Queer theory meets the queer body in these workshops. This smattering of queer artists bridges queer writing practices with queer bodybased practices. Drawing upon the varied performative interests and inspirations of the teaching artists, the workshops touch upon text, sound, witchcraft, impulse, free association, and movement.

These workshops are for folks with none to a lot of performance experience. Come see what inspirations and mini-spectacles are always-already burgeoning in your queer bodies.

Workshops are $10 each, all money goes to support the teacher and the space. Drop-in or take all of them. Space is very limited, so pre-registration strongly encouraged. Please send an email with your name and a quick tidbit about yourself to whatisqueerperformance@gmail.com. Curated by Li Cata.

MARISSA PEREL / SAT JUNE 14TH / 11A – 1P

Touching Into Text

This class will combine somatic awareness with reading to create an embodied approach to understanding language. For each class a short selection of text will be presented for reading and discussion. Through exercises that draw from various somatic practices, and experiments made up by the instructor and participants, the class will play with ways of feeling language; bringing words and their meanings into an intimate experiential sphere. There is room in this class for contemplation, finding an individual pathway for movement and speech, and for giving space to the often daunting mind-body split. It’s possible that we will get emotional about language, that we will love or not love how some texts feel, and that we will invent radical interpretations of what we read. We will investigate who we are as bodies that are simultaneously reading and being read by others. The desired outcome of this class is that participants find possibilities for integrating language and movement in their artistic processes. Texts include selections from Judith Butler, Gregg Bordowitz, Susan Sontag, Faith Wilding, and Lucy Lippard among others

bio

Marissa Perel is an artist and writer based in New York. Her interdisciplinary work includes performance, installation, criticism and curatorial projects.  She often uses collaboration as a platform for the exchange of disciplines, working methods and discourses with choreographers, composers and visual artists.  She is interested in drawing from the polemics of identity and representation to create compositional models for performance and installation. She orchestrates an immersive world where text, objects, dance and video transmit experiences of personal and societal conflicts. Her materials are cathected objects, cues that connect an immediate physical and psychic state to past events. Her work has been shown at numerous galleries, theaters and performance spaces in the U.S. and abroad.

Perel asks, “How do we move across space and time with respect to our collected histories?” Her essays, reviews, experimental prose and interviews engage this question at the convergence of the fields of contemporary art and performance. She originated the column, “Gimme Shelter: Performance Now” for Art21 Magazine and edited Critical Correspondence, the on-line dance and performance journal of Movement Research. She also pursues this question in her curatorial work, seeking to bring visibility to a multitude of forms and discourses. She has curated performances, panels and talks at such venues as the New Museum, New York Live Arts and at the Aux Performance Space at Vox Populi where she recently served as Curatorial Fellow.