Description
The Eurovision Song Contest, next to be hosted in Liverpool on Ukraine’s behalf in May 2023, illustrates many dynamics of the international: from the embodied performances of collective identity made by hosts and entrants which both play on and help constitute imagined relationships between national, civic, supranational and sexual belonging, to the roles of non-judicial/legislative actors in international contentions over LGBTQ+ visibility. One of Eurovision’s most iconic winners, Conchita Wurst, inspires an organising motif for Cynthia Weber’s intervention into ‘Queer IR’ and provides the cover image to Dennis Altman and Jonathan Symons’ ‘Queer Wars’. Its significance for public diplomacy has been illustrated by the growing stakes of asserting Ukrainian culture and nationhood to a transnational public, and by the BDS campaign’s mobilisation against Israel hosting Eurovision in 2019. Its contemporary footprint on host cities mediates everyday queer experiences of in/security and the international through the structure of cultural and competitive mega-events. Among the many knowledges that help reveal these insights is knowledge about popular culture, politics and security stemming from the post-Yugoslav space. Taking Eurovision 2023 as a starting-point, this roundtable will look to the immediate future of such knowledges against the background of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
