Will You Let Me In? is an activist performance created for Saint Saviour’s Anglican Church in Riga as part of Starptelpa. Set within a church, the work reflects on who is considered worthy of belonging — on earth, in society, and in the imagined space of Heaven. The church is approached not only as a religious site, but as a structure of power, moral judgement, exclusion, and possible care. In a Latvian context where religious rhetoric has often been used against queer rights, the presence of a queer, non-binary body in this space becomes both vulnerable and political.
The performance unfolds through a repeated attempt to climb upward using a telescopic ladder. The artist extends it section by section, trying to ascend alone, yet the ladder remains unstable: the body loses balance, the metal crashes to the floor, and sound reverberates through the church. These falls become a physical image of queer precariousness — the exhausting effort to move upward within systems that do not structurally support you.
The work resonates with Judith Butler’s ideas of performativity and social recognition: which bodies are read as legitimate, proper, or acceptable? It also echoes Michel Foucault’s thinking on institutions and discipline, approaching the church as a historical space where bodies have been named, judged, and regulated. Through Sara Ahmed’s notion of orientation, the upward climb becomes a question of who is allowed to move toward certain futures, spaces, and promises. Falling, in the spirit of Jack Halberstam’s queer art of failure, is not only defeat — it becomes a method of exposing the conditions that make “success” possible for some and dangerous for others.
Sound is central to the performance. The metallic crashes, vibrations, echoes, and silences transform the church into a resonating body. In relation to the festival theme Sonic Vibrations, sound becomes evidence of effort, risk, exclusion, and persistence.
The decisive moment arrives when the artist stops, looks toward the audience, and waits. For a long time, no one intervenes. Eventually, someone asks: “Do you need help?” The audience then comes forward to hold the ladder, allowing the artist to finally climb. The ending does not offer a simple resolution, but asks what inclusion requires in practice: someone must notice instability, step forward, and help hold the structure differently.
