questions

Starting from desire:

While re-publishing my master thesis (“Writings on the identities of a dancer and an artist”, 2014, TeaK) I was having correspondence with dance historian Anne Makkonen. She pointed out my trouble with “wanting to love dance history” by asking me: DOES (ART) HISTORY NEED YOUR LOVING? DOES HISTORY CARE?
Ever since I have been obsessed with this question and this trouble, just like I am obsessed with everything; can history be loved and does it matter? How can I have any analytical, cognitive, critical faculties as my way of being in the world is obsessive, possessive, focused on emotions only, loving, hating, wanting to be loved? And most importantly, what kind of reading of histories does it produce, when I want to be a lover of history? That would mean that I have to rewrite the history to satisfy my own needs, to meet my standards, to respond to my love language. Recently I stumbled upon the book, Monsters: A fan’s dilemma by Claire Dererer, in which she tries to resolve her love for the *works* of the artists despite the monstrosity of the author, the artist behind the work.
How could I ever understand ahistories as there is only the ever present now, the endless now of my desire, my longing for… the fabricated narratives of male dominance, oppression and white supremacy… So, maybe I have to be the lover and write a love letter to myself. Of course, you could say this is a performative practice, but that would crush the seriousness of my irrationality. But yeah, let’s say it is a performative practice, of wanting and needing and longing, being forever immature, adolescent and teenager in front of histories, authorities and agencies, just wanting but never becoming - a queer bundle of joy that never leaves the closet of infinite potentialities, never “becoming”, always in the state of daydreaming; resisting the image, just following the thirst… Always obey your body, leave your desires at the door, only hormones are welcome here - no dialectics, no verbal interactions, no analysis other than Madonna when she famously said: “Sigmund Freud, analyze this.”
My research’s starting point is a narrative: Choreography means dance-notation, writing of dances; dance historian Susan Leigh Foster argues how at the beginning of choreography - literally: written pamphlets of dance instructions - these scores had an actual monetary value as learning the dances would boost one's status in the society; allowing access to better social circles. I am interested in the circulation of dances in various social circles and understanding how these shape our understanding of identity and pop-culture; special focus will be given to Tiktok as a viral platform of dance sharing, and how this access to a “dance archive” is blurring boundaries of classification of class and race; gender and sexuality. Renaissance dances were organised according to an understanding of cosmic harmony; Louis IV as the king - as the sun - in the middle, as the central organising principle, with other bodies (planets, dancers) circling around him. I am interested in how the current “cosmological crisis” manifests in art-making and meaning-making through performance, choreography and dance; i see this as a rise of spiritual practises such as tarot and astrology, but also other environmental movements that are cosmological in nature; trying to redefine what labour justice, food justice, or sharing of resources would look like; and how that destabilises the idea of artistic production as a singular, market-driven activity.
I move between different domains of artistic labour: the past 10 years I have worked as a dancer, which has been very labour-intensive. Most of the time I have been hiding away in the rehearsal studio, rehearsing realities in environments that are normally completely secluded from the rest of the city - in a basement or in a room with no street view, and no daylight. From very early on, I got frustrated with this seclusion- I felt that people were rarely bringing what they experienced in their lives to the studio, something real to be abstracted and alchemized, but rather the starting point was imaginary: as I am sitting here, what do I imagine the world to look and feel like? So the starting point of abstraction was detachment - not being a body moving in the world; but a body finding solace and moving to the interiority of sensations, imagining what the world might look like.

