Mirca works as a curator, activist, speaker and project manager. “Part of what I do is curating and producing events. This includes music festivals, but also events with overlapping elements, where music, art and film meet and take place often as an intervention in public space.” Last year, they founded the agency “Safe the Dance” along with other activists, with whom they run many workshops and talks on awareness, diversity, safer spaces and gender equality. “Of course, my projects take up a lot of time. But on the other hand, they always create synergies and quickly lead to new ideas. You need to be passionate about it and have to see what you can get out of it. You have to realize that it's not just work, you also get a lot back.”
© Francesco Giordano, 2022
For Mirca, the pandemic was hard at the beginning, because suddenly, they did not have anything to do. “I'm usually on the road a lot, internationally, at conferences and festivals. I give workshops and speak about diversity topics, and all that was no longer possible.” With the foundation of Safe the Dance, everything changed. There was a great demand for online meetings on the topic of awareness work and diversity. “Founding the agency really paid off for us. We then also started focusing more on writing funding applications. That also really made a difference and helped us make a living. I learned that you can’t just think about everyone else, but also have to pay yourself enough money for these projects.” During the pandemic Mirca has networked with people from all over the world through online meetings and has participated in talks and workshops that took place in New York, for instance: “Last year in April, I also created an event called ‘Network the Networks’, which was all about bringing people together who are all working on the same problem at the same time, in parallel and always starting from scratch. In these areas, it's always the same problems and everybody puts in their time to end up with the same solutions.”
Mirca moved to Munich as a child. They describe Munich as a village that just happens to have millions of inhabitants. “I think it's a relaxed and slow city, that's why I'm fully rooted here. You run into people you know all the time. On the other hand, it can be annoying that things don't change that quickly, that everything is still a bit conservative and that money is distributed unfairly.” Through their work, Mirca is connected with the LGBTQIA+ community, for instance through a cooperation with the LesCommunity and the Habibi Kiosk of the Münchner Kammerspiele. “I believe we have to have an intersectional look at discrimination. We still live a very white cis heteronormative feminism that doesn’t take BIPoC, queer people or people with disabilities into account. Many of these people experience more than one form of discrimination – and I believe it's critical that we don't just look at one thing, but that we try to include as many aspects as possible. You can't just stand up for your own sensitivities. If I want to change something, I have to think bigger. That's why it's so important that we all talk to each other and see what kind of experience with discrimination each one of us has and how we can support each other.”
For Mirca, being queer means not having to define themself in any category and that they can just be themself and be free. “It doesn't matter how I define myself or who I want to be with or who I want to marry someday. Being free is what I value and not being confined and not being put in a box. Why should I be? What's the point of people being set, when they are confined by it?” Mirca themself values exchange, they like projects that need interaction. “I think it's great if there is the possibility to meet other people and connect.” Their projects are based on these experiences. “It can also be super exciting when people from different walks of life come together who otherwise would never meet.” With Safe the Dance, Mirca is planning a kind of manual on how to implement awareness policies, on the ten steps to making a venue and festival more accessible and barrier-free, or on how to treat victims of sexual violence. “We want to summarize all these topics to give a quick overview, combined with online links so that you can refer to additional resources.”
© Francesco Giordano, 2022
Mirca works as a curator, activist, speaker and project manager. “Part of what I do is curating and producing events. This includes music festivals, but also events with overlapping elements, where music, art and film meet and take place often as an intervention in public space.” Last year, they founded the agency “Safe the Dance” along with other activists, with whom they run many workshops and talks on awareness, diversity, safer spaces and gender equality. “Of course, my projects take up a lot of time. But on the other hand, they always create synergies and quickly lead to new ideas. You need to be passionate about it and have to see what you can get out of it. You have to realize that it's not just work, you also get a lot back.”
For Mirca, the pandemic was hard at the beginning, because suddenly, they did not have anything to do. “I'm usually on the road a lot, internationally, at conferences and festivals. I give workshops and speak about diversity topics, and all that was no longer possible.” With the foundation of Safe the Dance, everything changed. There was a great demand for online meetings on the topic of awareness work and diversity. “Founding the agency really paid off for us. We then also started focusing more on writing funding applications. That also really made a difference and helped us make a living. I learned that you can’t just think about everyone else, but also have to pay yourself enough money for these projects.” During the pandemic Mirca has networked with people from all over the world through online meetings and has participated in talks and workshops that took place in New York, for instance: “Last year in April, I also created an event called ‘Network the Networks’, which was all about bringing people together who are all working on the same problem at the same time, in parallel and always starting from scratch. In these areas, it's always the same problems and everybody puts in their time to end up with the same solutions.”
© Francesco Giordano, 2022
Mirca moved to Munich as a child. They describe Munich as a village that just happens to have millions of inhabitants. “I think it's a relaxed and slow city, that's why I'm fully rooted here. You run into people you know all the time. On the other hand, it can be annoying that things don't change that quickly, that everything is still a bit conservative and that money is distributed unfairly.” Through their work, Mirca is connected with the LGBTQIA+ community, for instance through a cooperation with the LesCommunity and the Habibi Kiosk of the Münchner Kammerspiele. “I believe we have to have an intersectional look at discrimination. We still live a very white cis heteronormative feminism that doesn’t take BIPoC, queer people or people with disabilities into account. Many of these people experience more than one form of discrimination – and I believe it's critical that we don't just look at one thing, but that we try to include as many aspects as possible. You can't just stand up for your own sensitivities. If I want to change something, I have to think bigger. That's why it's so important that we all talk to each other and see what kind of experience with discrimination each one of us has and how we can support each other.”
For Mirca, being queer means not having to define themself in any category and that they can just be themself and be free. “It doesn't matter how I define myself or who I want to be with or who I want to marry someday. Being free is what I value and not being confined and not being put in a box. Why should I be? What's the point of people being set, when they are confined by it?” Mirca themself values exchange, they like projects that need interaction. “I think it's great if there is the possibility to meet other people and connect.” Their projects are based on these experiences. “It can also be super exciting when people from different walks of life come together who otherwise would never meet.” With Safe the Dance, Mirca is planning a kind of manual on how to implement awareness policies, on the ten steps to making a venue and festival more accessible and barrier-free, or on how to treat victims of sexual violence. “We want to summarize all these topics to give a quick overview, combined with online links so that you can refer to additional resources.”