On February 24th 2017 the law on Partnership union came into force. After more than thirty years of fighting for the rights of gays and lesbians, after demands for prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation in Slovenian Constitution in early 1990s, after two referendums that tried to equalize the rights of homosexual and heterosexual couples, after an unconstitutional law on registered partnership, after all the demands for legal gender recognition that were ignored… in 2017, we »got« a law, a step closer to… discrimination. Discrimination remains, social stigma remains, structural ignorance towards the reality remains and is enhanced.
This year's Ljubljana Pride Festival is devoted precisely to exposing this reality or uncovering the invisible.
Too often we witness the arrogant beliefs of public officials, why are we still rebelling, we've got our rights, it's 2017 and everybody is nice towards us, we need to relax and enjoy our nice and beautiful cities, streets, markets, rivers and streams.
Reality is of course everything but nice. It's surely not beautiful and there's also no enjoyment in it.
Our reality is that half of the young LGBTIQ+ people feel unsafe in the streets, more than thirty percent report experience of violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity; babies that are born with ambiguous genitalia or cannot be gender defined at birth are operated and during those procedures they’re often sterilized; transgender women waiting for their gender operation are, because of the lack of "adequate personnel", indefinitely on medications which are known to become carcinogenic with time; in high school corridors students are posting offensive posters with pictures of young gays - their schoolmates, blackmailing and harassing them, while headmasters are saying to these same young gays that they should act less provocatively, meanwhile, the offensive posters still decorate the walls, teachers marching by daily, silently approving them.
In conclusion, it is clear why there is a need for a Pride parade, over and over again, still. This year’s festival will penetrate into the pores of social structures, dig beneath the surface and uncover these most invisible, marginalized and unpleasant realities of LGBTIQ+ lives.
This year's Ljubljana Pride Festival is devoted precisely to exposing this reality or uncovering the invisible.
Too often we witness the arrogant beliefs of public officials, why are we still rebelling, we've got our rights, it's 2017 and everybody is nice towards us, we need to relax and enjoy our nice and beautiful cities, streets, markets, rivers and streams.
Reality is of course everything but nice. It's surely not beautiful and there's also no enjoyment in it.
Our reality is that half of the young LGBTIQ+ people feel unsafe in the streets, more than thirty percent report experience of violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity; babies that are born with ambiguous genitalia or cannot be gender defined at birth are operated and during those procedures they’re often sterilized; transgender women waiting for their gender operation are, because of the lack of "adequate personnel", indefinitely on medications which are known to become carcinogenic with time; in high school corridors students are posting offensive posters with pictures of young gays - their schoolmates, blackmailing and harassing them, while headmasters are saying to these same young gays that they should act less provocatively, meanwhile, the offensive posters still decorate the walls, teachers marching by daily, silently approving them.
In conclusion, it is clear why there is a need for a Pride parade, over and over again, still. This year’s festival will penetrate into the pores of social structures, dig beneath the surface and uncover these most invisible, marginalized and unpleasant realities of LGBTIQ+ lives.
The design reflects this year’s political message of the Festival - Uncovering the invisible. We wanted to achieve a regard to the topic of intersex – one of the most invisible themes within the LGBTIQ+ community in Slovenia. We combined several simple ideas in colour, arrangement and added elements of this year’s visual identity in all elements of the design.
Firstly, by using the colour yellow, we try to resonate with the intersex flag, as yellow is its ground colour. In its meaning yellow is the colour of non-binary and of all sexes at the same time, as well as a colour of visibility, used often in signals or messages that need to draw visibility or need our special attention. Black, on the other side, is the electromagnetic frequency in which everything and everybody is perceived equal - as invisible, as nothing, thus (supposedly) the same. However, this is just an illusion of black - as it is many times an illusion we're all equals in our society. That illusion is perpetuated because those unequal remain invisible, under the surface and away from the eyes of the public.
Combining the two colours creates a duality where black (as an illusory representation of our equal (in)visibility) is ripped off with a visual tear to uncover what really lies beneath - the themes, the topics, the people - in yellow, beneath the surface, on the margin, in the undergrounds of the LGBTIQ+ community and wider society ...
Ljubljana Pride Festival 2017 enables a platform for the invisible to speak up, step out and uncover their invisibility, no matter their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or body characteristics.
Further visual elements elevate the idea of this story: isohypses as lines we usually see on a map connecting points of something equal here represent the "we are all equal" society (or, even LGBTI+ community). But truly, we are equal only in out inequality – being higher or lower on the social ladder, depending on which personal characteristic is perceived most negatively at that time by those judging, those setting the stadard. They also represent the surface, that the festival is trying to unveil and look under - in the LGBTI+ community and as well as in our society. The visual tear further uncovers what lies beneath.
The mosaic of mouths of LGBTI+ people symbolizes our greatest tool: our voices that need to be heard. Need to be heard for us. Need to be heard for others around us. And need to be heard for fellow LGBTIQ+ people all over the world.
Firstly, by using the colour yellow, we try to resonate with the intersex flag, as yellow is its ground colour. In its meaning yellow is the colour of non-binary and of all sexes at the same time, as well as a colour of visibility, used often in signals or messages that need to draw visibility or need our special attention. Black, on the other side, is the electromagnetic frequency in which everything and everybody is perceived equal - as invisible, as nothing, thus (supposedly) the same. However, this is just an illusion of black - as it is many times an illusion we're all equals in our society. That illusion is perpetuated because those unequal remain invisible, under the surface and away from the eyes of the public.
Combining the two colours creates a duality where black (as an illusory representation of our equal (in)visibility) is ripped off with a visual tear to uncover what really lies beneath - the themes, the topics, the people - in yellow, beneath the surface, on the margin, in the undergrounds of the LGBTIQ+ community and wider society ...
Ljubljana Pride Festival 2017 enables a platform for the invisible to speak up, step out and uncover their invisibility, no matter their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression or body characteristics.
Further visual elements elevate the idea of this story: isohypses as lines we usually see on a map connecting points of something equal here represent the "we are all equal" society (or, even LGBTI+ community). But truly, we are equal only in out inequality – being higher or lower on the social ladder, depending on which personal characteristic is perceived most negatively at that time by those judging, those setting the stadard. They also represent the surface, that the festival is trying to unveil and look under - in the LGBTI+ community and as well as in our society. The visual tear further uncovers what lies beneath.
The mosaic of mouths of LGBTI+ people symbolizes our greatest tool: our voices that need to be heard. Need to be heard for us. Need to be heard for others around us. And need to be heard for fellow LGBTIQ+ people all over the world.
