About

Structured as a two-part performance, part 1 took the form of a public lecture discussing the work of Scottish drag king artist Diane Torr (1948-2017), the punk singer Lydia Lunch's unrealised film script Psychomenstrum and the rhetorical teachings of Quintilian (c. 35 – c. 100 AD). The lecture described queer feminist methods which recontextualise Western conventions of language, gesture and delivery in modes of public speaking. Part 2 formalises an example of these methods through a performance developed with choreographer Janice Parker. Working with Parker I devised the 'flop;' a repeatable gesture of suddenly falling to the floor without injury. I performed the 'flop' while reading from an edited script of David Cronenberg's film Dead Ringers (1988) as a form of editing which physically challenges the narrative dialogue created by the pre-written text.