Curator: Ema Benčíková
Collaborators: Katarina Babič Derenda, Nuka Horvat, Lan Aidan Remec, Nai Štagar, Društvo DIH – Enakopravni pod mavrico, Zavod TransAkcija
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Exhibition Events
17. 5. 2025, 14.00–18.00: International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia Picnic
Bring and share your snacks, swap your clothes at our pop-up exchange and enjoy an ambient DJ-set during this community picnic celebrating IDAHOBIT and standing proudly against discrimination.
20. 5., 27. 5., 17.00–19.00: Book Club – Neuroqueer Theory Tuesdays
Come and join us for an online cosy evening on Tuesday and explore neuroqueer theory together. For all curious minds and warm-hearted rebels.
23. 5., 30. 5., 6. 6. 2025, 14.00–18.00: Plac – Your Place
Your Place is an open space for all trans and queer people interested in spending time in the company of other LGBTIQ+ people. Queers of all ages, identities, orientations and expressions welcome.
23. 5., 30. 5., 6. 6. 2025, 20.00–22.00: Movie Night – Neuroqueer Screens
Expect to watch, feel and discuss how media shaped by neuroqueer perspectives can challenge normativity and open up space for different ways of being.
1. 6. 2025, 16.00–20.00: Zine-Making Session
Let’s collectively remember and archive the joys of neuroqueer being. We will chat, hang out and make a zine celebrating our unique forms of embodiment. Materials provided – just bring your fabulous self.
5. 6. 2025, 17.00–19.00: Queer Sign Workshop
Come and learn how queerness can be expressed in various sign languages – from Slovenian to International Sign Language. No prior knowledge required, just hands, heart and curiosity.
11. 6. 2025, 18.00–21.00: Closing Action – Pride Poster Workshop
Pride is just around the corner and we want to wrap up the exhibition in style – join us to make posters and signs together, ready to share our queer, neurodivergent and collective messages with the world.
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Pushing my reality, living my truth, thriving. I want to write a love poem to all of you neurodivergent queer folx. All of you neuroqueering reality as you DIY this prefabricated life.
There is joy in my nervous system. There is ease in my bodymind. My embodiment is full of rest… Breathe in and breathe out… The parasympathetic pathway is activated. I digest the room, the lights, the sounds. I flow for connection.
⋆｡°✩ Neuroqueering ⋆⭒˚｡⋆ is an act of space for community.
⋆｡°✩ Neuroqueering ⋆⭒˚｡⋆ is fucking with grammar.
⋆｡°✩ Neuroqueering ⋆⭒˚｡⋆ is: “Actively exploring, practicing, reclaiming, cultivating non-normative modes of embodiment.”[1]
The streets can sometimes feel like they were not built for you. They were never built for me. The public infrastructures that cloud and scatter my perception make me dizzy. The body politic – dissociated for decades – leaves my system dysregulated and needing a nap. But where?
I look for a way to actively heal, I adjust my surroundings, I regulate my hypersenses. I see you also practise this alchemy of transition. Transing your way of being. Neverending, never stopping, bending and enmeshing, blending and connecting.
My way of being has always been a DIY-being-in-the-world. We have been given all these structures and particles, but never connected in the right way. I have been given a name, a gender, a set of career options, a set of maps and trajectories, a set of overwhelming social protocols and ways of sitting in a chair – and I remade them to fit. To fit me. I see you can do it, too.
⋆｡°✩ Neuroqueering ⋆⭒˚｡⋆ is destabilising.
⋆｡°✩ Neuroqueering ⋆⭒˚｡⋆ is digesting.
⋆｡°✩ Neuroqueering ⋆⭒˚｡⋆ is speculative world-building.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes that: “I am dreaming like my life depends on it. Because it does.”[2] Dreaming is a consequence of rest and play. I rest. I play. I dream a different world into being. Where we all get to nap after lunch. Where productivity is measured in how many friends you make. A world where my needs and your needs are truly met every day.
Neuronormativity and cis-heteronormativity combine into this post-post capitalist hellscape. We need to invite the neuroqueer art of failure. To ⋆｡°✩ neuroqueer ⋆⭒˚｡⋆ the nervous system of the social body and find joy in fluid, intuitive being with 0 pressure. Play is a radical act. It creates a space to access pain, restore and envision a world that prioritises humanity over profit.
I want to sing of access intimacy and unique needs; radical acceptance and softness that allow us to treat each other with the utmost kindness. We can refocus, reorient ourselves. See the corners of the room anew… extending with breath.
⋆｡°✩ Neuroqueering ⋆⭒˚｡⋆ for trans joy.
