Tarek Shukrallah conducts activist research and published last month the anthology “Nicht die Ersten – Bewegungsgeschichten von Queers of Color in Deutschland” as editor. The preceding research was linked to the archive of the Schwules Museum, amongst others. As October’s Darling of the Month, Tarek helps us to understand what actually makes someone start such a project and persevere with it. In doing so, Tarek not only provides an intimate testimony of non-white communities in Germany, but also a merciless inventory of their stories in our in-house archive…

mino: Salam Tarek! I’m actually a bit excited to be talking to you today. You’re currently a little starlet on the Berlin literary scene…

Tarek: (laughs) Is that so?

I would say yes! The response in the media, on site at your book release and online doesn’t lie. How is it for you right now?

Yes, there’s definitely a lot going on. I’m happy about the great interest in the anthology “Nicht die Ersten”, as well as in the project as a whole. There seem to be a lot of people who want to find out more about movement stories of queers of color in Germany and about the issues that the topic raises.

What role does Tarek Shukrallah play in this project?

The press work was of course very much focused on me as the editor of the anthology, but in general I would say it really is a collaborative project. The whole book is actually an attempt to bring stories, narratives and people together.

I definitely want to know more about community aspects, but now I have to ask you: how did you end up here? Where are you from, what did you do there and what is on your mind?

All right. I’ve been working between the office and the basement of this building for almost four years, namely in the archive and with the archive. I’m particularly interested in queer of color movements in Germany and the holdings of the Schwules Museum, which provide information on this. In my other life, I work as a research assistant in political science at the University of Giessen and am active in various activist contexts.

Are you from Giessen?

I come from near Mönchengladbach and also from Cairo. I also spent a lot of time in Marburg because I studied there. I studied for quite a long time because I did a lot of political activism during that time and had to keep my head above water with a job as a community organizer at the Marburg AIDS service organization. For example, I helped set up a queer center in the city. At that time, I also inherited a small archive from the Aids activist Bernd Aretz, which is where my access to archives comes from. Bernd was on the National Aids Advisory Council for a long time and was an important figure in the German Aids Association during its founding period. When he passed away, I inherited his extensive private library and archival collection. These then became part of the Queer Center. After that, I went to Berlin with the idea of studying a “cool international Master’s degree”; that was in 2020. Then corona hit and I had to study the Master’s degree from my living room. So I ended up studying queer of color movements in Germany rather than queer movements worldwide. I think you have to do research with which you are in direct contact, in dialog and in a solidary-political relationship… So the topic was obvious because it is activist, had and has to do with me. Among other things, it resulted in this book.

You’re still here now. Did more than the Master’s keep you in Berlin?

Definitely, I got into activism and project work here very quickly: in 2021 I became part of QTI*BIPoC United, which intervened in the Pride season. Much to our positive surprise, almost 3000 people showed up for this demonstration. That was a really important moment for me. But it wasn’t really until last year that I decided I really wanted to stay in Berlin, at least with one foot. With my research stay, I also found a home in Tunis that I keep coming back to, but I still want Berlin to remain a base. Places like the Tuntenhaus, the Schwules Museum, the Südblock, Möbel Olfe, the Sonntags-Club, the Oya-Bar, organizations like GLADT* and LesMigraS… They really only exist once in the world, here in Berlin. It’s worth being there, living there and defending these places.

It’s an honor to end up on a list with these greats! Can you remember your first day at SMU?

It was in 2015, when I visited the “Homosexuality_en” exhibition. After that, I had a few dealings with the SMU. The next point of contact had to do with class issues in the West German gay movement; that’s a topic I also work and write a lot about. I looked at how class and intersectionality are connected: how are we not only discriminated against in this world, but also exploited in concrete terms? I wrote about this for the newspaper “Analyse & Kritik”, formerly “Arbeiterkampf”. I went to the archives of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung a lot, but also to the archive here. And then, during Corona, I organized a Facebook livestream with my friend and SMU board member Brigitte Oytoy entitled “Queer Diaspora – the new revolutionary class?”. There we discussed with Mala Badi, a Moroccan trans activist with a refugee biography living in Amsterdam, even though we didn’t have a clear answer to the question at the end. It was a sweet event that gave you something to think about.

The Gay Museum is actually a white institution – I say that because I have already experienced it first-hand. How do you feel about this statement?

