A central query in my work as an artist and educator is the possibility of establishing a solidarity that does not homogenise but rather affirms difference. With this artistic research project, I approach this query by investigating the liberatory potential of performance practices. I propose performance as a means to – individually and collectively – interrogate and negotiate the constraints[1] that one is borne into. I approach performance as having the potential to undermine or possibly transform these constraints through the employment of queerness as an overarching practice and frame of reference, and incoherence and embodied knowledge as performative strategies. To guide this research, I have dreamed up a speculative, itinerate “school” which I refer to as “The School for Collective Embodied Inquiry”. The aim is to develop performance-oriented embodied learning practices that might blur, negotiate, or undo the limits of identitarian constraints, and offer space for the collective imagination and creation of new worlds and ways of relating.
[1] By constraints I point towards e.g., economic or social mobility, categories of citizenship and identity, race, sex, class, etc., thereby recognizing that such constraints are contingent, fluid, and stand in relation to inherent changes of the self and surrounding contexts.