MOTGIFTET #1: Club Kids Then and Now Screening
Drawing on the long history of queer boudary crossers and gender benders, Sam Message put together a snap shot of the Club Kid culture with a series of long and short films. This workshop was produced in collaboration with This is the Queer Space in preperation for the launch of their party SJUKT where attendees are encouraged to get wild with their aesthetics.

MOTGIFTET #2: Club Kid Drink & Draw
In this playful workshop, Sam Message and Kolbrún Inga Söring broke down the ‘I can’t draw’ narrative with a variety of exciting and experimental drawing techniques. Featuring 3 stunning club kid models. Participants played with tools like ‘edward-charcoal-hands’ and huge bendy foam rods to capture the naugthy club kid aesthetic.

MOTGIFTET #3: Teaching To Transgress Toolbox
For this workshop Sam Message and Kolbrún Inga Söring created a workshop with the material produced by the TTTT working group ‘Who’s in the classroom?’. The workshop focused on the many aspects of the Pronoun go-round and focused on three main elements, ice breakers, name and pronoun and accessibility. The main focus was to explore more intersectional and inclusive educational and working environments and give participants the tools to apply them to their own contexts. 

MOTGIFTET #4: Feminist Culture House
This workshop explored collaborations and agreement writing in the arts and cultural field. Peer support, collective sharing, and community building are central elements of Feminist Culture House’s practice, so this workshop was conversational—together, we practiced thinking about our needs and created small zines about them. Through their guidance and experience of feminist practice in approaching collaborations, they introduced tools for welcoming trans artists and arts workers into safe collaborative relationships.

MOTGIFTET #5: Daniel Mariblanca
Taking the artistic process from 71BODIES as a starting point, this workshop got us engaging with each other by exploring self boundaries and dancing together through improvisational tasks all while working through physical and mental challenges. Through Daniel’s guidance, we focused on searching for personal and unique dance qualities with every participant. 

Most of all, we had fun, experimented with the body and expanded our contact with others.

MOTGIFTET #6: Secret Sound Gardens

This workshop series with sound artist Isabel Taube(she/they) was centred around designing soundscapes. It was an introductory workshop for anyone who has ever wanted to try out music software and was raring to add to their self-expression toolbox and those who already had dipped their toes into sound’s soothing waters. The workshop was a space for participants to explore queer utopia’s through sound and experiment in a relaxed and supportive setting.

Daniel Mariblanca (he/him)
Daniel Mariblanca has 15 years of experience dancing professionally and a degree from l'Institut del Teatre, in Barcelona, Spain. Shortly after beginning as a dancer with the Norwegian National Company of Contemporary Dance/ Carte Blanche, Daniel created his own company 71BODIES; a transgender inclusive dance & performance company.

Feminist Culture House
FCH is a Helsinki-based non-profit working with and for underrepresented artists.  They work towards equitable futures and advancing feminist politics in the arts through providing learning opportunities for individuals and institutions. They focus on creating tools for change to create fair working conditions, better representation, and more inclusive institutional structures.

Gabbe Arvidsson (he/him)
Gabbe is a Shape shifting performance lover doing whatever they want.

Jonathan Hatila (they/them)
This fierce fashion feast is a non-binary, glitter loving and genderfucking godess who hates all kinds of norms.

Kolbrún Inga Söring (they/them)
Kolbrún Inga Söring is a gender queer artist working in Gothenburg whose work spans several areas of artistic expression from performance, video work and site-specific installation to community cultivation and cultural production. They currently run the organisation Status Queer.

Leo Glitter (they/he)
Leo is a genderbender extraordinaire, ready to challenge cisnormative bullshit with genderfuckery, glitter & chaotic sex appeal… as soon as they get up from the bed & their tv marathon with their depression in check.

Sam Message (they/them)
Sam is an artist and activist working with the spatial & the relational to explore connections between people. As a drag-performer they put their bizarre, playful and punk-like aesthetic to explore the surreal, the subversive and the political. They are both a researcher of queering practice and theory and a curator specialising in queer and feminist histories and themes. Other work includes inclusion, accessibility and engagement consultation, education and evaluation.

