What I would Like to do with Performance

So where do I see my own scholarly contribution being made with performance? I have a few varying research interests all influenced by my subjectivity, positionality, and actual spatial location. I will start with I-dea #1.

I-dea #1

I am very concerned with issues of gender and sexuality and the way those identities are performed. But I am also interested in the inextricability of gender and sexuality to race, class, ethnicity, origin and how a multiplicity of identities and positionalities are taken up in a performative way.

One way I am interested in doing this in engaging with the "other" is through music and specifically I am interested in the Riot Grrrl Punk movement, which is a feminist and often lesbian engagement with punk music. It was created as a way to subvert dominant and normative musical styles but was also a way to rebel against the male-dominated punk music scene. Although the movement reached its peak in the 90's much of the music and Do-It-Yourself feminist attitude prevails in certain subcultural groups.
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An example of the Do-It-Yourself mentalityt would be The Gossip's indie punk video for Standing in the Way of Control. The video is not as high tech or expensive as videos played on mainstream networks like MTV, thus, it is reflective of this subcultural ideology.
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An interesting place for this music and ideology to be taken up is at women's music festivals which, also tend to try and subvert dominant male paradigms of oppression. While the internal politics of festivals can be sites of contention it would be interesting to see how the music speaks to and through people. It would be interesting to see how this kind of performance can affect the audience there to see and how it could be a site for healing, a site for social justice, and a site of possible protest also. While complex, this topic could lend itself very nicely to a performance method and paradigm.

If I were writing it I would write about the performance as it speaks to me accounting for my own positionality as a white, queer, lesbian, bi-sexual woman. I would write about the place as a conflicted space but one that for me is a site of healing and personal growth. But I would also write about my cognitive dissonance with being a staunch social constructionist in a place that tries to define female as people who were born and socialized as a person with a vagina. Not only is this space one of contention for its gender definitions but also it's racial politics, while they may desire diversity I must ask where are all the people of color? Mostly together at the women of color tent-is this bad-no-but it is a reality. Even a "women's only" space is not perfect simply because it is built by the sweat and tears of those with vaginas.

But it is also a place where I feel a grand connection unlike anywhere else. Partly it is personal-but even more I feel as though it social and political to be involved and on many different fronts. I connect, I theorize, I am myself in a different way than the rest of my life, and so much of this is from music and the performers who attend. These people offer up their time and many of them rough it in the woods with the rest of us simple folk. Does that happen many other places? Where the power differentials between "stars" and laypeople is almost eliminated (of course they do get better food)-I don't know but I seem to doubt it? Would this be created by a diverse group of peace loving people-possibly, but all I know is that it is created by a group of semi-diverse people who happen to have vaginas.

But then it would be really cool to do performance in some way (writing or physical stage performance) of the impact a place like a women's festival has on other people. How good of an experience it is. for some. How complicated it is for others, who maybe attend but do not wholeheartedly agree with either the policies of the festivals nor completely want to diminish them either. And maybe those people on the outside too-how it makes them feel to not be included in such a rigid definition of what it means to be female and not be given the same chance for healing.

I think this space would be very interesting and complex for a performance ethnography because it isn't always clear who is outsider and who isn't. It isn't as simple as oh you have one marginalized sexuality you are the other, but in differing circumstances at differing times those who are oppressed become oppressor and then those women in turn become oppressed for sticking to their identities as women and as lesbians. It is complicated-but it would be fun and a good way to maybe create some healthy dialogue between the differing communities.

For those of us who are visual...
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