremacy (cf. The Anti-Violence Project 2023).

The project’s title I can see queerly now must be read facetiously. Seeing queerly is not a fixed destination that can be reached. Rather, it is about actively (re-)taking queer perspectives and being open to uncertainty and change. Frederik Marroquín pointed out that queer is a unifying term since it constantly changes and can be (re-)interpreted. It offers multiple ways of claiming and responding. In the series Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, Alok Vaid-Menon speaks about why non-binary and trans people are often threatening to systems of power: “We represent possibility. We represent choice, being able to create a life, a way of living, a way of loving, a way of looking that’s outside of what we’ve been told that you should be” (Netflix 2022, min. 5:18). Queer indicates this choice and possibility, different paths, and various orientations.

One issue that Noah raised during the interviews was to include the act of stopping into the discussion of queerness. What do we need to stop to give the queer a reality, Noah asked. They did not mean to negate that the queer has a reality, but rather, what needs to be stopped in order to create a space of possibility. This demonstrates the positive, generative aspect of stopping. It is a rupture to a project logic that is oriented towards efficiency, progress, and output. Stopping includes the challenge of dealing with the openness and emptiness it enables. Furthermore, Noah talked about how we can get stuck in defining queering and its benefits and suggested being open to what has space when we stop defining the queer. Instead of exclusively trying to queer already existing structures, they advocated for moving outside of heteronormativity to see what else could arise. Noah pointed out that we “need to stop trying to forcefully create the queer through a masculine ideal of ‘I want – so I create’”.

Noah also made the powerful statement that queer denotes searching for something that appears to be new but has actually been forgotten. Searching as an aspect of queerness was also mentioned by others: Frederik addressed how queerness includes the search for dissonance, leading to new connections. Practicing, embodying, and living queerness is about remembering and reminding ourselves and others about the beautiful diversity of life. Such an attitude can lead to varying emotional responses, from feeling threatened or confused to feeling liberated.

Queer entails opacity. Frederik described this as powerful and unifying since people can relate to it in different ways. The queer lack of transparency can refer to ways of communicating, such as using queer slang (cf. T. 2014) or queer aesthetics (cf. Furman 2020, MYCKET 2021, Reed 1996, Vallerand 2013, Vallerand 2021) – both as strategies to survive in environments that are hostile to queer people or as creative ways of resisting (cf. T. 2014). Using specific terms or aesthetics can be “a way of queers finding each other,” as one anonymous interviewee pointed out. Being opaque, however, also risks gatekeeping within communities due to a lack of knowledge about established terms. Furthermore, a queer perspective could remain untransparent to non-queer people. The opacity of a queer perspective could also mean “taking nothing for granted and staying open,” as Frederik formulated it. This includes an awareness of one’s own beliefs: We might have learned judgmental behaviors, yet by dismantling them we can approach reality anew. We can learn to be non-judgmental and supportive even when we do not understand. Vaid-Menon states that you do not need to understand in order to be compassionate: “Why do you need to understand me in order to say that I shouldn’t be experiencing violence?” (The Man Enough Podcast 2021, min. 22:02).

A queer perspective can be a helpful framework to reflect on who is considered an expert and on hierarchies around knowledge. Halberstam (2011, p. 11) argues for engaging in anti-disciplinary knowledge, and that one might “want more undisciplined knowledge, more questions and fewer answers”. Foucault (2003, pp. 7f.) uses the term “subjugated” knowledge that is “naive” or “hierarchically inferior”, yet “by no means [...] common knowledge or common sense but, on the contrary, a particular knowledge, a knowledge that is local, regional, or differential”. Halberstam builds upon those thoughts and argues for turning towards “antidisciplinary knowledge” (Halberstam 2011, p. 11), and that we should have “[c]onversation rather than mastery” (Halberstam 2011, p. 12) and knowledge “that seeks not to explain but to involve” (Halberstam 2011, p. 15). Following this, my research involves exploring how different forms of knowledge and knowledge production can be included in project work, questioning why some people are considered experts while others are not. I am interested in investigating what diverse knowledge is, and in what sense knowledge production can be centered not just around repeating knowledge, but rather thinking creatively and widely.

When it comes to a non-hierarchal queer perspective, it is important to think about perception: Who is being perceived, who perceives? A queer perspective can create the shift from being objectified to becoming an active subject. It can also mean practicing letting your gaze turn soft, relying on your peripheral vision, and looking in a different, softer way that allows sensing each other (cf. Lester 2022). A queer perspective then means to be aware of each other. To me, paying attention to bodies in space, where they are oriented (cf. Ahmed 2006, Ahmed 2007), and how they sense themselves and one another is the basis for collaborative processes. As queer individuals, we often face a hostile society. It teaches us the importance of community, care, and keeping each other safe. A queer perspective on and in project work, derived from queer communities, enables us to sense ourselves and others and to support one another.

In the interviews people had very different opinions about the utilization or instrumentalization of queering – some spoke out against it, while others found it acceptable. I am investigating what queer can mean, what calling an element or perspective specifically queer entails, and if and how a queer perspective can be beneficial to collaborative processes. The words of Vaid-Menon on the need for compassion have helped my understanding:

“This is not about accepting trans and nonbinary people. This is about accepting yourself. […] If you don’t do that work first, everything that I say is going to be inherited as an attack from a zero-sum ideology, that makes you think that if other people thrive, you must somehow lose something.” (The Man Enough Podcast 2021, min 14:26)

I find this beautiful, and I think that queerness is a freeing and joyful frequency that people can match to lighten up, which then instigates a stepping away from normative structures.