Teaching To Transgress Toolbox
“Based on peer-learning and collective research practices, Teaching To Transgress Toolbox* is a research and study programme on critical pedagogy in the arts. Funded by the European Union and developed transnationally by three art schools: erg (BrusselsBE), HDK-Valand (GothenburgSE) and ISBA (BesançonFR) this Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership (2019–2022) consisted of workshops, public events and an open access publishing platform that shares the resulting works, methods and tools with others to use in their specific educational contexts.” Read more: http://ttttoolbox.net/

who's in the classroom?
who’s in the classroom? Is a collectively written educational material which includes text,  video and audio interviews, drawings, Pronoun go-round guides(EN/SE/FR) and lots of resources. The work was written by Åke Sjöberg, Eva Weinmayr, Flo*Souad Benaddi, Kolbrún Inga Söring with great additional help from MC Coble, Nika Dahlberg-Melin, Sam Message, Tori & Håkan, Kasra, Jean Paul and Reb.

Isabel Taube (she/they)
Isabel Taube is a sound designer/artist who explores storytelling and self-expression through the creation of soundscapes. She has been working with Status Queer on a number of performance based projects including Initiations and Cult, running her own workshop called Secret Soundgardens as well as an installation for the upcoming Open Out festival in Tromsø.

The Spatial

We had two tasks with the spatial:

1. To create an environment which encouraged play and upset the rules. 

OUR SPACE OUR RULES

Walking into the gallery, you were immediately confronted with a pulsating, mouthwatering interruption to the sleek yeet bland navy, beige and black Scandinavian world outside. Just as we as a community break with normative life we made our space to break with normative aesthetics.

Sparkplug 1.0’s captivating sensory experience set the stage to move away from the cis-het norms that dominate our social world. At the same time though, being in such an alien space also had us feeling a little alien. If this was going to be the springboard for a new community, for a new home, we first needed to claim this space for ourselves.

Throughout the festival, workshops continually added to the space. We hung up our work, painted directly on the walls and furniture, created freestanding sculptures and left our traces as we pleased. Through our work and our play we claimed ownership over this space together. This built a special connection between us and the space  – in turn this allowed the space to become a medium through which we could connect to those we hadn’t directly worked with.

THE SPACE THAT HUGGED

While the first space was a place to get wet and wild, we also needed somewhere to collect ourselves, connect with ourselves and savour a slice of cooling calm.

At the back of the project space lay a shrouded entrance. Through this entrance came an outstretched peace offering: a hand holding a plant-cutting. In Gothenburg this plant is known as the ‘lesbisk nässla’ or ‘lesbian nettle’. The origin of the name is said to come from how easy it is to take cuttings from it. As the folklore goes, once one lesbian gets one, it spreads like wildfire through their circle. Textile artist Esse McChesney based their work for the Project Space on this ol’ queer Gothenburg tale, taking the ‘lesbian nettle’ as a symbol for our community’s sharing and caring: queer love, if you will!

Plunging into this entrance took you to the source of our space’s otherness – the portal. The Portal Room was designed to expand the space’s versatility. The Portal Rooms’ cool throbbing lights, encapsulating fabrics and dampened sound created a stark contrast to the bustling vibrant room lying just beyond the entrance. 

Throughout the week we used this space for reflection, and to take those quieter moments where we needed to get vulnerable with each other. With its completely different feeling to the Project Space, the portal room opened up a whole new set of possibilities for the kinds of relational work we could do with each other.

Sparkplug 1.0 was a space between spaces. It was a space between the world of ablist, racist, ageist, sexist, classist, cis-het bullshit outside and the queer utopia lying somewhere out of reach, beyond the portal. Sparkplug 1.0 sought to upset these overpowering systems; and even if we couldn’t override them completely, our two space’s gave us room to at least start that process.

2. To create a space which could host all of our relational work. 

This is where the Swiss Army Space comes in: we needed a space to host everything from drag workshops to mural painting, embroidery to vogue, film screenings to karaoke, social space to open space. Furniture we built to make this happen included folding benches and tables that turned into room dividers.