⋆｡°✩ Neuroqueering ⋆⭒˚｡⋆ for crip pleasure.
Ema Benčíková
PS
I find meaning in dense texts and sometimes it is important to formulate one-self-other-wise. Neuroqueer becoming is non-teleological. This DIY-being-in-the-world imparts orientations for a radically emancipated topography. Shifting of positionalities and relationalities performs institutional reconstruction; it is a transmaterialistic reordering, a prefigurative intra-action. To paraphrase Lucas Crawford writing in Transgender Architectonics: “Neuroqueer embodiment is poetic and architectural work.”
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[1] Walker, Nick. 2021. Neuroqueer Heresies. Fort Worth: Autonomous Press.
[2] Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. 2018. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Vancouver: Pulp Press.
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For inspiration:
Clare, Eli. 2009. Exile & Pride: Disability, Queerness & Liberation. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.
Ahmed, Sara. 2006. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham; London: Duke University Press.
Crawford, Lucas. 2015. Transgender Architectonics. London: Routledge
Chapman, R. 2023. Empire of Normality: Neurodiversity and Capitalism. Pluto Press.
Price, Devon. 2022. Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity. New York: Harmony Books.
Price, Devon. 2024. Unlearning Shame: How We Can Reject Self-blame Culture and Reclaim Our Power. New York: Harmony Books.
Salamon, Gayle. 2010. Assuming a Body. New York. Columbia University Press.
Shanbaum, Phaedra. 2024 Aesthetics, Gender, and Disability in Interactive Digital Art and Performance Art. Oxford: Taylor & Francis Group.
Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. 2018. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Vancouver: Pulp Press.
Walker, Nick. 2021. Neuroqueer Heresies. Fort Worth: Autonomous Press.
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Ema Benčíková (she/they) is a Vienna-based curator, theatre director and care worker. In their artistic research, they focus on the critical phenomenology of non-normative embodiment, especially on the infrastructural analysis of mutual aid between the trans and crip communities. In the last year, they were a fellow of the intersectional organisation kültüř gemma!
Nai Štagar (he/him/none) is a trans* activist and advocate for the rights of marginalised communities, particularly trans and hearing-impaired individuals. He organises Slovenian sign language workshops to emphasise accessibility and inclusion. He has also participated in movements advocating for broader human rights issues, such as supporting Palestinian rights through student-led initiatives.
Katarina Babič Derenda (he/they) is a queer Slovenian artist whose preferred mediums are digital collages, video and sculpture, through which they question normative modes of embodiment and centre neuroqueer well-being as a radical act. Rooted in a post-internet aesthetic, their work repurposes the visual detritus of gaming culture through humour, appropriation and remix.
Nuka Horvat (they_he) je kvir multimedijski umetnik. Zanima ga imitacija resničnega, uncanniness oblik in trganje elementov iz svojega konteksta za grajenje nove celote. Zanaša se na subjektivnost gledalke, ki s svojo percepcijo dopolnjuje vizualno izkustvo.
Teme, ki jih ponavadi obravnava so kvir problematika, družbena odtujenost, digitalizacija, (post)kapitalizem, itd.
Nuka Horvat (they_he) is a queer multimedia artist. Their work explores the imitation of reality, the uncanniness of forms and the extraction of elements from their original context to construct new entities. They rely on the subjectivity of the viewer, whose perception completes the visual experience. The themes they are typically concerned with include queer issues, social alienation, digitalisation, (post-)capitalism, etc.
Lan Aidan Remec (he/him) is a Slovenian queer activist and youth worker committed to building communities based on solidarity and collective care. He has been involved in queer activism since 2019 and has been working with Društvo DIH for the past three years. Lan is also a psychology student focusing on research that aims to create meaningful, positive change in the lives of marginalised communities.
TransAkcija is a queer, trans-specific and transfeminist organisation that focuses on human rights and social protection of gender-diverse people in Slovenia, raising awareness and providing education about trans culture, as well as strengthening the community and creating shared resources for knowledge, empowerment and support.
Društvo DIH – Enakopravni pod mavrico is a non-profit organisation dedicated to empowering queer individuals in Slovenia since 2003. Through its activities, the organisation aims to increase knowledge, understanding, visibility, awareness and representation of queer people to combat discrimination and promote inclusivity and acceptance.
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English proofreading: Arven Šakti Kralj
Slovene proofreading: Inge Pangos
Cover image: Katarina Babič Derenda, Nuka Horvat
Design: Lea Jelenko
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The Škuc Gallery programme is supported by the Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Ljubljana.
