Queer Analog Darkroom

Image of a person developing a photograph under red light. Only their hands are visible. At the bottom of the photo, yellow text reads: “But it’s definitely an intense change also for you”.

For this edition of Spätschicht, the collective Queer Analog Darkroom take over Rirkrit Tiravanija’s untitled 2025 (waiting room), a common space at Gropius Bau, opening it as a temporary refuge. Taking the exhibition Peter Hujar / Liz Deschenes: Persistence of Vision and the artists’ resistance to fixed categories as their starting point, they explore a radical practice of slowing down within today’s capitalism.

Spätschicht – Live Programme at Gropius Bau is a monthly series of free events with an interdisciplinary programme ranging from talks, book discussions and film screenings to concerts and DJ sets. In addition to the workshop, you can experience a performance by Selin Davasse, a reading by Andrew Durbin, and a short film by Gary Schneider, to which musician Biliana Voutchkova will respond with a live performance.

Under red light, the darkroom becomes a space of transformation and serves as a site to reflect on queerness and urban space: Who has space in the city? How does gentrification displace queer life? Who has been silent? Which spaces survive only precariously, and which have already disappeared? How can we use our spaces to imagine futures beyond those offered to us? A collaborative display gathers images and memories of queer venues and events that are lost, threatened and still existing, forming a collective archive of spatial belonging, resistance and solidarity. Visitors are invited to linger, perceive and collectively remember these spaces.

Queer Analog Darkroom e.V. is a self-organised queer collective for analog photography in Berlin. Using camera and darkroom as tools against mainly white cis-heteronormative image politics they make marginalized realities visible, and connect community, skillsharing and critical discourse towards queer-feminist futures based on solidarity.

During the event, photographs and video recordings may be made in which you may be recognisable. By attending, you consent to these recordings being used to communicate the event or exhibition.