“The body as a residency of forbidden thoughts” was a (research) practice I developed together with Marika Peura with a research grant between 2020-2022. We were looking for active ways of doing an artistic software update to our systems. The starting point was a historical interest of abstraction in contemporary dance techniques and choreographies. Whiteness has been unpacked very little in contemporary dance, yet the ideologies of whiteness - its ahistorical position and universality - have been shaping the historical canon of modern dance as well as the codified modern/contemporary dance techniques. In recent years, there has been discussion in order to create respectful contexts regarding the socio-political backgrounds of various urban dance* practices; white teachers of voguing nowadays explain the origins of the ballroom scene in the 60s and 70s Black and Latino queer, trans and gay communities of New York City, and commonly position themselves as being visitors in this culture and in this dance, even though having spent years embodied the particular physicalities. In contemporary dance there is no origin story - which of course is and is not true - but as whiteness has been the invisible backdrop in the delineation of dance as an art form (versus as an urban expression of subculture or energy exchange), it has been very difficult to frame these practices in any social or political context, offering a very closed, hermetic reading. Since the Internet, there has been a new circulation of dances and dancing bodies; firstly, the access to learning different dances that might not have been previously accessible; and secondly, platforms such as Tiktok, creating actual topologies in which dance and dancing can exist, circulate and thrive. I have argued previously that the flatness of the screen and the way TikTok frames images creates a certain favouritism of “white dancing”; a seemingly blazed and flattened out version of culture and context specific dances that become internet hybrids, or, dance memes.
So, the research will be narrative and fictive; trying to find narratives as a tool of queering and story-telling and meaning-making; using strategies such as humour as a way of resistance, which has always been rooted in the queer movement. resisting the face off value, resistance of the immediate, resisting the image; and insisting on the hidden, the opaque, the messy, the blurry, the ridiculous. i want to look at the history of astrology from a queer and feminist perspective as a way of creating narratives; parallel to that, dancing as a way of creating community and inclusion, but/and/also as a tool of unpacking topics such as whiteness, universality and “natural” which has been rooted in the western colonial thought, influencing our understanding of art, dance, celebration and belonging. There is a ghost that I call “the ordinary body”.
In this way, the body becomes a landfill site: a residue, a place of compost, in which messy emotions, hormones, sexual desires and disappointments, societal readings of one’s agency are being ejaculated and rejected. This is the post-performative body, exhausted from action.
The research will be divided in individual chapters that address different facets or entries of the same interest; that which remains unnamed and understood at the periphery; hence, not allowing to frame a singular artistic question to be neatly divided into smaller units of research; rather, understanding the queerness of research as an embodied activity of being a body in the world, moving through constellations and (dis)harmonies. Hormonal, full of fungi, parasites, the body as a superorganism, full of enzymes and kilos of viruses and bacteria.
What is the dancing body and how does it perform and resist?
The dancing body is controlled and uncontrollable. (Whiteness/the noble savage/ecstatic ritual dances/non-European dance traditions; Orientalism etc. Bodies read through the Western colonial lens.)
Dancing as an unproductive*/ephemeral activity: play. Energy exchange without production, aim or goal. Wasting time. Using the resources of one’s body.
Performativity of dance; the social role of dancing. Sexuality, intimacy, desire. Clubbing. Belonging. Community. Tribalness, locality, identity.
The performative and the non-performative dance.
Abstraction.
The dance that is capitalised and transactional.
These dances have symbolic value.
TikTok as the “place for the display and capitalization of performative pathos” (antithesis of dance in the body)
Emotions and desires in relation (or in resistance?) to neoliberalism

