storia di tommaso | maria laurids

September 2023.

Exhibition with Agata Hörttrich, Coco Wiss, Ezequiel Hyon, Jean-Noël Teschauer, Jil Schuberth, Lu Herbst, Lula Bornhak, Maja Zagórska, Mascha Naumann, Mattia Friso, Richard Müller, Steve C.E. Knoll and Véra Marie Deubner.

Storia di Tommaso is a performative story that attempts to tell a queer narrative of becoming, finding identity and purpose outside of the frames of linear storytelling and timelines. Result of the Queer Things Take Time workshop and exhibited in the omonimous exhibition in September 2023, it is a novella informed by concepts of queer temporalities. Set in the first part of the 20th century in South Tyrol, the story is told over multiple languages and perspectives of witnesses to one man’s story who, during the Italian colonisation of the land and its subsequent attack on Ethiopia, tried to define himself across the the frames and temporalities of Christianity and Italianess.

First cluster: prologue / part V: the gospel of Tommaso / epilogue

Introduction and conclusion to the story with words from the heart of the story, Tommaso's perspective. Installation with writing desk: candle, writing machine, writing paper, portrait and devotional image. Chair, jacket, and string from which the pages hung. At the side of the typewriter, a page invited comments and especially continuations of the story. Some five additions were made by visitors and hung alongside the other pages.

Second cluster: part I: days of halcyon / part II: body

Tommaso and Johannes' childhood in South Tyrol. Account by Johannes in German, mine in English. Arranged in a tree-like pattern, growing 'sideways'.

Third cluster - part IV: Bekehrung

Three accounts of Tommaso's conversion in German, English, Italian. Arranged in a spiral-like movement.

Collages for the collective Queer Things Take Time zine booklet, one for each session of the workshop: queer apocalypse; queer childhood; queering the archive; queering the public space.