Queerbourhood Watch Collective are a group of multidisciplinary artists & members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Many of the members self-identify as QPOC and or BIPOC. They all live with varied degrees of chronic illness and believe in radical forms of healing. The core collective are currently based on unceded Aboriginal lands, also known as ‘Australia.’ however they have made connections with LGBTQIA+ and marginalized communities globally, largely due to their practice of prioritising and centralising care & visibility for First Nations issues. This is because the oppression of Indigenous peoples and sacred knowledge practices are the scaffolding for all oppression and discrimination.
QWC’s practice explores a variety of forms, including text based art, poetry, soundscapes, hybrid performance, digital art & videography to create opportunities where experiences & voices of people often ignored and exploited can be discussed, protected and championed.
This group came together as advocates, activists and creatives who have survived lived experiences of identity based discrimination, racial, classist, ableist predjudice and ongoing suppression of their voices.
This collaborative group of artists are anonymous for reasons of safety – this choice allows them to challenge concepts of what’s considered Public vs. Private, with ideas of what people feel they are entitled to know. Questioning the identifying information used to frequently intimidate and silence their voices and that of community – our Collective invites members of the public, fellow artists and guests of PAWA to take part in these dialogues and conversations at a grassroots level, creating a natural evolution together for permanent revolutionary change.
Queerbourhood Watch Collective creates spaces online and via live performance where people can interact, transmute & communicate with memorable engagements & important conversations around accountability, growth and what an online profile feels like when it’s seen & felt in real time as a human being, dancing off the screen in front of them.
This model provides many of the collective members as disabled activists and creators with a way to express lived experiences & claim our right to accessibility and inclusion in forums where these voices are often silenced. Their work addresses concerns with those who profit directly in unethical ways from vulnerable people and/or represent problematic iconography in their work that causes ongoing harm, without any acknowledgement or will towards change. QWC are interested in using artworks to create conversations and dialogues around public accountability and representation.
QWC opens up avenues for recognition and growth, however painful and challenging they may be. Actions taken by individuals, especially those positioning themselves as leaders of communities or in positions of power regarding the booking of spaces, museums and venues – QWC argues that the actions of these people, especially in commercial contexts have direct impact on wider issues of safety, interpersonal relationships, employment, class structures, racial profiling and the perception and festishization of queer, BIPOC and marginalized people in society – these are key features explored and investigated through their work.
A movement of people power and an artistic reflection of reclamation. They are deadly serious about finding strategies and ways in which members of these communities can address how they are targeted,marginalized, oppressed and actively made to feel unsafe, in real life and online. This is a response to the steady but dramatic increase of hate based crimes and online bullying of marginalized people.This has specifically increased on social media platforms. We say this from the privilege of living in a 1st world nation and the western framework we have grown up in.The hardest part of the collective’s work is helping make it clear that there is bigotry, tokenism, abuses of power and class based hate within the LGBTIA+ rainbow.
QWC are oppressed artists and creators who are saying NO MORE to ALL oppressors. There has been a major energetic shift in this world and a panicked power struggle taking place internationally since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a new interest in the rainbow community, particularly from commercial corporations and cis-het audiences. QWCollective’s work is a living, breathing, rapid art response mechanism to these concerns, while also creating radical new forms of revolutionary community care.