Our furniture also needed to work as tools in our unscripted relation work. The flowing organic shape of our benches were made to be the heart of the room, where people naturally would collect. It became a place where people could meet in smaller groups, whilst also facilitating the mixing of these groups to make broader conversations. With the help of all our structured relational work, this became a space where relative strangers came together to share intimate experiences of being LGBTQ+ in Gothenburg.

The Relational

Once we had claimed ownership over the space together, the stage was set to build new relationships in our fractured community. Together, the workshopping and the spatial work paved the way for the crucial next step: getting into the nitty-gritty. We put on a buffet of different events from high energy – think a room full of hyped up queers and trans people chanting ‘gay power’ over and over again, an activity which deffinately did not upset the neighbours… thanks Speech Karaoke – down to careful contemplation.

This all fostered a lot of discussions – joyful ones, confronting ones, caring ones, difficult ones – and a lot of listening – listening to dreams, to frustration, to demands, to consolations, to play.

We had spontaneous discussions, structured discussions and prompted discussions. To spark these conversations, and to guide them, we used a variety of starting points from following scripts and our Together Tools (tools you can only use in collaboration with others) to film screenings and panel & round-table discussions.

These discussions helped us understand the different struggles, challenges and joys that we face across our incredibly varied community here in Gothenburg.

MAKING TOGETHER

Whether it was preaching impassioned speeches or sissying our swaying hips, embroidering rainy umbrellas or jumbling together non-binary characters, painting walls or painting faces, we did a lot of making together! Check out the gallery tab to get a taste of the action.

Our workshops were designed by and for people who belong to our 5 priority LGBTQ+ groups – racialised people, working class/precarious people, people with disabilities, elders and binary & nonbinary trans people. You can read more about our approach to accessibility and inclusion here.

Throughout the festival, we drew on the strengths of local talent and our international partners from The Queer Agenda to put on a deliciously varied spread of workshops to tantalise people of different tastes – we wanted to make sure there was at least 1 thing that got people’s juices flowing!

COMMUNITY

We built a space that broke with the norms outside its walls. Then we helped our community claim it for their own. In doing so, those that took part built a special relationship with both the space and each other. This made people feel at home and created fertile ground for new relations to sprout.

During this time we also made room for ‘open space’ – giving the chance for those in the community to turn up and do what they wanted with the space. From impromptu lip sync competitions to drawing to runway presentation on the street outside we used the space how we wanted to.

So, did it work?

Since Sparkplug 1.0 we’ve seen the seeds we planted burst out of the ground. First they were just small shoots, but with our continued nurturing and fertilising with the help of all our fabulous collaborators we’ve seen these plants grow into sturdy young saplings. Read more about our artistic endevours, and the social spaces our siblings at This is the Queer Space to find out more!

Where there is plenty of work still to go, we are well on our way to the sustainable, inclusive and diverse LGBTQ+ community we dream of. Onwards and upwards Gothenburg!

Much of our work with Sparkplug 1.0 was informed and guided by our network of LGBTQ+ artist’s, cultural producers and community organisers The Queer Agenda. Read more about that here.

Demba Sabally (he/him)
Demba is one of the Gothenburg leaders in the Voguing scene. He has walked balls in Paris, Oslo, Copenhagen and more. He goes by 007 in the main scene and Marciano in the Kiki scene. He mostly walks Butch Queen European Runway but he also walks Vogue femme.

THE DRIN (inside) PROJECT: DIVERSITY, REPRESENTATION, INCLUSION, NORM CRITIQUE
The DRIN project wants to enable everyone to participate in our societies, focusing on children’s books. The project brings players in the field together, shares knowledge, forms networks of empowerment and promotes standards for more diverse children’s literature in the European context.

Elias Ericson (he/him)
Elias is an illustrator and comic artist who has published three books: Åror (2013), Blompojken (2014) and Diana & Charlie (2021). Overwhelming emotions, LGBTQ experiences and mental health are all important topics and inspirations to what he creates.

Esse McChessney (they/them)
Esse is a queer textile artist in Gothenburg that works with weaving, fabric collages and embroidery. In their work they investigte gender and sexuality from the point of being a queer non-binary transperson. Their work circles around gender and body; What do bodies have to do with gender? And where does gender identity exist outside the body and in feelings? In their work you can also find symbolism, a lot of color, abstractions and balance.

