O | Circus, Artisten*, Bilder, Texte, Claudia Reiche

O | Circus, Artists, Images, Words, Claudia Reiche

• Price: 20 EUR
• To order at thealit 
• and also in every bookshops.
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• thealit Bremen, 2026
• ISBN: 978-3-930924-26-4
• German/English
• 188 pages in black and white and 4-colour digital print.
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• With contributions by Gerd Roscher, Brigitte Helbling
• Translation: Claudia Reiche, Brigitte Helbling
• © of the contributions by the authors
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• Book design: Verena Gerlach
• Schriftenreihe / series: queer lab, 2026, Bd.7
• Edited by Claudia Reiche, Andrea Sick
• thealit Frauen.Kultur.Labor.

Who still knows travelers who practice the art of the circus in the old tradition? Claudia Reiche's photographs from the 1980s of the ‚Circus Royal show portraits and observations of a circus family and their work. More than forty years later, during reunions with the artists, new pictures were taken. A fundamental question that runs through the book concerns the way in which ’deviant’ lives are currently perceived. Today, ‚circus‘ stands less for flying humans and the dream of a liberated life. Instead, ‘stones are being thrown’ at a circus that has become popular as a symbol of the unfathomably other: be it defamed queer sexualities or a feared and celebrated ‘evil’ in the mask of the horror clown. In other words, ‘circus’ is everywhere and circus is disappearing more and more. So where is the arena?