Περφόρμανς του Κώλου
existential selfie-spanking
durational performance by Lia Smaragda
with audience participation and improvisation using objects/symbols on me, inside me and all over me
you can touch, you can play
Performed at the Queer Performance Lab /curated by Fil Ieropoulos
Performed at the Athens School of Fine Arts
2019
Internal hydration
&
the befriending of enemies through food and the coordination of the digestive system
Selfie - Am I murdered yet?
can't get enough
learning from Athens
I bought my trauma at the store
photo: Alex Kat
durexional was part of Queer Performance Lab
a proposal for an exhibition and series of happenings @ the Athens School of Fine Art by fil ieropoulos, 2019
* queer performance is living and breathing we are well-aware that life is a constant exercise in performativity and thus our performance art is not a put-on role we play; it is an extension of our quotidian selves: who we are, what we eat, how we fuck. “we are born naked, the rest is drag” - RuPaul
* queer performance is posthuman we search for new hybridic, prosthetic, cyborgian selves and oppose essentialist theories that focus on the supposed finding of ‘real’ inner truths or fundamental ‘humanist’ narratives; our truths are multiple, our bodies are a battleground of emerging possibilities.
* queer performance is extravagant and ridiculous as queer subjectivities, we take pride on the mockery inflicted on us by the dominant powers of heteronormativity; we turn accusations around, reappropriate them and act as a psychoanalytic mirror for normies’ selfimportant pettiness.
* queer performance is DIY our queer bodies often live in the margins of capitalist productivity and mechanic professionalism; our work is made of the rejects, the rubbish, the unwanted, the discarded eccentric treasures that even capitalism cannot coopt.
* queer performance is about failure we do not buy the narratives of athletic-style career success in the arts and virtuosic academy-style development; our performance is a continuous discursive process between what works and what does not and most importantly: for whom.
* queer performance is hysterical we are not emotionally silenced by the oppression inflicted upon us by normativity and we refuse to be ‘sensible’ in the name of a toxic adulthood; we transform our traumas and desires into orgasmic spectacles.
* queer performance is an assemblage we have little interest in the canon of art history, the pantheon of the important and the influential; our bodies are tableaus of multifaceted conflict and therefore our influences are a collage of oeuvres, methodologies, genres.
* queer performance is pop-curious we understand the communicative potential of popular spectacle and have no respect for Adornian high and low brow divisions; we are shaped as much by contemporary pop/fan cultures as by the political avant-garde.
* queer performance is self-reflexive and metagrowing up queer, positionality of narratives is something that we have lived through, usually acting as side-players in someone else’s story; our performance is thus interested in the power dynamic between artist and audience, the complexities that come with holding the megaphone.
* queer performance is communal we are not interested in naive romantic notions of the artist as a solitary genius; we operate in creative families; we work on each other’s projects, being each other’s most supportive allies and harshest critics at the same time.
* queer performance is an unruly archive of unspoken stories it is an alternative history of art made of freaks; we have heard, seen, read enough stories by/of white, straight men and quite frankly we are terribly bored; queer performance aims for a disruption of a centuries old narrative.
From the 4th to the 8th of March 2019, Queer Performance Lab will serve as a space for the development of ideas, interaction between artists and audience, being constantly open to becoming a happening of any sort. Each day, the live performance element will be focused on / driven by an athens-based queer performer, commissioned to use the space as they see fit.