Queer(ing) involves questioning professionalism, in the sense of working playfully and experimentally without thinking too much. Many of my interview partners talked about the inherent creativity of queerness and how creativity is necessary when working in undiscovered and unknown realms. To Frederik Marroquín, a playful and creative approach offers a “possibility-space of coincidence”. Similarly, Noah described a playground of change that is inherently queer and offers a soft environment to fall and fail. In Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, the author states that under “certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world. Failing is something queers do and have always done exceptionally well” (Halberstam 2011, pp. 2f.). I am interested in reframing failing since it challenges normative understandings of success, usefulness, or progress. I believe it is freeing to move away from perfectionism and effectivity. A queer perspective can reveal the possibilities that lie along non-straight, meandering paths. Again, I am following Halberstam, who frames the acts of getting and staying lost, and of detouring as fruitful possibilities (cf. Halberstam 2011, pp. 24f).

A queer perspective questions norms that have been taken for granted. This might cause uncertainty and disorientation, or, as Frederik stated, lead to “a moment of irritation.” In the interviews, queerness was described as a rupture with the status quo (Frederik), a holistic departure from normative structures (Noah), traversing certain boundaries (Élise, Noah), or as a position of resistance (Élise). Similarly, the Mary Nardini Gang (2014, p. I) states that queer “is the qualitative position of opposition to presentations of stability – an identity that problematizes the manageable limits of identity. […] Queer is a total rejection of the regime of the Normal.” Understood this way, a queer perspective involves being in opposition, being angry, demanding, disturbing, or troublesome. Elucidating the claim that queer means remembering rather than reinventing, an interviewee asserted the following: rather than presenting an alternative to a given norm, queer is the root of everything. Another anonymous interviewee concurred: “The queer is the norm.”

The ASF (Action for Sustainable Future) hub was initiated in 2021 as a non-hierarchal system of mutual and collective learning and experimenting. It is embedded in the Open Innovation in Science (OIS) Impact Lab Program, which has been established by the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft (LBG). The program aims to involve societal actors in research and create networks of researchers who contribute to innovation and the increased use of OIS methods (cf. Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft, Strategic partnership - OIS Impact Labs). The LBG is functioning as a space to experiment with innovative practices in science. By setting up the ASF hub together with the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Angewandte), fostering experimentation was carried forward: the ASF hub aims at governing research unconventionally, putting civil actors in the lead instead of just including them. It is designated as a funding system beyond the money alone and includes allocating infrastructure and other supportive and guiding arrangements. Part of this support program includes my accompanying artistic research, specifically workshops on queering and dizziness, as I will describe in the next section. However, other provisions exist as well, such as individual and group counsel, workshops and trainings on diverse themes ranging from social media to OIS methods, or network meetings in each phase, starting with support in developing the first project idea.

The ASF hub is envisioned to contribute to societal transformation for a sustainable future, providing space for, transformative, innovative, and experimental actions, as stated in its title. Six project teams initiated by societal actors have been selected and are currently supported in implementing their project ideas. The projects address themes at the intersections of society, science, and art and focus on different aspects of sustainability, defined according to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (cf. United Nations, The 17 Goals). Until the end of 2023, the ASF hub supports the projects in working on “innovative and creative ideas” to contribute to highly relevant and practical solutions to sustainability issues and thus a more sustainable society (Action for Sustainable Future hub, About ASF hub).

Although the structure of the ASF hub is complex, the focus of my research rests on the following aspects: The LBG and the Angewandte assume facilitating and monitoring tasks in the background, with one representative each tasked with decision-making. The two representatives form the basic management board, which also involves more members in an extended version. The hub coordination, operated by one person, is central, as it communicates between the board and the projects and oversees most organizational tasks. When refer to the ASF hub as an actor, I refer to people involved in the overall project ASF hub: the hub coordination and the extended management board. When I refer to projects of the ASF hub, I refer to all people involved in the six supported projects.

The ASF hub is both an experiment and backs the projects in experimentation processes. As part of the evaluation and reflection, different accompanying research projects have been initiated. One of them is my artistic research project I can see queerly now. By investigating queer perspectives on project work, I dive into non-normative ways of conducting research, such as rethinking productivity and success; or including failure and getting lost as part of the plan. Experimenting is not only a vital part of the ASF hub and its projects, but also of my research, since working queerly means, amongst others, working experimentally and playfully. However, we should also pay attention to the consequences of conducting accompanying research: It is inevitable to create an object-subject duality. As I will show later, feelings of being experimented upon emerged among project members. Whether this was unintentional or not, my project added to this as well. Thus, I constantly reflect on my own position, including my mere presence in events like network meetings. Despite this, I have the possibility to continually accompany and support the ASF hub instead of merely observing it. Through regular meetings with facilitators from the hub and other accompanying researchers, I can feed my perspectives back into the hub continuously. I influence ongoing processes: Some adaptions, e.g., how network meetings are structured, are based on my feedback. Furthermore, I provide space and tools for members of the ASF hub and its projects to reflect, amongst others by (co-)hosting workshops myself, as I will demonstrate in the next section.

