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about
AN OPERATIC QUEER TORMENT.
The work is the outcome of a two week residency at WORM studios in Rotterdam, and a way longer process work that has engrossed and signified as I grew, constructed, and deconstructed.
A theme had been picked for the residency; ‘Protest, Resistance, Reclaim’ in its widest sense, and the description of the concept was as follows;
‘Through our process of becoming aware and unlearning we go from an indifferent body of profitable commerce to an active vibrant matter, which merely through its presence and by default, postures a resisting stance –even if its action was a non-presence.
We live in times where a neo-liberal ideology is so strong that it has planted its seeds inside the very crux of our personal identity. Aiming at an endless growth, an arrow on a diagram that only goes up, its product has become a personified definition of who we are. Capitalist maneuvers at these times are so penetrative and internalized that they will even try to sell you an anti-ideology anti-capitalist product for the sake of profit. Its growth has tightly co opted into our own individual growth. Its stock price is the price we pay for our freedoms of being a self or another, no matter what self it is.
This manifests itself in different ways and on different scales. We could talk about its rooted influence inside of our individual bodies, or on the collective body of our communities, or on the bigger anthropocenic scale of human against nature, and fundamentally, evidently, in everything, and everywhere.
The ways through-which this is stood against, in its many manifestations, spread widely; from a personal perspective of a body resisting through queering itself from norms, binaries, and singular static identities, to a collective march or a protest, a political presence, through art and culture, through adapting to alternative economic ways of being, reclaiming language, and much many more means that we over and over need to make ours.’
This is what the process of the work, in its essence, in its research, collected and generated material, processing, reshaping, and composing, had been busy dealing with.
Lastly, and I mention this with lots of love and appreciation, few other artists from different backgrounds were invited to spend a day with me in the studio and add their input. They are accredited at the end of this text.
lyrics
Translation of Dutch texts
Chronologically
Dorien catcalling:
Hey,
Psst , little boy, where are you heading!?
Can I come along?
Oh you are so pretty
Do you have a girlfriend?
No?!
Can I be yours then ?
Those denims suit you really well
your ass looks REALLY great in them
Can I get your number?
your insta?
your snapchat maybe ??
Hey, Little boy
Why the long face!?
Smile for me a little..
I don’t bite…
Unless you want me to ofcrs
Psst…Little boy
I am just trying to make conversation
I promise…I won’t touch you
I will keep my hands to myself…If it must!
You can trust me
We’ll just drink a cup of tea
No other intentions here
Oh well…
Little boy
What did you think, really…
going outside dressed like that…!
I can see your gorgeous muscular abs through the shirt
sorry to say…But then you know what it coming your way
Then you are asking a bit for it, right!?
Sorry, but I can’t put up a fight against mother nature…
Hey, pssst, little boy!
Listen here, little boy!
Psst!
Whore!
ik heb ook een male gaze
I, too, have a male gaze
bezweet, bezwerenlaat, ons bezweken onder het heen en weer rennen
sweaty, exorcismus, succumbed, running back and forth under it
staar me niet aan, als een tourist, verkleed op de Dam
Don’t stare at me like that, Like a tourist, all dressed up on the Dam
en dus even zachtjes zweven door de ongedwongen sfeer
and we float softly through the casual atmosphere
fok me hol, omdat ik alles wil zijn, wat jij wil dat ik ben
fuck my hole, because I want to be, everything that you want me to
[song]
een verspakket staat voor u klaar Natuurlijk niet Ik ben al gaar
a fresh package, standing ready in front of you, of course not, I am ripe already.
haar aaien, in haar onvolledigheid, om haar vervolgens te repareren , stukje voor stukje(x?), want je beleeft niets op een beleefd moment
caress her, In her incompleteness, so I could repair her, bit by bit (x?)
because a moment is not an experience if it is too polite
Ik wil je ook zoenen, want jij bent zo keybluaw
I also want to kiss you because you are so damn blue
nee gedachten, jij bent overlogisch
nooo, thoughts, you are being overlogical
ik schop tegen deze deur en zijn automatisme, it is not your hands that are tied,
van die mensen die maar drie kleuren willen gebruiken
I smash into this door and its automatism
It is not your hands that are tied
of those people who want to use ONLY three colors
Ik wil de jeugd , ik wil me gewoon lekker voelen
I want the youth, I just want me to feel good
we zien ze onherkenbaar in beeld komen, misschien als geluidsgolf
we see them ambiguously appearing
maybe like a soundwave
en ik maar huilen op deze goedkope vlucht
and I just sit and cry on this cheap flight
____________________________________________
TEXTS INCLUDED IN THE PIECE
ROTS - Poetry bundle / 2022 ‘Huilen op een goedkope vlucht’
Verginia Despentes - King Kong Theory - A gun for every girl
Verginia Despentes - King kong Theory - She’s so depraved, You can’t rape her
Andrea Long Chu - Females
COLLECTED MATERIAL
Slavoj Žižek - Violence - Talks at Google
Marsha P Johnson interviewed by Betty Brown
Alan Ginsberg - Howl
Sylvia Rivera - “Y’all Better Quiet Down” 1973 Gay Pride Rally NYC
Sojourner Truth Speech of 1851, "Ain't I a Woman" - performed by Pat Theriault
Hang Youth - 'LEG DE ZUIDAS IN DE AS'
credits
released October 2, 2022
Rots - Poetry, Text, Recital
POET, ACTIVIST, ALIEN
Mazzerine - Sings
CLASSICAL SINGER, VIOLINIST, MODEL
Dorien - Text, Recital
SOCIOLOGIST, WRITER, FIRE DJ
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