CONG/SPIRACY reclaims cong—a weaponised Indonesian slur once hurled at queer bodies—and twists it into a tactic: a whispered code, a conspiratorial language shared by those surviving in the shadows of normativity. Across Southeast Asia, queer life is often framed by authorities as inherently conspiratorial: corrupting morality, spreading propaganda, destabilising “family values.” This programme embraces that accusation and turns it inside out. Here, conspiracy becomes a creative method of queer world-building. The works gathered in CONG/SPIRACY do not seek permission or recognition. Instead, they plot in plain sight through camp, haunting, ritual, satire, and speculative fabulation. Refusing the role of polite explanation, they conjure aesthetic strategies for survival: seduction, distortion, mythic inheritance, glitch, laughter, and the everyday spellwork of living otherwise.
This screening will be followed by an interactive panel where panelists and audience members conspire together to discuss camp, codes, and queer “conspiracies” in Southeast Asia.
