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Conchita

The sky is grey, as always at that time of the year. It is cold outside and the everblowing wind gently touches Lenny’s body. „Vienna… You’re a slow city. You're too tied to the past. [1]“, he thinks as he walks down the street. The buildings around him let him reminisce about the former glory of the city. „The glam is gone. Something is missing here nowadays. It’s O-P-U-L-E-N-C-E: Opulence! [2] Where are the legends of the past?“

[1] The Young Pope

[2] Paris is Burning

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LEGENDARY

All-star categories for legends and icons only. A legend is a multi-trophy winner with a ballroom history, a veteran.

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Angie Xtravaganza

He turns around the corner and stops. This is the house. Lenny was waiting so long for this moment. An invitation to this kind of ball was not something usual, especially not for a former pope. The high-rise next to him leaves him in its shadow. Behind a wall one could see the contour of the building. It is clean, it is rational, it doesn’t talk to its surroundings. Metaphorically, it symbolizes force, male fertility, masculine violence. [1] Lenny stares at the white geometrical facade. They house glances back at him, while walking its face. Proudly it presents its sharp edges and big openings, without covering its face with any ornamentation that could hide its natural appearing. „Within modern, functionally differentiated society such unilateral control has become untenable. [2]“, Lenny whispers, „What a strange location for this kind of event.“ Moreover, it should seem strange that in a play performed in this same location, [3] all the many male roles remain subordinate, supporting rather than controlling the play’s action. [4]

[1] Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968

[2] Schumacher, The Autopoiesis of Architecture Vol 2

[3] Senseney, The Art of Building in the Classical World Vision

[4] Shakespeare, Richard III

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FACE

The face category is about who has a classically beautiful face.Typically, the performer will incorporate certain gestures, moves and poses that highlight the face.

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RuPaul

Now there is only the wall that separates him from his final destination. In a sense, there are two systems coexisting, [1] one outside and one inside. He orbits the building while searching for the entry. „It is here that the possible, the dreamt, […] is staged. [2]“ Lenny hesitates but something drags him inside. While passing the threshold, the outside, unreal world was evolving toward its apocalypse. [3] Suddenly it was dark around him. He was waiting in the shadow of a tunnel and there would scarcely be a trace of Outside. [4]. Blackness swept back over him in an instant and a moment later the lighting system in the tunnel turned on. [5] This corridor is the opening runway, the primary stage to judge the participants’ entrance. Lenny walks toward the end where a doorman awaits him. „Well, Holy father first of all, a small piece of information of a practical and picturesque nature... Under the desk, on the right, you will find a button.“ [6], he says. „The house is already waiting for you.“

House:  „I’m living in the space

I'm following your trace

Tell me what's going on

I'm gonna make you great

Girl are you air to see

Movin' it, come to me

Baby just come to me

Be what you want to be

Using your fantasy“ [7]

[1] Vee, Coding Literacy

[2] Buehlmann, Mathematics and Information in the Philosophy of Michel Serres

[3] Castells, The Power of Identity

[4] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[5] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[6] The Young Pope

[7] Gigi D’Agostino, La Passion

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RUNWAY

Judged on participants’ ability to walk like a supermodel. This category borrows heavily from the world of fashion as contestants strut down the runway like fashion models.

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Vladimir Luxuria

After entering Lenny was dazzled from the sudden bright light. A three sided entrance staircase welcomed him […], that led visitors to the entrance platform [1] The inside of the house in no way resembled what Lenny has seen at his arrival. Contrary to the masculine and strict appearance, the inside was open and light, opulent and beautiful.

House: „The category is: Royalty!“ [2]

The house shows Lenny all the facets of its impressive body, its majestic walls, the alluring staircase, which like a spine interlinks all the chambers of the building to a whole. All of that was topped with a crown that enlightened the whole space.

House: „Brutality, intensity, great gentleness, extreme delicacy, extreme strength. [3] I am turning it on the runway!“

Lenny goes up the stairs and looks around.

[1] Leatherbarrow Eisenschmidt, Twentieth Century Architecture

[2] POSE

[3] Le Corbusier, Toward an Architecture

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BODY

The Body category is about who has a well defined body. For this category, the contestants will draw attention to their body shape with flattering moves and poses and revealing outfits.

