Signified is an exciting online documentary series by Anna Barsan and Jessie Levandov (see picture below). The Brooklyn based filmmakers portray queer artists, activists and scholars in short video profiles, with the goal “to increase the visibility of queer identified individuals and organizations as well as create local, regional, and international networks for strategic community organizing and resource sharing.” The project started as a successful funding on Kickstarter in 2011 (over 20,000$!) and consists of so far 13 very beautiful and professionally edited videos – a very entertaining way to get to know people from different backgrounds, who all have shaped queer culture and politics in their individual ways. The first season, which has started with interviews with protagonists such as artist and activist Carlos Motta (who’s web project “We Who Feel Fifferently” we already posted about), writer, scholar and activist Darnell Moore, or the bklyn boihood collective, was completed in spring and is now followed by a second one, which has started in April. To make the series more international and expand their networks, Barsan and Levanov have also brought the project to a couple of Latin American countries, so there’s really a lot to look forward to. I’ve posted the most recent Signified episode below, it’s a portrait of poet and spoken-word artist Kit Yan. You can watch the rest of the series on the Signified website, where you also find a collection of useful links to websites of queer organizations and to articles by and about queer writers, artists etc. So to conclude: This really is the kind of stuff I love the internet for.

http://thisissignified.com

We Who Feel Differently is a beautifully designed internet project by Bogota born/ New York City based artist Carlos Motta, who has interviewed fifty queer thinkers, activists and artists from Colombia, Norway, South Korea and the United States about the history and current status of queer politics in their countries. All interviews can be streamed on the site in their original language and were also transcribed and translated into English. While they all reflect different views and approaches on topics such as sexual equality, social assimilation, gender politics, HIV/AIDS and queer arts, the project’s aim is to return to the idea of a “queer subjects” in a political sense, as Motta points out: “We Who Feel Differently attempts to reclaim a queer ‘We’ that values difference over sameness, a ‘We’ that resists assimilation, and a ‘We’ that embraces difference as a critical opportunity to construct a socially just world”.
As a second step, Motta brings together the main questions and topics of the interviews in five thematic reflections, which were also released as a book with the same title last year and can be fully downloaded on the artist’s website. He also has edited the online magazine We Who Feel Differently Journal, which further investigates queer topics. The first one focusing on marriage was published in spring 2011 and can be downloaded on the website as well, I hope it wasn’t the last one.
You find more background information on WWFD by Motta himself this little video portrait of the artist by Brooklyn based filmmaker and visual artist Anna Barsan, who portrayed him for the queer online documentary project Signified (which gets its own post here very soon).

http://wewhofeeldifferently.info

http://carlosmotta.com