My research on queer perspectives on project work is embedded in the artistic research on dizziness conducted by Ruth Anderwald and Leonhard Grond,7 professors of the Artistic Research PhD Program at the Angewandte. Dizziness as a concept in motion can highlight “uncertainty as an indicator of a change in possibilities” as well as serve “as a perspective for understanding and reflecting the individual and collective processes” (Anderwald et al. 2022) marked by uncertainty or unpredictability (cf. Anderwald et al. 2018). Dizziness connects to queer’s disorienting, destabilizing, and irritating character. Ahmed (2006, p. 544) describes queer moments as “moments of disorientation” that are part of our lived experience. Queerness can disrupt and reorder by following alternative paths and putting other, seemingly awry elements within reach. Changing directions and departing from “the straight and narrow” path can involve uncertainty about where one will end up, yet it also “makes new futures possible, which might involve going astray, getting lost, or even becoming queer” (Ahmed 2006, p. 554). Ahmed’s words help grasp the potential of queerness and dizziness in the context of project work: New and unexpected space for action can emerge. While dizziness is a dynamic, queering is a practice that includes purpose. Queering can lead to understanding and navigating through states of dizziness due to its celebratory and liberatory qualities. Both queerness and dizziness indicate process, motion, and rousing. They have an active character and thus open new possibilities and paths. Together, they are fruitful perspectives on processes within project work, specifically, in my research within the ASF hub. The ASF hub itself has a queering and dizzying effect on normative understandings of science, funding, knowledge production, and project management. Moreover, as indicated in the abbreviation ASF – Action for Sustainable Future – it offers spaces for actions. By thinking together queerness and dizziness in my accompanying research, I aim to offer a perspective on the ASF hub that helps all people involved frame emerging queering and dizzying moments in a generative rather than destructive way. The goal is to support, make sense of, and learn from the processes within the ASF hub.

Partly together with Anderwald and Grond, partly on my own, different creative tools and artistic practices were implemented mainly by hosting workshops. Together, we held two workshops for members of the ASF hub and its projects that focused on dizziness: The concept was introduced both theoretically and artistically, followed, amongst others, by balance training, exchange on emotional baggage, visualization of roles, or exercises to experience togetherness. Finally, the workshops offered opportunities for reflection. All participants were invited to go on an inspirational walk to wander around and collect things they wanted to bring to the workshop – anything from leaves or stones to pieces of trash.8 Through bisociative thinking, they connected the found elements with the goals of the ASF hub and the development and change of those goals (first workshop) and with performed actions and accomplishments within the ASF hub (second workshop). Individually, I hosted a workshop on queering for project members of the ASF hub, introducing queering as a concept that may help grasp power structures, make normative structures within science and project work visible and flexible, question hierarchies of expertise and knowledge, or remember the full potential of collectivity. Furthermore, I invited the participants to reflect and exchange on already existing and possible queer(ing) elements in their projects.

I started my research with a fundamental and inconsistent hypothesis: to make collaborative processes sustainably successful, one needs a queer intersectional perspective. My hypothesis is inconsistent insofar, as “success” is a highly ambiguous term that conflicts with the term “queer” since queerness involves questioning ideas of success, effectivity, or purpose. The project performs a balancing act between exploring and breaking down queering and queer perspectives into something beneficial for everyone involved in transdisciplinary collaborative processes, while also acknowledging that queer completely resists any form of utilization and instrumentalization. Queer(ing), similar to dizziness, writhes against being defined, and sometimes even against being understood.

My research is based on queering as a creative practice, including both the practice itself and its outcomes. My artistic practice is both process and product. Queering is part of the method as well as the object: I explore queering by queering. This means I am approximating queer perspectives with a practice-based approach (cf. Candy 2006) and am exploring how queer perspectives can be taken and applied by practicing and investigating queering. I practice transdisciplinary and application-oriented artistic research, involving different people from civic society to researchers from various disciplines (cf. van den Berg/Omlin/Tröndle 2012, p. 25). Specifically, as mentioned above, I strive towards practicing a queer way of accompanying research that can be applied and fed back to the ASF hub continuously. Artistic research has the potential to destroy knowledge and knowledge structures and often includes unlearning, keeping things fluid, in motion, and alterable (cf. Brellochs 2012, pp. 133, 135). Furthermore, artistic research bears the possibility to question the seemingly apparent within art and science and urges us to occupy ourselves with the other, with what goes beyond what is to what could be (cf. Grand 2012, p. 269). Thus, artistic research includes queer(ing) elements and often is inherently queer. Research on queering can be helpful for dismantling norms within research. Queerness, itself, needs to be researched from a non-normative, artistic, queer perspective.

Having been trained in the field of visual communication, visuals are powerful tools to me. Through visualizing, thoughts become graspable for discussion and reflection. My artistic practice in this project mainly includes the production of short videos, which I use to stage and reflect my research process. I am doing this practice on a weekly basis: During the week, I collect materials and thoughts on my phone, including videos, pictures, or written notes. Each Friday, I allow myself a maximum of two hours to turn the material into a short film. I post the videos on YouTube as the (currently) only way of archiving and making them publicly available, and put them together in a playlist (YouTube, I can see queerly now. Playlist by Leo Hosp). Each video contains a short title and description and is numbered consecutively. I mainly use material I personally collected, yet sometimes combine it with other open-source material like sound or imagery that I mention in the description, if applicable. Together, this forms the methodological routine and rules of the research game I have established. The weekly repetition and time limit help me in exploring queerness: I am forcing myself to produce something without perfectionism. The practice might seem point- or useless at times. The videos might not make any sense to others, not even to myself. Yet, they form the permission slip I have created to work queerly: playfully, experimentally, self-ironically, purposelessly, joyfully. Following Tepe, my artistic research practice is not only about analyzing the processes in the ASF hub but also about approaching them via my and other’s experiences (cf. Tepe 2020). The videos help me to capture, narrate, and reflect on those experiences, making them re-experienceable and sensually perceivable. They are more or less abstract letters to me and others or just quick notes. They allow me to try out messages or concepts, or bring together what seemingly doesn’t or shouldn’t go together, including interweaving myself with my research process. Thus, they are a concrete example of my queer methodology.

