A free guided tour of the exhibition “Susan Sontag – Seeing & Being Seen” in German.

The US-American author and critic Susan Sontag (1933–2004) was a “public intellectual”: a figure who sparked controversial debates through her writings and her nonconformist demeanor, and who engaged with them head-on.

In photographs and descriptions, Susan Sontag herself comes across as a movie star. Iconic photos of her hung on the walls of many lesbian-feminist shared apartments. Susan Sontag was a flamboyant, free-spirited, sometimes difficult, and contradictory role model. She lived a life of autonomy that would have been unimaginable to previous generations.

Susan Sontag struggled with identity labels throughout her life. She came into contact with the queer scene early on, but never came out. When, in the late 1980s, she witnessed the social exclusion of people with AIDS—including within her own circle of friends—she wrote “AIDS and Its Metaphors” (1989), an important text addressing issues of stigmatization, personal responsibility, activism, and solidarity. Her perspective, however, drew less on her own queerness than on her experiences with cancer.

What does Susan Sontag mean to us today? What is her significance in queer cultural history? How do we remember her many appearances in Berlin, a city she visited frequently and for extended periods?

Registration is not required. Participation is free; you only need to pay the admission fee to the Schwules Museum itself.

Photography: Renate von Mangoldt (Susan Sontag during the event “Three Americans in Berlin,” Academy of Arts, Berlin, September 1976), (c) von Mangoldt