The Barcelona LGTBI Centre presents the “Spiritualities” cycle, a programme of activities from October to December 2022.
The Barcelona LGTBI Centre presents the “Spiritualities” cycle, a programme of activities that will run from October to December 2022. Its aim is to understand spirituality as something beyond monotheistic religions, revealing its potential in the history and present day of the LGBTQIA+ dissidences and collective.
We propose an exercise in recollection and looking into the past. Over the centuries, despite persecution, some spiritual practices, such as paganism and certain minority religious traditions, have survived and become spaces for resistance for people who do not fit the male, cis-gender, heterosexual paradigm.
However, these spiritual practices have often been ridiculed, if not prohibited and punished, and have had to carry on in secrecy, similar to the situation of the bodies, desires and identities of LGTBIAQ+ people in many contexts.
Why and at what point in history did certain bodies, desires and affective networks became labelled as contemptible and provoke rejection and repression?
Can the binary and cis-hetero-normative norm be broken through spirituality?
Transgressing the schema that majority religious traditions have imposed on different ways of living and thinking in the world?
And what would happen if we were to open a space and recover everything that has been denied to us?
With this cycle, we hope to analyse tensions and ties between what we label as queer, religions and spirituality, and reclaim them as paths to personal and collective freedom. We want to shine a light on beliefs and practices which, wrapped up in prejudices, frequently look at us with condescension and resignify them as what they have become over time: spaces for building community and resistance.
From October to December we propose a journey through different traditions and visions: from the initiation ceremony provided by an art exhibition at the LGTBI Centre, to guided tours that will open portals onto other moments in history, along with workshops, literary conversations, conversation and exchange circles and training session on tools such as theTarot and themes such as death, grief and witchcraft.
Take a look at what we have planned:
Initiation
Like an initiation ritual, the exhibition “Spells and Dissidences” opens the programme and will be on display until 30 December, during the Centre’s opening hours.
The exhibition looks at different European and Abya Yala spiritual traditions, conjugating a variety of languages such as collage, textile art, illustration and audiovisual studies, among others. Black angels, medicinal plants, witches and unsubmissive vaginas call out from the walls, as if they were saints, virgins and icons from a particularly queer altarpiece.
Activity: Exhibition “Spells and Dissidences”
OPENING TIMES: From 13 October to 30 December during the centre’s opening hours
Portal
This activity opens the way onto a historical tour around the streets of Barcelona, at the hands of Barcelona Rebelde. This urban route takes us to religions and spiritual practices beyond the fringes of Catholic hegemony that have left their mark on the city of Barcelona. We will examine their sexual-affective visions and the points of contact between the persecution of these beliefs and repression directed at women and sexual dissidences.
Activity:
Guided tour: “Spiritualities, religions and sexual-affectivities: a history of persecution and resistance”, with Barcelona Rebelde
DAYS: 29 October, 5 and 12 November, 3 and 17 December
TIMES: 11 am to 1 pm
Registration at inscripcions@centrelgtbibcn.org
Conjuring chance
The poet, rhapsodist and sociocultural educator Txus García will show the way into the secrets of the Marseilles Tarot in this workshop where we will decipher ancestral mysteries through legends and archetypes. The Major Arcana will invite us to flee all kinds of uniformity and rigidity. Medieval images that show us the shadows and pleasures of life, playing with roles, concepts and definitions.
Activity:
Tarot workshop: “The Fool, the Witch and the Mirror: A Queer Journey through the 22 Arcana of the Tarot”; with Txus García
DAY: 11 November
TIMES: from 4 to 8 pm
Registration at inscripcions@centrelgtbibcn.org
Circles
Over these months we will have the chance to conjure face-to-face magic and reunite in circles around themes such as the magic that connects the participants in the “Spells and Dissidences” exhibition, different cultural traditions regarding death and their rituals, and the experiences of dissidents who embody different spiritualities.
Activities:
Presentation: Coven: Exhibition “Spells and Dissidences”
DAY: 25 October
TIME: 6 pm
Round table: “Dissidence and spirituality. An experiential approach”
DAY: 15 November
TIME: 6 pm
Round table: “A cool death: DU-DA”
DAY: 29 November
TIME: 6 pm
Revelations
We discuss the link between subversive spiritualities and dissident identities by approaching the revelations contained in a classic book: Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture. First published in 1978, different interpretations will help us place the text in the current context.
Activity:
Conversation on the book “Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture”
DAY: 17 November
TIME: 6 pm
Transit
Death raises doubts, questions and grief. It is a passage wrapped in rituals and traditions that often connect us to our more spiritual side, in the search for hope. With this training session we seek to provide tools for people accompanying others at the end of their life, to ease these processes in a way that respects sexual, affective and gender diversity.
Activity:
Training: “Dying queer. Accompaniment and possible spiritualities” with Som Provisionals
DAY: 14 December
TIME: from 4 to 8 pm
Registration at inscripcions@centrelgtbibcn.org
You can download the full programme here.