Amongst making videos and hosting workshops, I am conducting and analyzing interviews with members of the ASF hub and project members and participate in various events of the ASF hub such as network meetings. The videos mostly serve my own reflection and re-experience, while the workshops offer space for participants to reflect, thereby supporting and guiding them. The interviews and participation in events are not necessarily artistic methods but often part of artistic research (cf. Ehn 2012, p. 11). They are the most explicitly observative part of my research, which has the potential to create a subject-object hierarchy, as I mentioned above. Therefore, I want to make my position and intention very clear in the events where I participate and the interviews I conduct: I state my role as a researcher that accompanies the processes of the ASF hub to ongoingly offer feedback and support wherever needed and relevant, and draw learnings from the experimental and innovative setting of the ASF hub.

I interviewed three pivotal members of the ASF hub and one member with a central position in each of four of the six funded projects.9 All people knew the conversations were part of my research and agreed to being recorded. They consented in using their statements in anonymous and translated (from German into English) versions for this article. As mentioned above, the anonymization of these interviews is motivated by the participants’ wishes and depended on their diverse involvements and dependencies. Project members, for instance, are financially dependent on the ASF hub and therefore did not want their comments, critiques, or experiences to be associated with their names. The conversations took place either during walks, in parks, cafés, my office, or the office of the interviewed person. I had a guideline with topics I wanted to address: I did not target queerness or queering as an explicit theme but rather focused on sub-aspects. The main themes included the role of the interviewed person, their motivation for their work within the ASF hub, their definition of sustainability, their experiences and opinions of the particular funding and support structure, their thoughts on experimentation, innovation, efficiency, productivity, and success, feelings of togetherness within the hub, the role of joy, learnings, and their wishes for the future. However, some conversations developed quite differently, and not all topics were discussed in depth in every interview.

My research is not only a voyage into queerness in research, but also into my own queerness as an artistic researcher. Exploring queering by queering, investigating queer perspectives by taking them – this way of working feels both like an active methodological choice and the only choice that made sense to me. It bears the risk of being unclear, vague, or not scientific enough, yet also bears the possibility to explore new ways of researching and conducting project work: leaving behind what might not work and creating new, unforeseen knowledge. Next to making videos I use other creative practices to support my research, ranging from visualization tools to bodily exercises. I chose artistic forms to reflect on and present both my process and my results. Furthermore, I am including myself as both a stakeholder and an object of my research. Following Ehn, I do not approach my research detached from myself, but take my own emotions, positions, and experiences into account as well (cf. Ehn 2012, pp. 11, 16). My queer research methods evolve constantly in the process; sometimes they allow me to approach, direct, and grasp them, yet at other times they are fleeting and withdraw themselves.

As stated above, the ASF hub was created as a space to experiment, and as an experiment itself. It foresees the combination of funding and further support initiatives, fostering inclusive and diverse knowledge production, and the use and combination of different artistic, management, and scientific methods. From the start, the goal of the ASF hub was to add surprising elements to the funding and support system, by confronting the projects with inputs they might not have conceived otherwise. All of this can already be described as queer ways of doing project work. Based on my research so far, the projects within the ASF hub engage with queerness to a different extent. The following examples of what I subsume under the term “queer elements” are by no means summaries of each project but rather glimpses into their work.10

Together with children and youth, the Human Rights Space created a barrier-free, interactive exhibition on human rights. It was shaped inclusively and in participatory ways, aiming to foster a playful and creative approach to human rights. The project MACHS’S AUF! seeks to turn maker- and repair spaces more accessible for deaf and hearing-impaired people and has the goal of transmitting knowledge and innovation aside from scientific research. Re:fiction Radio aims at providing a platform of dialogue, focusing on refugees and activists. It is a free radio that resists capitalist logic, fosters the empowerment of marginalized people, works on dismantling hierarchies, aims at knowledge and skill transfer, and builds communities. The Wiener Sukzession works with the process of unsealing asphalt and concrete within public spaces. The project cultivates the moment of unsealing as an intersection between the seal and the following possibility of reshaping, as a metaphor for wider change and transformation. The project integrates various stakeholders and focuses on an approach full of relish and curiosity in uncovering hidden values. WurmHotel builds outdoor composting systems hosting worms that turn waste into fertilizing humus. These hotels for worms are placed at different public places in Vienna, building cross-species communities. The narrative around the project addresses, amongst others, questions about who cares for whom or what is considered gross. Finally, the Zukunftsrat Verkehr is a council on traffic in Austria where members of civic society become co-creators of solutions to sustainability challenges on traffic, transport, and mobility. The citizens’ council functions as a space to talk about controversial topics in productive ways.

These projects all addressed a variety of queer aspects. Inclusivity and diversity are approached intersectionally; ways of working are participatory, process-oriented, playful, and experimental; alternative ways of knowledge production and transfer are being explored and applied; joy, relish, and curiosity are part of the project work and often the main drivers; marginalized voices are amplified; artistic and creative methods are combined with science; hierarchies and capitalist logics are questioned; community-building, collectivity, and caring ways of working are fostered; sealed surfaces are being cracked to let new things emerge.

