”Always forever, never stop, never whatever”: Queering unconditional love in relation to kinship, family, and nationality

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

Over the next years, I will develop a series of multidisciplinary collaborative works that combine stand up comedy, performance, literature and new media art. My artistic practice borders on several fields, but persistently engages with the same themes: queer love, bodies, gender identity, otherness, discrimination, immigration and family. With this project, I want to examine these themes by critically looking at the concept of unconditional love. We’re all taught that the ideal romantic love is unwavering, for better and for worse, always forever. A mother’s love is described as the strongest form of love - precisely because it’s unconditional and eternal. A patriotic love for your home country is supposed to defeat the boundaries of time and space – you should love your country's past, present and future, even (or especially) when you're far away. But what if, as queer people, we love critically? What if queer love can be shapeless? In-between or outside of monogamous hierarchies and predefined Western structures? What if I still hold hands with my ex partner, because we never stopped loving each other despite our breakup? What if I don’t love my home country, because I love myself too much to accept a life of oppression and fear? I propose to reject loving “always, forever” and offer an admittedly less catchy, but equally less harmful alternative: “As long as we want to and are being treated well”.