How can I find narratives as a tool of queering and story-telling and meaning-making; using strategies such as humour as a way of resistance (which has always been rooted in the queer movement)? Resisting the face off value, resistance of the immediate, resisting the image; and insisting on the hidden, the opaque, the messy, the blurry, the ridiculous…
Research as writing fanfiction
I understand research as a way of being in the world. Queering research is building community: it is not about finding the truth, or, treating a topic, but about bathing - sharing a moment of lavish joy and justice, while being immersed in the experience, having a full-on affective, sensorial, bodily experience. Embodied research.
Queering research is understanding artistic research as fanfiction. Spending time with your favourite characters; inviting them to your narrative, and allowing yourself to speak through these characters; or, allowing these characters (philosophers, thinkers, artists, activists) to speak in a voice that their original context was not made for.
Fanfiction is about building community, having agency and authorship, despite being rejected by the mainstream narrative. Fanfiction is collective resistance and representational justice. Fanfiction is desire. Fanfiction is joyous and porous and exciting and hot and immature and adolescent. Fanfiction is a position: I am a fan, I fabricate fiction. I don’t want to be a subject, I don’t want to be an object. Fanfiction is Foucault’s desubjectivation.
Fanfiction allows to see the world as a hologram: am I inviting Edward Cullen to be my boyfriend in a protopian* world, or, am I creating deep fake porn without the consent of Robert Pattinson for my own exploitative pleasure.
The focus of my research is in performative practices that focus on queerness, whiteness, desubjectivation, and desire.
Artistic research as a way of making amends and practising harm reduction; trying to weave cosmologies, or, understanding the (Western/global) crisis of living in an era of multiple species mass extinction/post-fossil fuel logics. Artistic research as a way of decentralizing whiteness and opening up posthuman discourses; performing for plants, with domesticated pets.
Questioning the traditional division of power and labour in the arts (author-interpreter, artist-assistant, teacher-student, master-pupil, old-young, good-bad, educated-autodidact, professional-spiritual, unique-authentic). This stems from my personal experience of working as a dancer; as the interpreter of the works, but always in a submissive role to the Author, to the Creator. Re-delineating the division of the artist/audience and art/society.
The spiritual and the sacred not as marginal non-realities but as epistemologies rooted and excavated; reinventing ontologies, re-imagining cosmologies. Queer utopias - no-places - and radical justice protopias - what could we do, right here, right now? With the queerness in me, elsewhere, meanwhile…
There is a very real urgency of bodies targeted with violence or being at threat; and also, the utter ignorance of those in power (and in privilege) to various existing inequalities and oppressive structures. I am interested in re-reading the position of the artist and that of the dancer in society not through the individual genius myth but as an agent of change that centralises topics such as community, inclusion, care, adjustment, gravity, grace, and vanity; and through my own art-making, allows me to dive deeper into topics such as performativity (of the self or of an idea) in society generated ideological conflict(s); the choreographic as a technology; the dancer as a fictive character which allows me to unpack understanding of labour, authorship and agency; as well circulation of dances via TikTok as a tool to understand collective viralness of bodily fashions and desirability, and the value of dance and dancing. (I will move between words such as dance, choreography, performance, but I am aware that I have to define and contextualise those at the beginning of my research. My horror is to end up in a hermetic, phenomenological dance research vacuum; rather, I understand dance as a social construct and currency.)
The research will be divided in individual chapters that address different facets or entries of the same interest; that which remains unnamed and understood at the periphery; hence, not allowing to frame a singular artistic question to be neatly divided into smaller units of research; rather, queering the research as an embodied activity of being a body in the world, moving through constellations and (dis)harmonies, fabricating narratives and narrating fictions. I call this (jokingly) queer autotheory fiction, in which the knowledge is generated through the I, or the body: hormonal, full of fungi, parasites, the body as a superorganism, full of enzymes and kilos of viruses and bacteria - as a form of fanfiction to satisfy the inner emotional cravings of the irrational self, against any logic of the market value or attention economy.
I am interested in a performative methodology: wrong answers only. The idea is to start with wrong answers only - quite simply, trying to fail. It is a way of queering the process; subverting the linearity and going for something rather obscure, intentionally trying to fail and celebrating that. In terms of research, this means questioning the given conditions, expectations and norms. However, I want to give extra care and focus to accessibility of the research, so that the form in which it is shared can be sensed and experienced; allowing some sort of direct sensorial or affective input, without having to be “grasped” or understood. That is why I am interested in the methodology of artistic research; I guess I have another horror of a website that is impossible to navigate and to understand as the final result of my research. I hope to find ways to share the research in small, digestible units, that can be experienced in their own right, without having to know the entirety of the project.
I feel there is a strong demand for ethical guidelines in terms of work processes to create healthy working conditions that are nurturing solution-oriented thinking and sustainability - both in material and immaterial ways - in the field of art at the moment. Most of the times I work in collaboration; most of the time is spent thinking about the clashing needs, desires and wishes of the participants. Thinking of psychological safety and environmental awareness has become a key in the creation process. I think a lot about social injustices, accessibility, inclusion, and engagement - however, I am no specialist in these topics. As I move relatively freely in the world, and I ask: who moves with me? And who does it not? Why not? Often, facilitating situations is about very tangible practices. Agreeing on a definition of a safer space. Naming common values and principles - agreeing on what we agree on as a basis foundation, which allows us to disagree in the minutia because there is the safety of already being on the same page with fundamental core values. However, this requires a lot of work and listening. Here extitutional theory is relevant: “Extitutional theory claims that no one lens can fully capture and study the entire complexity of social phenomena. The same social phenomena could be characterised as an institution, an extitution, or both, depending on the perspective.”
During my PhD, I would continue making work - performances, video works, and sound works. I enjoy being a participant, being an assistant, being a co-creator. I struggle with finding cohesion. I have a certain resistance to “topicality” - choosing a theme and treating it; however, that is how most of the research works - and the Ph.D. programs as well. But what is the topos, the location, of the research is the body itself - as a landfill site? And by resting and listening one can start articulating the different forces at play - the performativity of the self (as a fictive fabulation) clashing against political ideologies in a shared space? I am interested in developing methodologies to hack and to interrupt cohesive understanding of being a subject in the world, and rather, taking the position of a medium: allowing what is already happening to be articulated. As an approach, this goes away from expertise and dominance back into being subordinate, secondary, of assistance, a helper, a worker, a colleague, a friend: being lost, awkward, clumsy, and confused - which are actually very fruitful for creating encounters, unlearning, and re-learning.
Special focus will be given to pedagogy and education as I am starting a new position as a teaching assistant at the University of the Arts Zurich; I believe this position will both inform my art making as my positioning in the field of art, making money in (higher) art education. A secondary trait will be my own artistic articulation working as a performer “for others, with others” - as a co-creator in the works of others, performing material that does not belong to me with my own body, in live settings in front of an audience. And thirdly, my passion for autoerotica and bad poetry: finding snippets of language that is appropriating ‘the poetic’ and aiming towards ‘the erotic’.

