‘(Pre)processed body. Towards the queer performance studies’

dr.hab. Jacek Kochanowski’s lecture combined with the presentation of performance fragments

A theatre is a reality laboratory. All that is material, real, carnal is made in a theatre with the use of the same technologies we employ in our day-to-day life. Let’s take a closer look, then, at how carnality is made in the theatre as well as during a performance, so as to discover how we ourselves make our bodies through little, daily gestures.

A body is a social construct. Carnality is a process. It is a materialization of a normative scenario, an embodiment of a form. The queer perspective is accused of “over-theoritizing” and of being disdainful towards what is the material condition of human existence. I will try to show that this perspective, especially in symbiosis with the performatic context, leads to the disclosure of what is the substance of biopolitics which is vital for our subordination: the mechanisms of political preprocessing of the body and carnality.

Nowadays performance helps us to reveal and disguise these bio-power technologies, and thus the short lecture will be accompanied by longer fragments of respected artists’ performances.

Admission free. Lecture and presentation for adults only.
Lecture prepared in cooperation with the Zbigniew Raszewski’s Theathre Institute in Warsaw.
Special thanks go to Jakub Drzewiecki for his help in preparing the presentation of performances