Sustainability, or its pursuit, is the ASF hub’s context: It is a vital part of its name, Action for Sustainable Future and it appears in its main slogans, such as in “Shaping the sustainable transformation of our society!” or “Shaping sustainable societies together.” (Action for Sustainable Future hub, About ASF hub). The ASF hub aims to foster sustainability, defined according to the SDGs of the United Nations (cf. United Nations, The 17 Goals). During my research, it has become clear that individuals within the ASF hub and the projects have slightly diverging understandings of sustainability. Some define it as inter- and intragenerational justice, others as enabling a good life socially, ecologically, and economically for all beings, and yet others as creating awareness for themes such as ableism or human rights. Everyone involved in the ASF hub seemed to exhibit an extremely high degree of intrinsic motivation. They felt called upon to do something good, meaningful, or empowering, and they strived for sustainability in manifold ways, and directly addressed issues that stroke them as relevant.

During the first dizziness workshop, participants revealed that they perceived the hub’s initial goals as heavy and daunting. After all, wanting to shape sustainable societies seemed quite overwhelming. The participants hence emphasized a mindset of being good enough, being patient, and practicing the making of mistakes. The original focus on the far-reaching general goals has changed towards more concrete, seemingly small impacts and kicking off impact chains that can lead to a ripple effect. This includes inward impacts like strengthening competencies within the team and outward impacts as spreading ideas that can be further pursued by others. Seemingly small but blissful moments were described as the main driver to continue working within the ASF hub. This included a workshop on human rights, motivating someone to speak up against sexism, or people learning Austrian Sign Language because they heard about it in a sensitizing lecture. Those moments made sustainability concrete, tangible, and physically felt as joy. They showed people that their work had an impact and thus paid off.

Furthermore, the longevity of the ASF hub and the supported projects was mentioned. The duration of the ASF hub is confined until the end of 2023, so there is both time pressure and uncertainty about what will happen afterward. It was emphasized many times that the projects should continue beyond its runtime, even though the ASF hub as such will most likely not be continued. In the first dizziness workshop, a watering pot became the symbol for growing together and taking roots beyond the restricted project time, and to maybe sprout elsewhere as entirely new plants.

As stated above, the ASF hub has an inherent double role of providing both monetary funding as well as other supportive structures. This role shapes its innovative and experimental character but also leads to challenges. Only one person, the hub coordinator, oversees both the coordination of the support offers, as well as administrative matters including monetary decisions. From the projects’ perspective, the double roles of the coordination and the ASF hub are perceived ambiguously. One person stated: “When you get money from someone, they have a certain power over you. And then it is quite hard to trust them and communicate your needs honestly because you always wonder if it influences how much money you will get.” Another one said: “Monetary funding is, of course, connected to certain hierarchies and guidelines. However, those hierarchies are not as present in the hub, there is some scope to play with them and break them.”

Furthermore, the support aside from money was described as both helpful and burdensome by the project members. Many described how their already limited resources were consumed by the support program, which felt detrimental to their projects’ progress. One person said: “It often was unclear if the success of the hub was important, or the success of the projects. Everything was going well in our project, and it felt like the additional meetings and workshops were rather stopping us from working.” Similarly, another project member described how the offers usually seemed very interesting. However, they were too many on top of being not specific enough to the project’s needs. Experimental workshops that used creative and artistic methods like the dizziness and queering workshops were met with skepticism, even though many participants expressed their positive surprise afterward. Furthermore, many members of different projects described how it was unclear what was expected from them. One of my interview partners brought this to the point: “Especially in the beginning, it was not clear to me if I needed to achieve something or somehow perform well in the workshops, or if they were more about helping me.”

In the interviews, the facilitators of the ASF hub described the experimental character as a positive learning experience for all. The projects got to experiment, and the LBG, together with the Angewandte, experimented too, namely with a completely new way of supporting projects. However, innovations such as the ASF hub often face high expectations, and trying to live up to them may result in trying to forcibly steer processes instead of letting them evolve freely. One member of the ASF hub said: “We are also communicating to the projects that they are part of a big learning experiment. This is certainly not easy for everyone, but I think overall it works very well.” In all interviews with facilitators of the hub, however, it was mentioned that the experimental character could have been more clearly communicated and carefully implemented.

Some members of the projects stated that they were fine with the experimental character and enjoyed the freedom of trying out things, while others described how they struggled and felt like they were being experimented upon. One person said: “I think you really must be careful whom or what you call an experiment. Sometimes it can be hurtful to be perceived as an experiment.” While some projects are backed by a support structure (for instance, a company or an association), others face more precarious circumstances and are financially dependent on their projects, and thereby felt like their existence was being experimented upon. Others struggled with a lack of structure and felt the ASF hub was somehow befuddled, as one person stated: “Sometimes I wished for more clear guidelines and clarity concerning who was responsible for what.” Another person told me that “the freedom was nice, but it almost felt like we as a project were coaching the hub. Some things were not clear, like when we would get money. I think the hub needed to test out and learn a lot of things itself.”

Thus, to me, the experimental character of the ASF hub needs a mindset that includes openness for trial and error, for the unknown or seemingly useless things, and for stepping away from normative understandings and internalized measurements of success – all things that are part of a queer perspective. However, there are also practical requirements for experimenting. If experimenting, figuratively speaking, includes falling, a soft ground can help in trusting the experiment – there needs to be a certain baseline of clarity and a certain amount of resources, especially in terms of time and financial security.

