Hasen Pavilion

Made for project "QUEERING COMMON SPACE" queeringspace.xyz/

This 3-minute video, shot on an iPhone, documents my visit to the cruising forest of Hasenheide Park on a day in September 2020. The area is a well-known place for men who are attracted to men to meet each other. I used to visit it from time to time, and had some interesting, often inspiring, encounters. On this particular day I saw quite a few people there, but they were much more discreet than on the previous days I had visited. Was it because of the pandemic? Or perhaps the weather? I don’t know.

The song I sang in the video is a piece from the traditional Chinese opera “Peony Pavilion”(《牡丹亭》) written by Tang Xianzu (1550-1616). It describes Miss Du Liniang’s first stroll in the garden on a spring day: she is impressed by nature in full bloom, and sighs about being locked indoors to study. This visit also inspires her own desires; later in the opera, she dies from missing a man she met in the garden and becomes a ghost.

Hasenheide is my Peony Pavilion; therefore, I call it “Hasen Pavilion”.