top of page

15.T. Osa Hidalgo - De L a Riva / Two Spirits: Native Lesbians and Gay Men / for Royal Eagle-Bear Productions / 1992,

 

16.Merce Cunningham / 1968,

 

17.Andy Warhol,

 

18.Fred Herko,

 

19.Jack Smith,

 

20.Crusing Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity/ José Esteban Muñoz / 2009.

 

Plus personal stories..

TROPICAL ESCAPE Nø 1

Our heads were wrapped around:

 

The politics of fantasy , the labour of pleasure, the exotic as fetish, the economy of the obscene. Escapism as form of resistance.

 

The politics of fantasy: the awareness of the cultural tropes and semiotics of our fantasies, the articulation of movement (dance) as a political manifestation of this references. E.g.: reflection on first masturbatory fantasies, context and implications, reflection on what is understood as 'good' or 'pleasant'. Biopolitics.

 

The labour of pleasure: connects with craft in creating paradises, exuberant, vivid imagery - the physical work involved on the stimulation of pleasure, e.g.: sexual intercourse, metabolism, hormonal liberation. Or the working hard / being good - reward dynamic. Seduction. Rhythm. Drag-queens.

 

The exotic as fetish: the sexualisation of the exotic, race, the tropical "behavior", the otherness, the anthropomorphism of nature, or natural phenomena, e.g: weather and its equivalence to gods and mythological imaginary and life cycles: birth, reproduction, fecundity, death. story telling. Reality-show, melodrama. Creation of icons.

 

The economy of the obscene: Relating desire with capital; non tangible, virtual, sensorial experiences and values as goods. The exchange of "non public" material. Pornography, prostitution, promiscuity, cabaret and other events that are established in the context of privacy, not regulated by the state. The commercialization and construction of sex and gender, the fiction of binary sexuality versus the concept of speaking bodies. The drug market. Development of utopias and forbidden / vulgar areas.

 

Escapism as alternative of resistance: configuring other experiences and the need to survive normality (white-streight-monogamic-neoliberal-normative) and humor as refuge and method of processing and satirising cultural/social information to generate dialogue and knowledge.

…the importance of rekindling a political imagination. (…), escape itself need not to be a surrender but, instead, may be more like a refusal of a dominant order and its systemic violence. Queer fantasy is linked to utopian longing, and together the two can become contributing conditions of possibility for political transformation.Utopia´s rejection of pragmatism is often associated with failure. And, indeed, most profoundly, utopianism represents a failure to be normal. (…)Within failure we can locate a kernel of potentiality. I align queer failure with a certain mode of virtuosity that helps the spectator exit from the stale and static lifeworld dominated by the alienation, exploitation, and drudgery associated with capitalism or landlordism.

 

José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia The Then and There of Queer Futurity. pages 172-173.

MAPPING

 

 

 

There was a point where it became clear to us the wish to talk to the audience. The Hungarian political conjecture plus the current discussions about the value of Art, Dance and Improvisation in Budapest, made us want to speak up. Therefore we decided to Map Tropical Escape and put the whole piece in context. We called this the crouch of the piece, where we show the “hidden parts”, the referential land we were creating with. We wanted to open a window through which the audience could see through a legacy / linage / history that unfolds the issues we were dealing with. And this graphic was the path we made. A map to escape. A map of resistence.

Premiere:23-24.05.2015Artus Studió - Budapest HU

Lenght:55"

 

Support by: Artus Stúdió, SÍN Kulturális Központ, Új Előadóművészeti Alapítvány and Sildenafil Fairy.

Performance: Sildenafil Fairy

Light Design: Mervel Miklós

Costumes and Set : Sildenafil Fairy

Tropicats: Cuhorka Emese and Garai Julia.

1.Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres/ La Grande Odalisque / 1814,

 

2.Guerrilla Girls / 1985 ,

 

3.Mary Beth Edelson / Some Alive American Women Artists / Last Supper / 1972,

 

4.Marcel Duchamp / L.H.O.O.Q. /1919,

 

5.Marcel Duchamp /Rrose Sélavy,

 

6-Testo Junkie: Sex , Drugas and Biopolitics in the pharmacopornographic era/ Beatriz Preciado / 2013,

 

7.Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics / José Esteban Muñoz/ 1999,

8.Carrie Mae Weems/ from the series Ain´t Joking : Mirror Mirror / 1987-88,

 

9.Karen Finley,

 

10.King King Theory / Virginie Despentes / 2006,

 

11.Paul Gauguin / Te Arii Vahine / 1896,

 

12.Eduard Manet / Olympia / 1863,

 

13.Nijinsky / L’Après-midi d'un Faune / 1912,

 

14.Dancenoise,

 

.

REFERENCES

INFO

CRITICS

double click to see the whole image.
bottom of page