What is the dancing body and how does it perform and resist? What is it performing and to who? It is a paradox as the dancing body is both controlled and uncontrollable; there’s the rigour, the technique (whiteness) but there’s also the ecstatic ritual dance, the uncontrollable rave, the “exotic” Noble Savage; how Black and Brown bodies have been fetishized and sexualized for their dancing; and how the white/Western dance techniques have tried to control the body and to move away from the pelvis to the idea (Classical ballet; defying gravity and isolating individual body parts under extreme control). Bodies read through the colonial lens; or, bodies becoming the image of the Western industrialisation - the industrial body.

Dancing is an unproductive activity: it is kids’ play... Energy exchange without production, aim or goal. Wasting time. Using the resources of one’s body. It is also a ritual, an act of seduction, of dominion, a rite of passage, a temporary community.

The performative and the non-performative dance; the representational and the energetic. The dance that is capitalised and transactional; I guess these are the ones that are circulating and becoming viral. These dances have symbolic value. TikTok as the “place for the display and capitalization of performative pathos” (antithesis of dance in the body)

Emotions and desires in relation (or in resistance?) to “neoliberalism” … Defying an internal logic.

What is the definition and framework of fiction and the ‘narrative’ in my research?
Autofiction? Autotheory? Queer autotheory fiction?
The subjective narration as a process of individuation?

Performativity of something as something? of the self, of the con-self, of the con-artist, of the teenage self, immature, NOT always-already, the not-always not-already…

Performativity of the protagonist, the main character, the I am. of the projected self, of the heroic journey… the ethos of performative

as activating social conflict, conflictual sociability, activating debate in the Neverland,
and creating space, instituting, exhibiting a catalytic something, the sacrificial exhibitionism

performativity of becoming = art as exhibitionism

Only understanding transactional relationships where love is the currency. Valuing things only by loving them, loving them only to feel reciprocated with love, the love seeking as a perpetual return and a vicious circle…

« As soon as we act practically', he says, ‘we have to follow the
prejudices of our sentiments.’97 This is exactly what Nietzsche
did with the intention o f putting forward a new meaning
and goal. »
https://monoskop.org/images/4/48/Klossowski_Pierre_Nietzsche_and_the_Vicious_Circle.pdf p. 142 of the pdf

‘but at the same time, the will to be love and our sentiments need to be suspended to institute criterias of judgments
the historical category determined by the success for imposing power, determined by its asentimentality will inexorably receive our loving and love seeking attention.
Is writing a love letter to self the only way not to care for History? As a forever teenager, would it be writing to the self or writing to the father - the epitomic father or the historical father? writing a letter to the love one hasn’t received?
Would saying that writing the love letter is performative equate to saying it isn’t sincere?

performativity is also simply the formal expression, the expressionism of something that isn’t always revealed, it is expressed and it is staged.

Stage and Mise en scène : Who is the director, who is the interpreter?

« Many anathemas have been flung against the ravages of industrial
civilization since the middle of the nineteenth century in the name of
emotional Life.

Imputing to the means of industrial production a pernicious effect on
affect, i.e., on emotions, means acknowledging that it has considerable
moral power, in order to denounce its demoralizing influence. Where
does that power come from?

It comes from the fact that the mere act of fabricating objects puts their
purpose into question: how does the use of useful objects differ from the
use of art objects, which are “useless” for any actual subsistence
purposes?

Nobody would ever confuse a tool with a simulacrum, unless it is as a
simulacrum that an object has its necessary use » https://monoskop.org/images/b/b0/Klossowski_Pierre_Living_Currency.pdf

– will, desire, eroticism and capitalism, industrial complex, rationality and the simulacrum…

(Pierre Klossowski):
« Selon lui, cette « connaissance pathétique » qui mobilise tous nos affects ou nos impulsions premières est productrice de simulacres et la meilleure pourvoyeuse de langage poétique [18] Les simulacres, dont la fonction est dévoilante, sont des constructions mentales, des représentations issues des empreintes corporéisées qui agissent dans l’achoppement du réel avec l’imaginaire, « produits inventés selon l’astuce de son intellect ». La représentation en tant que résidu tient alors le pari d’une retranscription de l’expérience vécue de ce « fonds » qu’il dit inéchangeable, parce qu’informulable, incommunicable. Là où il y avait discontinuité et rupture, le simulacre rétablit continuité, unité, unité narcissique dirons-nous. « Penser, c’est spéculer avec des images [19]. » Par le geste répété du maniement de l’image, l’acte de création s’attèle à divulguer le « phénomène de la pensée », soit le moyen de symbolisation qui tient le nouage entre réel, symbolique et imaginaire »