Jack Halberstam
Halberstam drew on the artistic concept of Anarchitecture to defy any normative fixations in his thinking about transness. His exploration of the meaning of trans embodiment originates in Anarchitecture as a model of undoing hierarchies and constraining structures and thus to unbuild the binary that underlies the prevailing system of gender. This queering strategy not only seeks to disrupt social norms, but to conceive of the trans body as providing dimensions of corporeality beyond those afforded by the current status quo.
Image Credit: © Christina Stivali / Turboturbo
Friederike Schäfer
With a special focus on the artistic practices of the Anarchitecture group, Schäfer presented a counter-reading to the congealed narrative of Anarchitecture as an artistic stance on architecture by foregrounding the witty, poetic and philosophical note cards written by artist Gordon Matta-Clark in the 1970s, as well as Suzanne Harris's reflections on her embodied approach to installation art.
Image Credit: © Christina Stivali / Turboturbo
Jennifer Sichel
Jennifer Sichel's and Caroline Lillian Schopp's reconceptualisations of archival material from the 1960s and 1970s each play an essential role in current efforts to critically re-engage with key episodes in art history. Proposing the notion of 'criticism without authority', Sichel encouraged a fresh perspective on New York's avant-garde artistic scene as one that is decisively queer, marked by failed tactics and genre-bending practices that resist categorisation.
Image Credit: © Christina Stivali / Turboturbo
Caroline Lillian Schopp
Schopp, meanwhile, reframed the performing body in Viennese Actionism, drawing attention to hesitant gestures of 'in-action' that trouble the entrenched paradigm of performance as emancipatory action.
Image Credit: © Christina Stivali / Turboturbo