At this point, I would also like to demonstrate the influence that accompanying research has: It furthers the experimental setting and feelings of being observed. To me, this was somewhat unavoidable. Thus, I deliberately wanted to state my role as an accompanying researcher in each interview, workshop, or event I attended. I tried to be as transparent and clear as possible in communicating my intention of researching the ASF hub itself and what can be learned from its structures and processes, rather than observing singled-out individuals within. I received feedback from some project members that this explanation helped them feel less researched upon or even assessed in my presence.

Furthermore, there was a difference in understanding success: mostly, success means having an impact and existing beyond 2023 – to both the ASF hub as well as the projects. The general attitude towards success is rather skeptical, especially when framed within a neoliberal logic of performance or achievement. It was stated by multiple individuals that both the ASF hub and the projects are already successful in the sense of having a positive impact and getting positive resonance. Such a perspective focuses more on the process itself rather than on one specific output. One person from the ASF hub addressed this explicitly: “We were always focusing more on the process and did not measure the success of the projects in a classical sense. Rather, we were leaving it up to the projects themselves, guiding them in realizing their impact.” In another interview with a member of the ASF hub, the lively and processual character was mentioned as well, stating that the goal is to answer “Yes!” to the question of “Has the ASF hub been a vital ecosystem?” after the project’s runtime. Overall, collective learning shifted into focus, or as another person from the ASF hub put it: “It is not about enabling someone or learning in the sense of barely accumulating knowledge. Rather, it is about making experiences, building upon our existing and gaining new competencies. Taking something positive with us.”

As stated above, there is a high level of energy within the ASF hub and all the projects – the shared attitude seems to be one of being motivated to work for what people care for and find meaningful. While this is a great potential, it can lead to overworking and people burning out, especially in the precarious and competitive environment of limited research funding. Due to the innovativeness of the ASF hub, there are also fewer structures and resources to build upon. Many stakeholders told me about their struggles within the process, mainly due to a lack of time, money, or work overload. People reported crying every morning or considering stopping their project. Burning out was described as rather normal, even though it should not be. One participant said: “In areas where people work for something they are truly committed to, burning out is so common. Because you have this personal connection to it, an intrinsic motivation.” Another one pointed out the precarious environment: “I also realized that I am a little tired. I don’t want to search and apply for funding anymore.” What helped people get out of those states was counseling or coaching, learning to ask for help, saying no, and managing their time, a general mindset shift away from normative understandings of productivity, and remembering the motivation behind their work. Some phrases were:

“When I won’t finish it, I won’t finish it. That’s the way it is.”

“You don’t have to manage everything on your own. It’s okay to ask for help.”

“I don’t have to know everything.”

“It’s not necessarily my fault if something is not working. Maybe we just don’t have enough resources.”

“Sometimes it’s really hard. Getting positive feedback and remembering why I am doing this is the only thing that keeps me going. That really is extremely beautiful and confirming.”

When it comes to remembering their motivation, some people pointed out the role of emotions. As part of the supportive structure of the ASF hub, one workshop was about vividly imagining the best possible outcome of the project. This was often described as re-energizing. One person said: “I was so close to giving up. Going into those positive feelings of the best-case scenario helped me so much! It’s so important to work with emotions!”

When it comes to conclusions, the need for more apparently empty space and time was mentioned most often by project members. They experienced the ASF hub program as too packed, not leaving many opportunities for the projects to think about how they could connect with each other, what kind of support they needed, or to reflect on what had happened so far. They wanted more open formats with a loose structure. Furthermore, many project members stated that a physical space for hanging out, connecting, or co-working would have been a good idea. From the perspective of the ASF hub, it can be challenging to allow for apparent nothingness, letting things develop on their own, and thereby resisting the urge to provide a tight program to ensure a positive outcome.

To me, pausing and taking a break is extremely powerful. It allows us to take a step back and reflect, recharge, and rest. However, it is important to not utilize the pause as a tool to simply be more productive. Pausing and resting means resisting the capitalist logic of growth and productivity, especially when done for the mere purpose of pausing and resting. Similarly, I think working joyfully just to experience joy is powerful. I am including this as part of my method, trying to set-up my research practice in a way that feels most joyful within the given circumstances. My video practice is a concrete example of this – it is a way of reflecting on my process that I find highly enjoyable. In one of my interviews, a participant said: “A lot of work is great if it’s joyful work that doesn’t overstrain you.” Another one also pointed out the importance of joy: “For me, this was actually one of my motivations to do this project: The possibility to experiment, just have fun, and not think too much.”

The project MYCKET is a lovely example here since it is a project where joy is and will be the focus: “Everything should continue to be driven by joy. Hopefully, by working like that, we will transform the way things are being done” (Bonnevier 2023). To me, this is the ideal scenario where the creative energy of engaged people can unfold instead of burning out. Again, the question is how such a scenario can be created and what requirements on a structural level are needed. I do think, however, as Bonnevier pointed out, a queer way of working can also transform the way things are being done –both in terms of bottom-up and top-down processes.

Since this article is being written at a point in time where eight months were left of the hub’s runtime, revised after only three months were left, it is too early to draw conclusions. I am hence summing up my present thoughts and reflecting on my research in the status quo. I started this research with the intention to accompany the processes of the ASF hub, looking for queer elements, and investigating what queer perspectives on project work could be. I strived to provide support, guidance, and inspiration: both for ongoing processes and for reflections that could help set up future projects. I don’t want to force the use of queerness as a concept or insist on calling certain ways of working specifically queer. Yet, I find it fruitful to see queerness as an invitation to look through a kaleidoscope or a prism, that both offers new, fun, playful, fascinating perspectives, which can make normative structures visible and flexible and might help to develop new ways of collaboration.

