Dylan Mitro: Refuse To Be Forgotten

Photographer and filmmaker Dylan Mitro found their craft first within Toronto’s LGBTQIA+ nightlife. Ever since, Dylan has been practicing forms of queer storytelling, researching stories within LGBTQIA+ archives. It’s Berlin’s unmatched queer history that drew him to this city, inspiring their latest project, Inherited Thread, a documentary collection now on display as part of a joint exhibition by the Artist-in-Residence program Fresh A.I.R. and the Martha Cooper Scholarship.

“Tracing the threads between the contemporary queer community I’m part of and its historical roots has been both an act of discovery and of healing” – says Toronto photographer and filmmaker Dylan Mitro about their latest project, Inherited Thread, that’s now on display in Berlin.

Dylan spent eleven months in the city through the Artist-in-Residence program Fresh A.I.R. and the Martha Cooper Scholarship, during which time they worked on the documentary project that went on to become Inherited Thread. Revisiting and reflecting on some of Berlin’s historic queer spaces, Dylan’s work is now part of the residency’s exhibition, I AM FLUX: The Freedom of Being and the Possibilities of Becoming.

“I’ve been developing this project while living in the heart of Schöneberg, Berlin’s historic gay neighborhood. Creating this work within such a significant space has allowed the research to move beyond books or online archives; it has become a lived experience, grounded in the physical presence of community spaces and their stories.”

With Inherited Thread, Dylan bridges past eras with contemporary identities, making the project a moving journey of self-exploration through living history.

“How do we memorialize both grief and resilience? To ask these questions universally, I first had to explore them within the context of my own personal journey.

As part of their research, Dylan dove deep into Berlin von Hinten, a publication considered to be the ultimate gay city guide of the 1980s. They encountered many stories, fragments of memory and resilience that revealed how deeply queer spaces remain intertwined with personal histories.

“Berlin von Hinten made a deep impression on me, and I ended up using the publication as a kind of personal map. The guide was first published in 1981 by Bruno Gmünder and his partner Christian von Maltzahn, both around my age when it was first published. Their work was bold, unapologetic, and full of life, mapping a world that existed mostly in the shadows. Mapping the sites from Berlin von Hinten was not just an act of documentation; it became a process of listening, to voices still present and to absences that speak just as loudly.”

Berlin has changed tremendously over the past decades, with only a handful of some of the city’s legendary queer spaces still around. Lately, Berlin’s oldest queer club, the SchwuZ closed its doors, filing for insolvency.

“One of the most impactful encounters was at Pussycat Bar; it’s been around for over 50 years, founded by two women in 1974. Standing in that dim, smoky room, I spoke with the current owner, Donna, who’s been working there since the mid-80s, and Jan, a young bartender. It’s a space where intergenerational connection is still happening.

The news of the SchwuZ closing was a shock. A space that has been a sanctuary for nearly five decades. Visiting it in its final weeks, I met people who had met their partners there, who said it was the first place they ever felt safe dancing.

There were so many of these encounters, and it changed how I see the map I created.

I AM FLUX: The Freedom of Being and the Possibilities of Becoming is a joint exhibition at Berlin’s Urban Nation Museum including works of international artists Lena Becerra, Lena Biresch, Mariana Carranza, Jivan van der Ende, Julla Kroner, Linda Marwan, Agata Mendziuk, Dylan Mitro, Hugo Pétigny, Monika Popiel & Paweł Świerczek, and Mátyás Tóth.