That’s true. (both laugh) Two of the three BIPoCs who have lasted longer than three months in the office are sitting here. The box I brought today is kind of a mixed box of queer BIPoC activism. It’s almost all the BIPoC activism-specific material in the archive. There are still a few posters, one or two small collections – for example, the collection on the “Gay International” is not in here. But either way, it’s really manageable in the Gay Museum when it becomes more intersectional. And that’s also what the project I’m doing is about. So to ask: how can it be that the movement archive of the Gay Museum is so white? People have handed in their flyers, pornography, notebooks and private objects here, giving us the impression today that the gay movement in West Germany, from which the SMU emerged, as well as the women’s and lesbian movement, was pretty much exclusively white. In the latter, for example, Black women had to really fight for their place; ADEFRA emerged from this in 1986. The longer I dug, the clearer it became that these movements are in the tradition of a left-wing, white student movement that was very bourgeois in character. And the archive builds on this. The Migra and BIPoC holdings are quite small, which in the end not only does something with what you find on site, but also shows what kind of space it is; what kind of structures you find there and how it works … But I also think that disruptions, such as through my work, have effects and bring about change. I am far from finished!

Did you approach the Gay Museum with the idea of throwing sand in the gears? Or did you have a different, perhaps more naive self-image at the beginning of your work?

I didn’t approach the Gay Museum because I wanted to do it a favor. My goal wasn’t to contribute something to the museum; it kind of just happened that way. I actually came here because I wanted to do research on a movement that I owe a lot to. A movement that sometimes doesn’t feel like it’s a cohesive one; a movement that sometimes doesn’t become visible as a broad, militant movement. Not only do I owe a lot to queer of color communities, they raised me and I am part of them. At the same time, I often had the feeling that we didn’t have our own story. Now, fortunately, I can work scientifically and I’m firm enough to argue with gay men when in doubt… And that’s how I ended up in this archive. At around the same time, the Gay Museum started to look more specifically for opportunities to promote anti-racist and BIPoC issues. This eventually turned into a collaboration in the winter of 2021, which is still ongoing.

That’s really a lot that you’ve achieved in the last few years and are still achieving. How do you manage it all?

I can’t. Something always falls behind, and I haven’t taken a vacation for a long time… And things take longer! It’s actually a manageable project to work with this box because there’s not that much material; nevertheless, it took three years.

Have you noticed anything that makes working on and with the Gay Museum, or with this box, special?

The archive here is both dead and alive at the same time, that’s what makes it special for me. It is an archive of movement in which people’s emotional connections to the materials are quite obvious. Nevertheless, it is a colonial archive. These are the four axes that move me about it. On the one hand, it is alive in the sense that everything that has to do with people ends up here. Then people also do a lot of voluntary archive work. They come to the Gay Museum through their own queerness, start doing something here, work with the archive, do research in the archive, for some there is also an activist approach… Because only a small percentage of the archive is accessible, you have to know people and know who knows what in order to find something. That’s another lively aspect of it and can be beautiful and romantic. At the same time, it’s also a problem: if these connections aren’t there, or are even broken, then the materials simply aren’t available. Then they are in the depths of the cellar, in some folders, boxes, crates, untraceable because they can’t be accessed. Then it is suddenly a dead archive, no longer a living one.

In working with the archive, this box and its material, you certainly had to learn how to deal with empty spaces, didn’t you?

I wouldn’t speak of empty spaces. There are no empty spaces, because empty spaces imply that you have forgotten something that actually belongs in there. But the fact that this is the manageable stock of “BIPoC” has nothing to do with the fact that we have been forgotten. It has to do with racism. And it also says that queer BIPoC activism has always emerged in contrast to white LGBTIQ movements.

Oh wow, you said the R-word (laughs)

Yes, I have to. The archive is simply also the result of a movement practice full of exclusions that were and are racist. The holdings and their composition indicate how specifics of racism, class relations and queer hostility interact here. It is the archive of a white gay movement. There are now a few trans* holdings, a few lesbian holdings… But there aren’t many. And there will be even fewer if it is to be more intersectional, for example BIPoC or migrant.

What do you think the future looks like in that respect?

I think it’s changing, communities are also appropriating the archive. Currently, many white trans* activists, but also a BIPoC trans artist, have left their estates to the Gay Museum – perhaps also because of the lack of a trans archive, but that’s another discussion. At the same time, it simply changes what happens here. That makes a difference! The fact that I’ve been here for three years and talking about BIPoC issues also changes things. Ultimately, the Gay Museum is an important place where great people work. When I express criticism like this, it’s always structural. I’m not saying “They were all racist pigs in the past and we have to throw everything here on the garbage heap”. I’m more interested in pointing out how exclusions work and what responsibility could look like for an archive or a museum that now sees itself as queer, intersectional and critical. We all want something different from the world again.

Thank you for your work, Tarek! I hope you’ll continue to bother us for a while…

Interview & Image: mino Künze