Outburst Queer Arts Festival returns in 2024 for an emphatic 18th birthday celebration. The jam-packed programme features events taking place all across Belfast from November 15 to 23.
The festival is separated into six different strands, with something to suit every taste. Are You On The Bus? is an interactive triptych of happenings; Out From Under The Covers platforms discussions surrounding sex; Together-nesses celebrates queer kinship and imperfect solidarities; Dramatic Paws highlights new queer performance; Sound & Vision includes visual and live art as well as moving image; and Dive In presents a series of workshops, discussions and gathering spaces for listening, learning and sharing.
Within these strands, there are over 30 incredible events to choose from. Highlights include Homemade Undercuts – an exhibition about hair, identity and community; Your Sexts Are Shit: Older Better Letters – a delightfully intimate and funny show from award-winning theatre-maker Rachel Mars; and Suspect Device – a thoughtful and disruptive exploration of the impacts of a patriarchal system, and the explosive potential of queer people and women to dismantle it. These are just a select few, with the full list of offerings available here.
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Speaking about the 2024 programme, Outburst Artistic Director Ruth McCarthy said: “Outburst Queer Arts Festival is 18 and we’re serving queer art realness for troubled times.
“Over the past two decades, queer artists at Outburst have redefined and reimagined representation, form and queer possibility in ways that have rippled far beyond the creative playground we have built together in community.
“This year’s programme continues to centre the queer alchemy of togetherness, with visual art, writing, films and performances that go beyond queer representation to explore the depth and breadth of queer ideas as much needed catalysts for change.”
Similarly, the festival’s chairperson, David Codling, expressed: “Connections between queer artists in shared experiment, questioning and celebration have always been at the core of Outburst’s work, year round. Those connections have strengthened and multiplied over the years, here at home in Belfast as well as in many different cultural settings and multiple languages.
“The 18th Outburst Queer Arts Festival reveals how urgently needed those connections are, despite all the challenges, obstacles and threats.”
© 2024 GCN (Gay Community News). All rights reserved.
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