I am very much looking forward to presenting at this symposium this Saturday at Brunel University:
This symposium explores the concept of defiant embodiment in theatre, sport, and performance. It aims to consider artistic interventions into the practices of sport and physical culture (Cassils Becoming an Image, PanicLab’s Rite of Spring, Franko B’s Milk+Blood) as well as performances of defiant embodiment in the world of sport (Caster Semenya’s record breaking speed, Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s raised-fist gesture at the 1968 Olympics, Colin Kaepernick’s sat protests against the Star-Spangled Banner).'
- How might the multiple defiant embodiments in theatre, sport, and performance intervene in and challenge discourses of identity and value constructed through regimes of gesture and movement?
- What new and innovative research methods might we use to study such defiant embodiments?
- What dangers and threats accompany the performance of defiant embodiment?
Taking place at Brunel University London’s Indoor Athletic Centre, Defiant Embodiments will explore research at the intersection of practice and theory, and will include a workshop in Olympic Weightlifting from Kristian McPhee (British Champion 77kg 2016) and a performance lecture from artist and scholar Kira O'Reilly.
I will present:
muscle/pause/poesis
A series of contemplations of muscular embodiments across scale and duration, invoking gyms and laboratories and crashing on mats in the desert. A performance lecture of a body in muscular pause, enacting endocrine worldings of aging, specifically the thresholding of female middle aging.