Queer and Norm Culture

Conversation: Elias Sadaq & Ditlev Tamm

What does it mean to be queer — not just as an identity, but as a lived experience? How is our sense of belonging shaped by the stories, families and norms we grow up with and move through? And how can vastly different life experiences across generations, cultures and religions mirror each other in surprising and recognizable ways?

This evening, David's Bazar invites a conversation in which queerness is the common focal point and where the personal, the poetic and the legal are intertwined. Poet Elias Sadaq and professor, writer and cultural commentator Ditlev Tamm meet in a dialogue about identity as something that is both lived from within and shaped from the outside — by norms, language, beliefs, legislation and the time in which we live.

Own experiences and different perspectives are brought into play in a conversation about love, freedom and the right to exist on one's own terms. Through his lifelong work with legal history, Ditlev Tamm opens up a larger look at how queer identity has historically not always had the same right to visibility, protection or language. Tamm examines who has been allowed to love whom -- and under what conditions. At the same time, Elias Sadaq brings the power of poetry and art into play as something that can change both society and mind.

The evening revolves around queerness as a shared experience space — even when lives look different. Together, Sadaq and Tamm explore how personal narratives weave themselves into larger structures, and how art and poetry can open fissures where legislation and norms have historically closed them.