Queer Antidotes: Specificity in Theory and Practice
Thursday, 1 December 2022 at 12:00:00 am UTC
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Session Convenors
Hamish McIntosh, University of Melbourne
Dr Zoë Bastin, Deakin University
Session Speakers
Melissa Ratliff, Monash University
Dr Frances Barrett, University of South Australia
Phillip Adams, Temperance Hall
Sang Thai, RMIT University
Eden Swan
How dangerous is queer specificity? Much has been said recently of queerness’ popularity and seemingly endless application. With the increasing commercialisation and tacit visibility of LGBTQIA+ cultures in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, queerness is spreading. However, critiques from scholars and artists of colour have challenged the colonial logic of this ubiquity for decades. Reflecting on these critiques, we present papers and performances on specificity: on queer antidotes to supposedly “queer” universality and inclusion. The title of this panel is inspired by the Greek word “antidotos,” meaning “given against.” Acknowledging that Western Art Theory has invoked queerness in reaction to normativity and power, this panel explores the particular problems and contexts that queerness might address. We ask, what are we giving queer against, and how might this reflect the excluded lives, embodiments and practices that inspired theory? To explore these questions, we highlight specific modes of theorising and practising: resistance through curatorial uncertainty, subtle t-shirt significations, silly-in-pink choreographies, and Brechtian BioDrag polemics. Convened by dancers, this panel includes contributions from multiple artistic traditions—curation, fashion, visual art, and performance—with each paper and performance demonstrating queer antidotes by showing up and showing how.
VERS: Queering the Symposium Format
Melissa Ratliff, Monash University
Dr Frances Barrett, University of South Australia
Following a 2019 invitation from Monash University Museum of Art to convene a symposium on queer curating, six curators and artists met periodically to develop what became the discursive and performance event VERS: On Pleasures, Embodiment, Kinships, Fugitivity and Re/Organising (17–18 June 2022, Samstag Museum of Art and ACE, Kaurna Country, Adelaide). Taking ‘vers’ (short for ‘versatile’) as its framing concept—etymologically evoking turning, switching, engaging—the event spot lit capacities associated with non-centred forms of knowledge and the relational dynamics of encounter. Its subtitle concepts pointed to politics and ways of being that might be bannered by the term queer (/trans/nonbinary/Indigenous gendered), providing themes taken up by VERS’s intergenerational, cross-artform participants. A response to its institutional and pedagogical context, and—in part—to the increased focus on queer curating, VERS used curatorial strategies to foreground conversation and lived experience over traditional Western (expert/audience) explanatory presentation modes, ‘relinquishing certainty in the name of queer ethics’ (Sullivan and Middleton, 2021). This paper will address how VERS’s durational, performative, conversational and collective framework-oriented symposium-making towards the affective, improvised and shared. VERS was developed by a curatorial panel consisting of Frances Barrett, Archie Barry, Maddee Clark, Léuli Eshrāghi, Jeff Khan and Melissa Ratliff.
Yours SinQueerly
Phillip Adams, Temperance Hall
Queerness, as an exposé on my life’s choreographic practice, has not been determined from any one fixed historical or political definition, nor is it clear-cut in its resistance to heteronormativity. My own definition of queerness has sat in an elusive conversation of choreographic terminologies, arising from ‘happenstance’ influences, and lived experience. In this paper, I discuss my 2019 work “Glory”: the TV sitcom of my life foretold in choreography, built on discussions around my oeuvre in relation to autobiography and queer introspection. In this analysis, I explore the queer aesthetics of my work as an antidote: an ‘every-occasion’ malleable tool escaping definition. I formulate this analysis through two entwined methodologies. First, I detail my choreographic compositionality through the translation of scores/manuscripts devised from the composer J.S. Bach’s “Brandenburg Concertos.” Second, I interrogate the material that emerged as a queer homage to the French artist Yves Klein’s monochrome paintings and performances of the 1950’s Anthropométries. I arrive at the radical proposal of an absurd transmogrification of Klein’s trademark International Klein Blue: Phillip Adams Holy PINK. Central to this discussion is my use of absurdity/silliness: a multimodal creative device through which I aimed for an abstract PINK monotheism: a PINK God.
Thai Me Up, Thai Me Down: Subtle-ly Fashioning Intersectionality Through a Practice of Tying
Sang Thai, RMIT University
This series of works explores practices of ‘subtlety’ through traditions of tying and knotting through a queer diasporic Asian lens to fashion a collection of t-shirts. The project employs ‘subtle traits’ as a condition of the (east) Asian diasporic, and queer, experience to reveal how race and sexuality might be performed and expressed through fashion production against dominant white queer, and heteronormative (east) Asian narratives. Shibari and Chinese knot tying techniques and motifs are embedded into the t-shirts with rope allowing them to be worn or hung. Configured within the t-shirt are rice bags and pixelated t-shirt prints; a combination of Asian and queer motifs. The graphics are pixelations of streetwear graphics embodying queer lexicon specific to the Asian diaspora in Australia, the pixelation recalling the censorship strategies of sexually explicit imagery. The artifacts ‘subtle-ly’ signify and imply queer and Asian identities. This collection of works forms a part of a broader doctorial project titled ‘All Tee, No Shade’. The project explores norm-critical and intersectional approaches that use the t-shirt to disrupt subjectivities that contribute to marginalization and discrimination of the queer Asian diaspora. Using an autoethnographic approach, the project aims to contribute to broader discourses that decentralize dominant narratives in fashion practice.