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Tamara Mascara

He is standing at the very end of a big plaza like room, a room without a roof. When Lenny looks up the grey sky had vanished and there was only a bright blue and shining light. The space reminded him of a greek agora. The plaza is formed in an additive way, with the side arcades tipped up to form the space. [1] Young and old came streaming into it from the corners that configured it as an open place where people could congregate informally on the spur of the moment. [2] The forum was disposed with a view to its purpose and uses so that if there were many people the square would not be too small, but if there were only a few people it would not appear empty. [3]

Viewed in isolation, the ornamentation of the Courts seems bizarre and extravagant. [4] Brilliant, clear and with deep toned shadows, it makes up the equilibrium of the whole by contrasting its variety with the pulpy softness of the female figure, glowing with all the charms of colour, bright, gleaming, mellow, full of all the voluptuous luxury of female charms rich and swelling. [5]  The orders are at once emblems of people of different gender and age, and the measure by which the building is laid out. [6]

Inside all kinds of creatures were tumbling, walking and crawling around. The inhabitants of the unknown worlds […], brutes with six fingers on each hand; fauns born from the worms that develop between the bark and the pulp of trees; sirens with scaly tails who seduce seamen; […] ass-centaurs, men to the navel and asses below; Cyclopes, each with a single eye the size of a shield; Scylla, with a girl’s head and bosom, a she-wolf’s belly, and a dolphin’s tail […] the cynocephali, who cannot say a word without barking; sciopods, who run swiftly on their single leg and when they want to take shelter from the sun stretch out and hold up their great foot like an umbrella; […] human bodies with heads of the most diverse animals … [7] The space in between the columns was occupied by artists of this theatre, arranged in nine groups, which will process in the following order [8]: LEGENDARY, FACE, RUNWAY, BODY, REALNESS, SEX SIREN, BEST DRESSED, BIZARRE, VOGUE

The Plaza emptied itself and the crowd was cheering from the side. Only one body was left amidst, starting to perform a most intriguing show. Behind Lenny somme other figures were chatting:

House: „Welcome to the ball, Miquela!“

Miquela is singing: „I miss what we used to be

Out every night in the streets

You hanging all over me

Acting like we royalty“ [9]

Octavia St. Laurent: „Come on now, it is a known fact that a woman do carry an evening bag at dinner time. There's no getting around that!“ [10]

Scylla: „What exactly is a ball?“

Octavia St. Laurent: „Balls are a gathering of people who are not welcome to gather anywhere else.“ [11]

The house turns to Lenny and says: „Here the feminine is not just the yawning void of a non subjective body but signifies an inter/trans subjectivizing structure/encounter/space where potentially human subjects co emerge and co transform within a space of minimal difference. [12] I am belonging to neither of the binary categories, yet traversing both. [13]“

[1] Eisenman, Written into the Void

[2] Casey, The World on Edge

[3] Williams, Daniele Barbaros Vitruvius of 1567

[4] Bergdoll Oechslin, Fragments Architecture and the Unfinished

[5] Harrison Wood Gaiger, Art in Theory 1648 1815

[6] Macarthur, The Picturesque

[7] Eco, The Name of the Rose

[8] Harrison Wood Gaiger, Art in Theory 1648 1815

[9] Miquela, Hard Feelings

[10] Paris is Burning

[11] POSE

[12] Zajko, Laughing with Medusa

[13] Braidotti Hlavajova, Posthuman Glossary

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REALNESS WITH A TWIST

Realness is all about the illusion of blending in with heteronormative gender stereotypes. Realness with a twist is judged on the participants' ability to blend in with heterosexuals, then returning to vogue like a femme queen.

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Venus D-Lite

Estranged by this conversation Lenny leaves the plaza. He walks onto a gallery that connects several chambers. The architectural decoration became increasingly extravagant to attract continued attention. [1] Dimensions stereotypically condemned as feminine, weak, or frivolous—pink, chintz, boudoir chairs—received validation. [2] Lenny is captivated by the enticing show the house performs for him. The red velvet floor reminds him of the only kiss he ever had, the subtly open doors let him dream of the worlds that could be behind. The house does its best to seduce Lenny and he is falling for it.

