Gendered Performativity
“If the ground of gender identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time...then the possibilities of gender transformation are to be found in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a different sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style”. Judith Butler
This performance challenges the private/public performativity of gender protocols by occupying Butler's Arbitrary Spaces. This work will function as a video installation documenting my private performance of gender application within the public sphere of a café audience, using my laptop computer as a mirror. If gender is performance, what is a performance conceptualizing performativity? Using two forms of gender application (make-up and a beard), I'm curious as to when/where the performance truly begins? And if the answer is the "private", then who are we performing for?
Taking up my indigenous roots as a two-spirit individual, I do not perceptually consider myself as sexed - in all senses of that word, both sexualized or gendered. It hasn't been easy coming to this internally, realizing that these labels are seemingly omnipotent external concepts, contributing to a "cultural" body rather than the animal one that we possess.
sigh...it's killing me to refrain from asking the simple, blatant question: what is gender? once the unpacking begins, it just keeps unravelling... we are not bound by culture. There is always a key to the lock.
This performance will be filmed and edited by collaborators Macky and Eamonn Schwartz. And thank you to Andy Flinn who helped me with the video work and for dialoguing with me.
