ehsan gill

here are many times at which writing simply leaps out of the body. clogged up ideas once entertained come rushing to the surface. below is what i wrote in 15 minutes, having very little in the previous 6 hours

Trajectory becomes an incredibly compromised readjustment of actuality. Chronologically speaking it is only natural to shuffle art movements into a progressing (if not progressive?) order. This feels almost necessary in any attempt at engaging with practice insightfully. In relation to my own adjustments it seems to me that if we believe the slogans of postmodernity there is a reflexive movement in artist’s conceptualisation of the body that moves from the impersonal and grand to the personal and fragmented. Theoretically I might chart this through feminism and see the universalising concepts of 1970’s empowerment give way to 1980/90’s post-feminist reconciliations with class, race and sexuality.  Experiences previously ignored and further read as part of the move from the grand to the specific. In relation to this I am interested in highlighting artists who have not only challenged conceptualisation of their body against hetronormative desire but have also looked to challenge the implications of new theoretical hierarchies that seek to textualise their bodies as part of a social and political tug of war. A back an forth over which they are attributed little or no control. That is not to suggest that such mechanisms are not relevant to readings of such bodies. Only that in practice, specifically performance, the body gives rise to new points of incite that begs for reflexive and relational readings of identity. Identities that challenge the new mechanisms of disempowerment levied from academic contexts. The aim of this writing therefore is to articulate the possible new spaces of incite created by the body in performance. Be this from phenomenological or somatic perspectives.