[1] Bonnemaison Macy, Festival Architecture

[2] Hays, Architecture Theory since 1968

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SEX SIREN

The Sex Siren category is about teasing and seducing the judges. For this category, the contestants will reveal their skin and showcase their sex appeal.

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Heidi’N’Closet

Curious what’s behind, Lenny opens one of the doors and glances inside. It was a long rectangular room. [1] It was bright with sunshine, the walls were alive with decoration, the table was set, and the odor of the food was enticing. [2] The whole room was dressed with ostentatious wallpapers and tapestries out of the most interesting fabrics. In between closets the most interesting clothes were lying around and two women were getting dressed. Makeup and female smells combine to generate a softness that bewitches and exhausts. [3] Lenny spots one of the Sirens, whose alluring beauty already seduced him at the Plaza.

Siren:

„“You think I just woke up one day and poof, I look like this? No. It takes work, drive, sacrifice to be a woman.” [4]

Lady Gaga:

„Generations of women have been told by advertisements, films, and parents that the natural female body requires enhancement and adornment to be truly feminine. [5] I portray myself in a very androgynous way and I love androgyny.“ [6]

The Siren turns around and looks Lenny in the eyes. Out of excitement she bursts out of the room and starts to run outside of the building. Lenny follows her.

[1] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[2] Asimov, Complete Robot Anthology

[3] Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony 

[4] POSE

[5] Zimring, Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste

[6] Braidotti Hlavajova, Posthuman Glossary

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BEST DRESSED

Judged on a participant's ostentatious clothing.

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Acid Betty

A garden more inviting than Eden would then meet the eye, and springs of joy murmur on every side. [1] He has never seen something so beautiful. It remembers the Garden of Eden, the sufficient paradise, land of milk and honey, and the desert where manna fell from heaven, and the hut where pitchers, as though they were springs, poured forth their contents. [2] There are trees not similar to any we know, but trees of life, of immortality, of knowledge, of apprehension, of understanding, and of the conception of good and evil. [3] Lenny starts looking for the Siren. He has a feeling inside of him, one that he had never had before, one that he could not fight anymore. He cultivates only flowers that are real but seem artificial, has abnormal love affairs, inflames his imagination with drugs, prefers imaginary journeys to real ones, enjoys late medieval texts written in effete and sonorous Latin, and composes symphonies of liquors and perfumes, transferring the sensations of hearing to those of taste and smell; in other words he constructs a life made up of artificial sensations, in an equally artificial environment in which nature, rather than being recreated, as happens in works of art, is at once imitated and negated, re elaborated, languid, disquieting, sick... [4] Suddenly he spots her behind one of the trees. For him she is sex, absolute sex, no less. [5]

Lenny runs to her and they fall into their arms. Such pleasure took he to behold this flowery plat, the sweet recess of Eve thus early, thus alone; her heavenly form angelic, but more soft, and feminine, her graceful innocence, her every air of gesture or least action overawed; his malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved; his fierceness of the fierce intent it brought: That space the evil one abstracted stood from his own evil, and for the time remained stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge; but the hot hell that always in him burns. [6] Such sex could be cosmic, or Dionysian, or unquestionably weird. [7]

Lenny: „Laymen always think we priests are scandalized by even the slightest things, whereas the truth is the exact opposite. We are never scandalized, no profession has to deal with sin on such a continual basis as ours. The confessional is our operating room. Just as surgeons have no fear of blood so we priests are no longer afraid of scandal and sin.“ [8]

Siren: „If Adam and Eve never left the Garden of Eden they would have not become human beings.“ [9]

[1] Wollstonecraft, Complete Works

[2] Serres, The Five Senses

[3] Voegelin, Order and History 4

[4] Eco, On Beauty A History of a Western Idea

[5] Rendell Penner Borden, Gender Space Architecture

[6] Milton, Paradise Lost

[7] Davis, High Weirdness

[8] The Young Pope

[9] Buehlmann Hovestadt, Coding as Literacy