Film screening by Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor
laying fire is an exploration of intimacy that uses Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic” as a guiding beacon. As Lorde writes ““The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos and power of our deepest feelings.” The erotic is most often defined as arousing sexual desire. If we queer this definition of the erotic, we can redefine the term to include new ways of relating to one another. Instead of the erotic being used as a pornographic tool, we can modify it to build partnerships and make relationships more inclusive.
In feminist theorist Sara Ahmed’s essay “Ideas of Queer Use” she writes, “queer use can be understood as the ordinary and painstaking work of challenging existing structures or modifying existing arrangements.” One queer use for the erotic could be imbuing all of our exchanges with a heightened charge of energy that comes from a place of pleasure. The initiative to archive narratives about queer Afro-Norwegian in the Nordics arose from questions about the politics of intimacy.
Queer intimacy in all its forms is politicized in many societies around the world, from over 200 anti-LGBT bills filed in the United States in 2022 to more than 60 countries across the globe with national laws criminalizing same sex relations. Images of queer Black intimacy are rarely shown in a positive, stable and affirming light, where stories from these intersecting communities are rarely amplified in mainstream media.
