Sierra Ortega (Astoria, NY, USA): fru1t1ng_b0d1es
- duration: 20 min
- watch: 19th April 2018 at 11 pm UTC
DESCRIPTION: What can occur when we are allowed to live inside our own queer natures? What emerges in the revealing of a queer body? How can we disrupt notions of the binary? These questions will be explored through an approx. 20min. long performance, fruiting bodies part 3 of my dsm series, which uses the DSM-V diagnostic criteria for body & gender dysmorphia as inspiration for a performance score. This series seeks to confront the exploitation, medicalization, and institutionalization of neuroqueer bodies and explore alternative means for healing and growth. Inspired by the not-quite animal not-quite plant existence of slime molds and the new queer aesthetic of ASMR slime videos populating Youtube, I will mix a large batch of slime, decorate it with various glitters and shimmery powders, and then wrap myself with it, letting it ooze across my face and body. The slime, a liminal creature, neither plant nor animal, gives me hope in my own in-between. I will move to create a performative embodiment my unclassifiable, alien gender. I make/remake myself a new/different skin.
BIO: Sierra Ortega is a multidisciplinary performance artist living and working in Brooklyn & Queens, NY. They received an MA in performance studies from NYU in 2016 and an MA in rhetorical studies from Hofstra University in 2015. Using physically and materially disruptive practices generated from their own affective life as an anxious bipolar, their work investigates notions of queerness, alienation, and alterity in the search for meta-utopian post-capitalist futures. Most recently, their work has been presented at the Center for Performance Research, Panoply Performance Laboratory, the Whitney Museum, and Dansens Hus: Stockholm, among others. They are currently a TMT Institute Fellow and the Target Margin Theatre in Brooklyn, NY. ARTIST WEBSITE