A lot of queer elements are present in the ASF hub and its projects, in my opinion. This ranges from the innovative way the whole structure has been set up, to individual actions and ways of working. In the following paragraphs, I am summing up preliminary findings and learnings from my research process, touching upon multiple queer aspects. In doing so, I also formulate questions that can be utilized beyond the ASF hub as learnings for future, similar undertakings, with an eye to what needs to be considered in terms of facilitation and design.

First, everyone’s extremely high motivation is a great potential, yet also bears the possibility of overworking, if not properly monitored, especially in already precarious and competitive environments such as project funding. I think it is necessary to find ways of fanning this energy carefully, so it does not burn (people) out. Therefore, one of the main takeaway questions is: how can we create a sustainable environment where high levels of energy and motivation thrive and accelerate in a positive way, and where project work becomes a state of flow, instead of leading people into burnout? I believe structural changes are needed, as well as a queer way of doing project work that is focused on joy, care, process, and curiosity instead of outdated models of competition, outcome, and success. Doing things queerly creates new, sustainable structures and makes old ones crumble.

Pressure emerges from the high, dizzying, seemingly unreachable goal of shaping society’s transformation to sustainability. In the ASF hub, part of this has been resolved by breaking down the big goal into smaller impacts. Nevertheless, it remains important to challenge normative understandings of effectiveness and success and think about what sort of expectations are bestowed upon innovations – or, as one member of the ASF hub said, how to deal with the question of “So, did you save the world already?” This is connected to the perception of time. One lesson was that things always take more time than expected and that it is hard to stay with the process and not feel continuously behind, or not proceeding fast enough. As I argued above, slowing down and taking breaks is important. How then can we feel like we are always on time while embracing a seemingly slow process?

Within the ASF hub, success is overall understood as processual positive impact and collective learning that can create further impact chains that continue to grow. Due to the support’s experimental character, however, it was not always clear whose success was fostered. To me and everyone I interviewed, the ASF hub and its projects are already successful – in the sense of having a positive impact. Apart from the question of how to shape sustainable ways of working together, the question of success is not whether positive effects can be discerned, but rather what kinds of positive effects emerge, how we can reveal them, or where they might lead.

For the project teams, the combination of monetary funding and further support the ASF hub provides is perceived as innovative and both beneficial and challenging. Further frustrations emerged through unclear communication of responsibilities. The hierarchies created by monetary funding are hard to combine with support which needs trust and intimacy, so it was suggested many times by project members that the monetary funding should be disentangled from the provided support. Even though the ASF hub was set up as a non-hierarchal system, certain hierarchies cannot be avoided and need to be acknowledged and mitigated.

To me, this entanglement is connected to responsibility. When it comes to creating a safer space where people use their creative energy to experiment together, the question arises: who is responsible for creating and sustaining such a space? The aim of the ASF hub is to enable a system of mutual learning, one that is co-created and collectively shaped. However, certain hierarchies are also interlinked with responsibilities. I wonder: who is taking and should take what kinds of responsibilities? Is it even possible or desirable to distribute responsibilities equally and have no hierarchies? Who is accountable for what? This ties back to the ASF hub as an experiment. Experiments need a certain mindset and practical requirements, including an environment where everyone feels safe to experiment together. For the project members, this has not always been the case. The feeling of being experimented upon, at some points even with their existence, has been a challenge. I believe that experiments need to be guided and the role(s) of each participant clearly allocated and communicated.

I believe that frustration is inherent to project work to some extent. In the context of the ASF hub and its projects, the precarious environment of research (funding) is a stressor. I believe that acknowledging, talking about, and reflecting on frustration points is a first step towards overcoming them. However, it also showed that there is a real lack of resources – mainly financial, timewise, and/or the fact that the hub was short-staffed. This is a hindrance to reflective work and the translation of this work into further actions. Related questions include: How much reflection is needed? What resources are required, and what is being done with the results of the reflection?

Finally, joining what might not belong together is an important characteristic of the ASF hub that bears both frustration and new possibilities, such as joining art and science or joining projects with different topics and approaches. A queer way of working and taking and fostering queer perspectives can be described as one unifying element the ASF hub and its projects have in common in all their heterogeneity. Negativity emerges from feeling disconnected from each other. Reminding ourselves of our similarities, reinforcing togetherness, and staying open for possibilities of connecting things that might not go well together at first glance are ways of navigating through that paralyzing dizziness, and tapping back into our creative power. Even though the ASF hub is made up of different projects with diverse themes, the common ground is already determined by its name: Action for Sustainable Future. The individuals work in diverging areas, yet creating actions to strive toward sustainability is the unifying aspect that holds everything together.

During my process, I have often felt doubtful and lost, like I won’t be able to generate any meaningful results. Now, after a year of doing research, I can see the whole picture more clearly. The insights on the ASF hub are one part of my results, which I explained in the sections on sustainability; hierarchies, experiments, and success; motivation and burnout; and joyful pausing, and which I reflected from a queer perspective. The development of my practice of queering and queer perspectives in project work forms the other part. In this reflective section, I will focus on the potential and challenges of this practice. A methodological part might seem misplaced, appearing so late in this article, but is a main outcome of my research.

