Theory-Ography

the multi-year “theory-ography” project emerged from this impulse toward collective queer creation. disidentifying itself as a stable work of performance, when it really isn’t that at all, its varied manifestations share structural similarities among their iterations as embodied collecting pools for movement thinkers to explore textual and physical ideas together. “theory-ography” brings artists into collaboration around its theme to engage an improvised whole that always requires the participation of its audience. as a whole, the project is rampantly unruly and awkward. it insists on underestimating its potential, as it refuses to be rehearsed into a repeatable form. each iteration of the work contains “set pieces” contributed by participating artists, with the whole stitched together by a shifting set of tasks, texts, rules, expectations, and physical provocations provided by the performers, designers, technicians, and gathered audience members. previous versions of “theory-ography” have explored endings and beginnings (1.0: the end of the tale, 2008); the concept of the ready-to-hand (2.0: heidegger’s hammer, 2010); theory as practice (3.0: we dance theory, 2011); queer presence (4.0: we queer here, 2012); and Black queer futures (5.0: afroFUTUREqueer, 2015). imbued with queer intention, the work invariably emerges as a queer-made mobilization of being and doing in relation to a theme of shared interest.