A speculative reclamation of the subversive omnipresence of queer existence within spaces, rituals, and trajectories
Nachchi Samayama
Nachchi – A regional term that recognizes the umbrella notion of the term “queer”, originating from Sri Lanka‘s Southern region, commonly used by the Sinhala-speaking folk and traces back to the early traditions and rituals in which these Queer individuals participated. Some say the origin of the term derived from the performers or enactors who were part of the traditional curative ritualistic dance practices of the Kolama tradition.
Samayama – This is a Term that signifies holistic time or a significant period, used in the ritualistic possessions that signifies a period when an entity or cosmic intervention might occur. For example, the period when the black prince entity will be at its highest energy form is known as “Kalu Kumara Samayama”.
I have been born as a regeneration of this land
A Mutant of many pains
Blasphemy
Seeking for salvation
Surging for belonging
This land is not mine, mother!
What is a queer land?
It is a space between tensions as a transgressive body that keeps on transcending its materiality, formation, and epistemology. There are no cognitive enterprises that govern the “queer Land ” as all forms of bio-political conditioning wouldn’t be able specifically to grapple with the existence of this land and its bodies.
It could be an architectural space or a territory that falls under an overtly sexualized territory, where sex acts or explorations subvert the definition of the initial construction built by the designer or the users. Perhaps these acts reclaim spaces historically, culturally signified, or portrayed under significant epi centers devoid of their constructive paradigms.
Therefore, queer spaces are ephemeral habitats built to transform into a performative being with time, devoid of any physical constructive notion or ideology. The identity of the architectural space cannot be entirely queerable or un-queerable, but exists as a provocative entity between both that helps to understand the profound constraints and potentials created by spatial structures concerning various elements of identities.
Black Prince encounters
Black Prince is an entity which is considered as an incubus being who causes ill fortune, madness and hallucinations. Interacts with wooing its prey ( mostly women according to popularized narratives) through an act of possession; which is considered as a sexual encounter in a secluded space. Many documentations depict this entity as a transgressive entity according to oral and ethnographic material. In this performative enactment the entity is reclaimed back as a form queer persona narrating a tale of spaces which are secluded , segregated as ominous presences. Engaged into a narrative that showcases through acts of bodily movements , how these spaces were reinterpreted as queered inhabitants.
These performances narrate subsequent segregation and acts of resistance in the form of sultry or degenerative behavior conducted by a marginalized community. Through these actions , interconnections, care , self declarations ; they were able to exist until the present time in tumultuous periods within the country. ( From the era of 80’s beginning of civil war to present times)
These spaces are concocted with narratives of fear, isolation, and despair to the majority; due to its past tales and occurrences of violent acts that are testimonies to past of communal violence and war. Yet these spaces become utopias, claimed territories of retribution for another minority community who to this date have been considered as a criminalized existence.
Wellawatta Railway station.
Wellawatte railway station (situated in Colombo) faces towards the sea side located in Colombo maritime region. A significant locality where the majority who reside are Tamil-speaking Hindu communities. A minority subjugated to many atrocities in Sri Lanka’s socio-political history, the location bears witness to the 1983 communal riots. During this event, many piers were lit up by the perpetrators while some succumbed to death by being thrown into the sea, and in the end, the railway station was destroyed during the riots. The location is an active railway station for daily commutes and the space transformed completely into a land for many explicit encounters by twilight. The location has been an active space after the 83 riots and provided a canopy of solace due to the fear of the past incidents and narratives entangled with the area.
Rio Cinema Complex.
Rio Cinema Complex is a heritage building located on Slave Island. Burnt during the 1983 Black July riots when the Tamil and Sinhalese communities collided, it is owned by the Tamil Navaratna family and has now been preserved. One of the prominent venues, an event like the Colombo Scope Art Festival has also been hosted in this prominent space till the present. Apart from these events, the building still functions as a site screening seed films and hosts many other events. This space from the period of 80s to the present has been a ground for generations of queers and other individuals as a closed-door hub for encounters, gatherings. It is the oldest running queer space for individuals coming from various classes, cultural identities. The building still exists in its deteriorating image, following testimony to the violent past and present catastrophe of being erased (Slave Island is a prominent neighborhood in Colombo subjugated for de-territorialization and community annihilation).
De Soysa Building. ( In Process)
The De Soysa building was built in the 1870s by the famed philanthropist Charles Henry De Soysa (the wealthiest Ceylonese of the 19th century). The De Soysa building was located on Justice Akbar Road, Slave Island, Colombo. It was a heritage structure that used to function as a two-store block for commercial shophouses. Yet this building was demolished in the year 2021, during the pandemic, by the state. Demolishing of heritage sites has become a common phenomenon, leading to occurrences of land grabs conducted by multimillion-dollar international corporations.
The building was transformed into a space of a temporary residence for many individuals who were blue-collar laborers, prowlers, sex workers, and queer bodies. With the demolishing of the heritage site, these individuals or the community dispersed away from their ancestral lands alongside the tangible structure. Both gradually succumbed to the trajectory of erasure completely up-rooted from the landscape of Slave Island.
The black prince becomes a protagonist whose existence draws parallel paradoxes to activate these spaces. The performances inclusively find the existence of the “ Black Prince” which coherently creates a map of these spaces in the form of reclamation from their initial narratives and historiographies into transformative ephemeral performative phantoms. These phantom personas juxtapose their existences within these spaces, as entities who have prolonged visited these spaces encountered each other.
