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Showing posts from June, 2020

Notes on Brexit

Originally published on Facebook and Instagram, 31 January 2020 photo: Paul Wade I never felt at home in the United States, where I was born and grew up. I felt at home in my parents’ house, when I danced or skated, at university and in Philadelphia’s theatre community, but never fully in the culture at large. My sense of humour didn’t work there. People often didn’t “get” me. They asked me what was wrong a lot. When I was a child, I used to sit in the park not far from my par ents’ house and face East, as if through regular performance of this ritual, I could will myself across the ocean, to Europe, where I had never been. When I first lived in a European country - the Czech Republic in 2005/2006 - I experienced a transformation in my wellbeing and sense of self. I began to dismantle the toxic association of a person’s wealth with their intrinsic value as a human being. I learned delayed gratification. I felt sexier than I ever had in the United States. I made dear friends w

An experimental metaphysics, or The Moving Body in Higher Education

Originally posted on Instagram on 17 May 2019 as "An experimental metaphysics, or [TITLE_REDACTED]" Your task: simultaneously, assimilate the following: The body is to be minutely analysed. The body is its own expression. The body is to be worked. The body is not to be worked too much. The body is a temple - treat it with care. The body is not to be allowed to stop, under any circumstances. The weakness of the body is to be denied. (If it can’t be denied, it is your fault.) Some bodies are better than other bodies. Which bodies those better bodies are will be decided by others. Others will decide how you should use your body. Your body is your research, your laboratory, your material, your subject. What happens in your body and through your body has something to say to others. It is of value, that something. It is important. Your body doesn’t matter. Cultivate the responsivity of your body. Your body should respond only to appropriate stimuli. Learn to l

Content production in the time of Corona...

Originally posted on Facebook, 9 April 2020 Over the past weeks, I’ve read a number of posts and articles suggesting that the arts sector - the performing arts in particular - should use this time to stop. These posts have not sat well with me, but they have been accumulating and seem to have considerable traction. I have avoided too much engagement with them on the grounds that a) I think we all need to go easy on ourselves and each other right now and b) perhaps selfishly, I wondered if the response they provoke in me is a personal reaction to what I perceive (perhaps unfairly) as judgement of my own decision not to down tools at this time. Last night, I decided to spend some time digging into what exactly I think about this and why. In this post, I want to share what I uncovered.  Note before proceeding: I am not at all addressing the decision of individual artists or groups to use this current interregnum however they see fit. I do not wish to endorse a culture of “shoul