Dunst (queer network in Copenhagen)
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Since 2001, the queer network Dunst has contributed to gay life in Copenhagen. The group is well-known for its bizarre and tongue-in-cheek drag personalities, including such names as Ramona Macho, Miss Fish, Puta and Tove Hansen. Dunst has, among other things, arranged art shows, dinner nights, performances, film nights and parties. Dunst started out as a completely informal network but now formally works as an association. The name means odour or reek in Danish.
Having decidedly anti-establishment aims, the group has a very humorous and creative way with its own uniquely twisted drag-punk flavour. Public appearances have been positively referred in mainstream media which would otherwise ignore gay events.
During 2003 Dunst broadcast some episodes of its own TV show on a local Copenhagen network. The network, however, declined to air an episode showing one artist eating a turd and subsequently banned Dunst from its facilities. Dunst currently broadcasts a weekly radio show on the local cable network.
During some months in 2002, Dunst handled the Gay House at Christiania. Events and parties in the revived Gay House were popular among Copenhagen's gays, but Dunst did not see themselves welcomed by Christiania residents.
Dunst has made events in neighbouring countries and has gained some international attention, notably in Berlin.
The attitude of Dunst is arguably more fun and less militant than most radical queer punk formations abroad. It could be claimed that Dunst combines a postmodern appearance with a Danish tradition of humorous political activism. During the 1970's and 1980's, the theatre group Solvognen (Sun Chariot, linked with Christiania), singers Troels Trier and Rebecca Brüel, and the squatter performance network Kulørte Klat ("Coloured Blob") made imaginative and ironic performances, as well as feminist groups of rødstrømper (literally "red stockings").
[edit] The Dunst Manifesto [1]
1. dunst is for all the cute ones.
2. dunst is the culture bearing layer of our gender political confusement.
3. dunst has provocation as a work tool and not as a goal in itself.
4. dunst makes contrasts strong.
5. dunst is for all who in a self performance will go beyond their own modesty.
6. dunst is the low life that others won't have an opinion about.
7. dunst is the sanctuary for those who come from a male or female chauvinist upbringing.
8. dunst crosses the gender specific habits and limits you keep in your everyday life.
9. dunst is for those who think they and others should be culturally carpet bombed.
10. dunst is always in change.
