HÄN: Edition 1

The first edition of HÄN is a compilation of stories, images, poems and art, uncovering gender anarchy, sex, love, transness, beauty, leather, queer spaces, memory and the transformation of community. It’s about the search for one’s identity, and the right to determine your own life and body. It is about queerness as shapeshifting, as something hopeful, nourishing, open and radical. HÄN is an archive which connects the queer past with queer futures — and this book serves as a bridge.

This book is an exploration of queerness. It is an exploration of what it means to exist in a queer body and mind in today’s world. It is about queerness in a world going through a global pandemic, in a community which still carries the grief of the previous century’s AIDS epidemic. It is about queerness in a world which is burning — and in a world which is being reborn. It is about queerness as shapeshifting, as something hopeful, nourishing, open and radical. The queer community depicted here belongs in London, but the ideas we share and discuss transcend borders. It is a book of more questions than answers.

The first edition of HÄN is dedicated to the exploration of gender. We have picked this topic partly to honour the history of pioneers like Leslie Feinberg, Jack Halberstam and Patrick Califia, who have navigated the notions of masculinity and transness in relation to the dyke and broader queer community.

But we are also living in an era when the understanding of gender is shifting rapidly. Today, we have language for gender which our queer ancestors never had – something that opens so many new paths and possibilities. At the same time, it opens a host of new difficult, confusing, heated, and cathartic conversations.

14 interviews, 9 artists. Photography, poetry, illustration, mixed media art, essays. Published in July 2022.

Get your copy here.

HÄN TEAM
Creative director and curator ELLA BOUCHT | Editor and co-curator ANASTASIIA FEDOROVA | Photographer, creative consultant and co-curator ANYA GORKOVA Art Direction and design ESTER MEJIBOVSKI | Web developer RIFKE SADLEIR