Hammerschlag – Artistic practice as Queer Local History Research

In this poster presentation I want to present the methodology and state of research of my artistic-scientific PhD project, I am pursuing at HFBK Hamburg since 2024. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, queer resistance against repression in Hamburg was forming collectively. One example is the first pride parade 1980, that was organized by a small collective using the infrastructure of the student and artist led gay liberation movement. Indeed, the demonstration revealed the police's will to document and single out individuals by taking photographs for unofficial registers. I order to end this surveillance of queer bodies in public spaces, an campaign was started to make this illegal practice public and to influence public opinion – again as a collective effort.
Researching this incident I found it very difficult to rely on official and hegemonic archives, as they mostly do not collect neither evidence of illegal police practices, nor self-representations of the subjects of police investigations. With the aim in mind to re-tell the story of queer resistance it is necessary to activate, build, and manifest counter archives.
My PhD project aims to fill the gaps in the official state archives by activating private memories of time witnesses and survivors, using the means of artistic production like re-enactment of a historic incident of self empowerment during an installation at Kampnagel Hamburg theatre space in April 2026, and an ongoing oral history workshops at the annual Queer History Month Hamburg.