From 3-7 March 2025, the ASEAN SOGIE Caucus (ASC)’s Southeast Asia Queer Cultural Festival (SEAQCF) collaborated with New Naratif to host a series of roundtable discussions—an online space designed for queer artists, cultural workers, and community organizers across Southeast Asia to connect, share their practices, and discuss common challenges. Bringing together practitioners from diverse artistic, cultural, and community-organizing backgrounds, these discussions explored the role of art in activism and its possibilities in creating and maintaining safe space, the landscape of queer literature and publishing, the redefinition of queer aesthetics, film production in the region, and the complexities of organizing Pride events. While each roundtable session focused on a specific area of creative and cultural work, several recurring themes emerged across discussions. These included artistic practice as a means of creating safe spaces, reclaiming queer aesthetics while confronting exploitation and extractive prac