QUEERING THE VOID 4 A QUEER UTOPIA
Eden Swan
There is no danger in queer specificity if you believe queer is specific. A sexuality, a uniform (an asymmetric mullet coloured in Pantone-gradient), a vocal sibilance, a flag, a… choice? The contexts for my work are distinct. We index each other en masse in an ironic attempt at inclusion-ism, which is inherently exclusive. This neo-tribalism becomes the destroyer of The Real Queer Vision: reciprocity over hierarchy, fidelity over tourism, solidarity over sympathy, liberation over ‘lockdown.’ When paired with its famous invigilator, neoliberalism, we see rainbow-coated corporates push for queer commodification: heinous, back-handed praise for a group of people who were previously ‘cancelled.’ In this reality, perennial pride-smears intend to separate us while feigning the opposite. When I say, “I’m queer,” do you know what that means? When I say, “I am not safe,” do you know why? In this performance-lecture critiquing queer modernity, I posit a concept for a radically queer future, QUEERCORE. For my audience, I partly offer this future through a remixed, re-worked BioDrag-cum-Brechtian performance of Dannii Minogue’s 2003 song, “I Begin to Wonder”—styled as an exposé on queerness, artist-hood, and queer as a disembodied state.
Biographies
Hamish McIntosh, University of Melbourne
Hamish McIntosh is an artist-researcher living and working on Wurundjeri Country. Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, Hamish trained as a contemporary dancer at the New Zealand School of Dance before pursuing postgraduate education in dance studies. Hamish is currently a PhD candidate in dance at the University of Melbourne, researching queer theory, ontology, and death. Broadly interested in dance as a site for identity and politics, Hamish has published on queerness, pedagogy, and dancing masculinities, and exhibited his work at galleries including the Gus Fisher (Auckland), play_station (Wellington), and the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne).
Dr Zoë Bastin, Deakin University
Zoë Bastin is an artist and choreographer committed to the capacities of dance for personal and political expressive transformation. This manifests as installations, films, and live performances. Bastin completed a PhD at RMIT University, where she developed a deep knowledge of contemporary sculpture and dance practice, with a particular interest in improvisation, feminist and queer critical theory, and new materialisms. Bastin has shared her research through workshops and at conferences both in Australia and internationally and she is currently a lecturer at Deakin University.
Melissa Ratliff, Monash University
Melissa Ratliff is Curator Research at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), where she works primarily on the museum’s publication program and recently co-curated (with Hannah Mathews) the exhibition Language Is a River (2021). A curator and writer, she holds bachelor’s degrees in art, art history and theory from the University of Newcastle and UNSW Sydney and has worked independently and institutionally in Australia and internationally, including on major periodic exhibitions the Biennale of Sydney (16th, 17th, 20th and 21st editions), Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg and dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel. She is a board member of un Projects.
Dr Frances Barrett, University of South Australia
Frances Barrett is an artist who lives and works on Kaurna land in Tarntanya Adelaide. In 2019 she was one of the recipients of Suspended Moment: The Katthy Cavaliere Fellowship. The commissioned outcome, Frances Barrett: Meatus, was presented by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in 2022. She is one member of the collective Barbara Cleveland (with Diana Baker Smith, Kate Blackmore, and Kelly Doley) whose survey exhibition, Thinking Business, is touring Australia across 2022–23. In 2021 Frances completed her PhD at Monash University and is currently Lecturer in Contemporary Art at University of South Australia.
Phillip Adams, Temperance Hall
Phillip Adams is the artistic director of Temperance Hall. Adam’s career in dance and performance spans over 25 years as a vital contributor to the richness of Australian performing arts. Adams works provide a crucial point of differentiation: a psychologically generative, collaborative environment that continually extends the parameters of dance and visual art-based practise to produce bold, artistic choreography and art works. Adams’ process draws on collaboration through hybrid mediums of music, design, fashion, architecture, cinema, visual arts and engaging with the unorthodox, queer, and popular culture. Adam’s work has been presented internationally at leading festivals and venues and commissioned by many Australian dance companies and museums.
Sang Thai, RMIT University
Sang Thai (he/him) is a designer, lecturer, and creative practice researcher at RMIT University (Australia) based in the lands of Wurundjeri people. He holds degrees in both architecture (The University of Melbourne) and fashion design (RMIT University) and has extensive industry design experience. Sang is currently a PhD candidate in the School of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT University with an interest in masculinity, intersectionality, and inclusive fashion design practices for social change. His doctoral project explores the use of the t-shirt to embody and express the diasporic queer Asian experience in Australia. Sang teaches in the Bachelor of Fashion (Design) program leading pedagogy in Diversity and Inclusion.
Eden Swan
Eden Swan (she/her) is an Indo/Australian artist and musician who is hyper-marginalised: queer, low SES, and living with disability from a rare chronic illness. Her performance work speaks of and to life on the outside as she creates surreal, transformative onstage worlds, often presenting fringe themes in outlawed spaces. She reveals the highs and lows of societal otherment through lauded and exiled figures and aims to both centre and obscure our relationship to what we worship or admonish. She has toured nationally and internationally (EU/USA/Asia - Singapore & Japan) and has performed at iconic Victorian events and spaces such as NGV, Fed Square, No Vacancy Gallery, VAMFF, Midsumma Festival, Melbourne Fringe, MSFW, Earthcore, The Village, and Gaytimes Festival. Eden is the recipient of Creative Victoria's Creators Fund Grant 2022 for her current project, BODY PARADOX: IN/VISIBLE ILLNESS.