Queers Read This is an ongoing ICA reading series presented by writer Isabel Waidner and artist Richard Porter. The events feature various texts which work across intersectional systems of oppression and challenge formal distinctions between prose and poetry or critical and creative writing. The title of the series is gratefully borrowed from an anonymously published leaflet distributed at a 1990 pride march in New York.

Helen Cammock works across moving image, photography, writing, poetry, spoken word, song, performance, printmaking and installation. She is interested in histories, authorship, storytelling and the excavation of lost, unheard and buried voices, often mapping her own writing, literature, poetry, philosophical and other found texts onto social and political situations. Her work has drawn on material from Nina Simone, Philip Larkin, James Baldwin, The Housemartins, Walter Benjamin, Franz Fanon and others to reveal how we construct our personal collage of influences and reference points to establish our sense of self, context and history. She has exhibited at venues including Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Cubitt, London; alpha nova kulturwerkstatt & galerie futura, Berlin; The Tetley, Leeds; Open Source Contemporary Arts Festival; Hollybush Gardens, London; and 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, London. Cammock was awarded the 7th edition of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2018.

Caspar Heinemann is a writer, artist and poet. Their interests include critical occultism, gay biosemiotics and countercultural mythologies. Recent events include a US tour and readings at the Baltic Triennial; BAK, Basis voor Actuele Kunst, Utrecht; Camden Arts Centre, London; and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. They have exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; David Roberts Art Foundation, London; and Outpost Gallery, Norwich and been a guest at Chelsea College of Arts; the University of Reading; the Sandberg Instituut; Goldsmiths, University of London; and the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD). Their first book of poetry, Novelty Theory, is forthcoming from The 87 Press. They were born in London, roughly 2.5 months after the release of Green Day’s seminal album Dookie.

D. Mortimer is a poet based in London who is interested in queer and trans ecologies. Their writing has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, Vice and DIVA magazine. Their short story ‘Supermarket Revelations’ was published in Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Fiction (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018). They are currently reading for a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Roehampton.

Richard Porter is an artist currently studying on the MFA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, University of London. He founded Pilot Press in 2017 and his publications Not here. A queer anthology of loneliness, Over there. A queer anthology of joy and A queer anthology of rage are available at Tenderbooks and Donlon Books in London, and Printed Matter, Inc., Mast Books and McNally Jackson Books in New York City. Porter is the co-curator (with Isabel Waidner) of Queers Read This at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.

Isabel Waidner is a writer and critical theorist. Their books include We Are Made Of Diamond Stuff (2019), Gaudy Bauble (2017) and Liberating the Canon: An Anthology of Innovative Literature (ed., 2018), published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe. Waidner is the co-curator (with Richard Porter) of Queers Read This at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and a lecturer at the University of Roehampton, London.