ANTI – PERFORMANCE AS PRAXIS

ABSTRACT Anti-performance is a term that I use to describe my body of performances, which in actuality are also ephemeral moments in time-space. The ‘anti’ is derived and borrowed from anti-colonial, the radical (root) of ‘decolonial’ and ‘post’ colonial, in this case a direct opposition to what is expected of gendered, racialised bodies, by audiences but also that which is usually invited by institutions. The anti-performances discussed in this article – (Can the Subaltern Speak?)… YEAH BUT CAN WE LISTEN THO? (2015), Transistence, Moving Into Sunlight (2021), and Let Them Eat Cake/May The One Without Hunger Lift The First Knife (2016) – refuse the objectification and spectacle of my so-called ‘marginalised’ body and how it is often consumed, violated, devalued, and exhausted, and instead seeks to subvert the gaze, interrupt voyeurism, reclaim wellbeing, as well as querying what we think we know. Anti-performance centres myself as performer (ourselves when collective) rather than the audience; this, however, is not intended to be divisive, as the audience members are often witness to and/or accomplices of the performance if they choose to be. Anti-performance strives to transform the paradigm of ‘consumer’ (audience and institution) and ‘consumed’ (performer) to something much more ethical and with integrity.