Posts tagged art

                                                      I am an Opera,

                                    A Deconstructionist’s Dream                             

                                                    by Cassie Peterson                                                      

Please read my essay/review/love letter about Joseph Keckler’s performance, I am an Opera. This piece was originally published in BOMB Magazine, online.

                                                 Excerpt/Teaser

I am an Opera simultaneously deconstructs and re-animates the operatic form, making it contemporary, relevant, and even urgent. Joseph is possessed by the demand and discipline of high art while continuously locating himself in prosaic realities. In this way, his work is both an elevation and a grounding. Celestial archetypes meet quotidian anti-heroes, all within the insularity of the narrator’s discursive thoughts. This alchemy of high/medium/low art subject matter elicits particular emotional responses from audiences. The sheer, visceral gravity of the aria overlapping with its irreverent content caused me to laugh hysterically while simultaneously giving me the chills that only a bravura performance can. In this way, I am an Opera operates both as a formal materialization and as a conceptual dematerialization, creating a palpable fissure that allows for new experiences and subjectivities to emerge. I can feel all of these potentialities arise (like my neck hairs) during the piece. It is a new and exhilarating sensation.

                                          BUT, WHAT IS QUEER ART?

                         A Paradoxical Manifesto by Cassie Peterson

Please read my newest thought piece on what makes queer art. This essay was written to help contextualize the Queer New York International Arts Festival (June 7th-15th at Abrons Arts Center) and was originally published on the online, performing arts site, Culturebot.

                                                 Excerpt/Teaser:

Similarly, queer art is a kind of embodiment that challenges dominant modes of production, reproduction, and representation. Against essentialism and in favor of multiplicity in meaning, queer art aims to subvert traditional forms, genres, aesthetics, and structures. Queer art plays in the space of unreason. It is experimental. It is provocative. Suspicious. Queer art celebrates the failure to adhere to normative expectations and is pleased with itself as a conscious and exquisite transgression. The artists in this festival accept and employ this constellation of principles to make queer work.