Kolbrún Inga Söring (they/them)
Kolbrún Inga Söring is a gender queer artist working in Gothenburg whose work spans several areas of artistic expression from performance, video work and site-specific installation to community cultivation and cultural production. They currently run the organisation Status Queer.

Newcomers Göteborg
Newcomers is a social platform and network for LGBTQI refugees and migrants. Newcomers is a part of RFSL Gothenburg which meets regularly to do activities chosen by its members.

Romas Zabarauskas (he/him)
Romas is a unique cinematic voice from the Baltics, Romas is equally known in his home country as an openly gay, outspoken LGBT+ rights activist. His feature film Advokatas/The Lawyer (2020) is the first Lithuanian feature film focusing on a male same-sex romantic relationship and one of the very few fiction films about the LGBTQ+ refugee experience in Europe.

Sam Message (they/them)
Sam is an artist and activist working with the spatial & the relational to explore connections between people. As a drag-performer they put their bizarre, playful and punk-like aesthetic to explore the surreal, the subversive and the political. They are both a researcher of queering practice and theory and a curator specialising in queer and feminist histories and themes. Other work includes inclusion, accessibility and engagement consultation, education and evaluation.

Speech Karaoke
Speech Karaoke is a fun-loving, intersectional communal art project. Speech Karaoke resembles ordinary karaoke, but instead of doing a song, you do a speech. In addition to over 800 speeches in 17 languages already in our catalogue, we have new speeches curated and created especially for this event. Welcome, everyone!

This is the Queer Space
This is the Queer Space is a platform working to bring Gothenburg safer LGBTQ+ social spaces. The platform works closely with Status Queer to strengthen and deepen relationships instigated by Status Queer’s Community Cultivation methodology.

We are so grateful to our funders, without which we would never have been able to lay the ground work for the little slice of queer utopia we’re trying to bring to earth.

Sparkplug 1.0 was supported by:

Daniel Mariblanca(he/him)
Daniel Mariblanca has 15 years of experience dancing professionally and a degree from l'Institut del Teatre, in Barcelona, Spain. Shortly after beginning as a dancer with the Norwegian National Company of Contemporary Dance/ Carte Blanche, Daniel created his own company 71BODIES; a transgender inclusive dance & performance company. 

Feminist Culture House
Feminist Culture House  is an intersectional feminist organisation based in Helsinki working for and with underrepresented artists. Their vision is to advocate for ''intersectional and feminist values and working conditions, resulting in an art field working sustainably, and thoroughly occupied and built by different kinds of bodies and identities.'' 

Peter Nylund(he/him)
Peter Nylund is an artist and activist, working in the intersections of racial, gender and sexual justice. Formerly a professional boxer Peter still always has a foot in the world of athleticism and loves to promote a healthy and active lifestyle to the community. Health is wealth, as they say.

Romas Zabarauskas (he/him)
Romas is a unique cinematic voice from the Baltics, Romas is equally known in his home country as an openly gay, outspoken LGBT+ rights activist. His feature film Advokatas/The Lawyer (2020) is the first Lithuanian feature film focusing on a male same-sex romantic relationship and one of the very few fiction films about the LGBTQ+ refugee experience in Europe.

Speech Karaoke
Speech Karaoke is a fun-loving, intersectional communal art project. Speech Karaoke resembles ordinary karaoke, but instead of doing a song, you do a speech. In addition to over 800 speeches in 17 languages already in our catalogue, we have new speeches curated and created especially for this event. Welcome, everyone!

Sindre Rydhard(they/them)
Sindre is a performer, communicator and event organiser. They go by Sugar as a stage name because they sprinkle sweetness into everything they do even though they sometimes look scary. They are a part of the Gothenburg ballroom scene and the international ballroom house of Milan. Royal Iconic House of Milan.

THE DRIN (inside) PROJECT: DIVERSITY, REPRESENTATION, INCLUSION, NORM CRITIQUE
The DRIN project wants to enable everyone to participate in our societies, focusing on children’s books. The project brings players in the field together, shares knowledge, forms networks of empowerment and promotes standards for more diverse children’s literature in the European context.