My accompanying research has the potential to point out and remind participants of their common ground from a more detached perspective and through creative tools. Looking back on my process, the audio-visual thinking through producing videos has proven to be extremely fruitful. They are like pages of my research notebook and reflections on interviews, observations, and participations in events. They helped me to think creatively, stage questions or themes I was pondering, or formulate messages I could not put into mere words. In retrospect, all videos create a season of queer perspectives with weekly episodes. During the runtime, the themes shift and evolve: starting with a voyage into queerness, queer elements as being omnipresent, and queering as a practice, they shift into queer perspectives on project work. Today, with three more months left of the ASF hub’s runtime, I arrive at investigating togetherness with our individual and collective surroundings, including togetherness with nature and other beings. I investigate what can be learned in terms of collaborative processes that work towards sustainability and are sustainable in itself. With these thoughts in mind, I develop perspectives to feed back into the interviews and workshops.

The interviews themselves, both the ones I held at the beginning with other queer people as well as the ones with members and members of its projects, were relevant not only for collecting information but more so for exchange. The interviews on queerness and queer perspectives helped me in grasping queerness and describing it for the means of this research project, but some interviewees also stated that it brought clarity around the term for themselves and possible own projects. Often, they were more like conversations of co-regulation since it allowed us to exchange experiences of being queer in research settings. Furthermore, the thoughts Frederik Marroquín provoked on anonymization, giving credits, and hierarchies of expertise enriched this article. Not only did they push me to give more appropriate credit to the interviewees but they also led me to critically rethink my research practice.

Similarly, the interviews with ASF hub people went beyond the mere collection of data: Many of the interviewed people said how nice it was to talk about the hub and their projects, to speak on themes like success or self-care within project work, and their learnings. They stated that it helped them to reflect on what had happened, realize accomplishments, and get a clearer view of what was still ahead of them. Next to being grateful for the resources all interviewees put into this article by participating, I am thankful for the trust they displayed. All conversations were intimate and trustful. Many people shared emotional, grave and joyful information with me. Thus, the interviews impacted me. I felt many emotions, ranging from energized to disheartened afterward. I experienced similar emotions during the events I attended. I felt joyful during and after network meetings listening to other people’s motivation and accomplishments, and I felt sad and hopeless when people shared existential struggles or serious themes they addressed in their projects.

Including those emotions in the workshops was part of my working method. I incorporated exercises like the Stinky Fish, for example, where people were invited to reflect on what they were carrying around and thus bringing to the workshop but would rather not talk about on their own, which could be anything from struggles with their family or not having slept enough (cf. Hyper Island, Stinky Fish). We noted down moments of joy, shared them with others, and kept the notes to remind ourselves of this joy later. Given my own experience, and the participants’ feedback, such simple exercises created a sense of trust at the beginning of workshops or meetings. The workshops I held alone and those I held with Ruth Anderwald and Leonhard Grond sought to provide spaces for reflection. We wanted to remind all participants of their common ground and the goals they shared, providing togetherness in view of the difficult and dizzying task of creating steps toward sustainability. The people who participated described the workshops as fruitful and inspiring, yet only a few people attended the workshops to begin with. From talking to project members and facilitators of the hub, this was most likely due to a lack of resources and a general skepticism and doubt towards experimental and artistic workshops. I do think that this is fine since the workshops were merely an offer, not an obligation. However, at the same time, I would have wished for more participation and interest in them—a wish that is explicitly shared by the board and coordinator of the ASF hub.

Investigating queer perspectives on project work also meant applying them to my research. Amongst others, this meant reframing success by not labeling low participant numbers as a failure of a particular workshop, but rather focusing on the positive experiences of people who did attend. It included cherishing moments of joy and trust, and actively pointing out accomplishments of myself and others, no matter how big or small. I meant allowing myself to be involved and to show it, to be touched and get emotional, and not only accepting this but viewing it as a significant part of my research. Sometimes, it entailed acting in ways that felt unprofessional yet in ways that were driven by joy, such as playing around with modeling clay or making videos just for the purpose of making them.

Overall, I am only starting to grasp what queering means for me, and what aspects queer perspectives imply. This way of working has been an experiment and aligned well with hub’s experimental character. Queering has a big potential to uncover and dismantle normative structures and foster transformation and innovation, connected with community and care. My research allowed for multiple stimuli and points of view, enabling procreative moments of transformation, transitions, and change. However, the question prevails of how to make queering and queer perspectives available. Should it be understood and utilized as a method? How can we communicate its potential and relevance? It requires more time and people to investigate queering and queer perspectives in project work and collaborative processes in general, possibly by co-creating a queer (un)common body of knowledge. One challenge that is general yet also specific to the ASF hub is how to measure or access experimental, innovative, non-normative, and queer undertakings, and how to communicate findings and learnings. The question of the (probably unusual, vague, or relative) nature of themes like expertise, care, learning, togetherness, or success becomes ever more relevant. Finding an answer to this question needs time and a willingness to see things queerly.

I am ending this preliminary report by proposing a manifesto of doing project work in queer ways. It is not complete, final, nor in a particular order. Rather, it is an invitation to start seeing queerly by just attempting it. Since I cannot draw final conclusions on queering and queer perspectives, and possibly never can, this manifesto is both outcome and a mere snapshot of my research. It might appear out of context or to be standing alone, creating an unsatisfactory rupture in the reading flow. Manifestos can initiate change, inspire movements, provoke thoughts, or shape discourses. By ending with this manifesto, I intentionally do not conclude my article. Instead, I open it up, inviting readers to ponder about queer perspectives in project work: what is missing? What could be left out or adapted? And how can this manifesto be implemented?

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reposition ISSN: 2960-4354 (Print) 2960-4362 (Online), ISBN: 978-3-9505090-8-3, doi.org/10.22501/repos

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Leo Hosp - I Can See Queerly Now. Queer Perspectives On Project Work - 2024