Since its beginnings in the nineteen-seventies, the medium of video has been closely linked to the subcultural and countercultural movements of its time, both in art and in everyday culture in Germany. Art and music videos in particular demonstrate great subversive potential: artists and musicians oppose traditional values, transgress and repeatedly explore social norms and gender stereotypes. In this volume, queer academic as well as artistic research approaches and archival practices are reviewed in the context of a history of punk and its offshoots. Among our many contributors are Tiffany Florvil (University of New Mexico), Marina Grzinic (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Jack Halberstam (Columbia University in the City of New York), Angela McRobbie (University of London), Peter Rehberg (Schwules Museum Berlin), and artist Wolfgang Muller.

The genre of the video clip has been established for more than thirty years, mainly served by the sub genres of video art and music video. This book explores processes of hybridization between music video, film, and video art by presenting current theoretical discourses and engaging them through interviews with well-known artists and directors, bringing to the surface the crucial questions of art practice. The collection discusses topics including postcolonialism, posthumanism, gender, race and class and addresses questions regarding the hybrid media structure of video, the diffusion between content and form, art and commerce as well as pop culture and counterculture. Through the diversity of the areas and interviews included, the book builds on and moves beyond earlier aesthetics-driven perspectives on music video.

Popular culture encompasses and draws on a rich history of works by musicians, filmmakers, writers, photographers, and performers who question the contours of traditional sexual and gender identities, including but not limited to members of LGBTQIA* communities. When encountered on the stage or screen, for instance, in the guise of drag performances, forms of sexual ambiguity often spark fascination. Yet in everyday life in various socio-cultural contexts, sexual and bodily difference in all its forms is still met with hostility, rendering vulnerable those human beings that deviate from the white, male, straight, able-bodied norm. Queer artists today respond to social stigma in multiple creative ways, for example, by transforming negative affect, fostering a politics of care, and rewriting history. This volume considers how feminist, queer, and trans* musicians, filmmakers, curators, and performance artists contribute to popular culture. It explores the many ways of relating to difference, however this is conceived, that their contributions enable. What affects do their works engender? How do they rouse their audience, and to what ends? How do they fabricate and circulate provocative messages about new forms of gender, race, class, and desire? What other visions do they inspire?