Expanded forms of Reenactment in Queer Performance: Holly Hughes, Cynthia Carr, Malik Gaines, Emily

Holly Hughes is joined by Cynthia Carr (author of "Fire in the Belly: A Biography of David Wojnarowicz), Malik Gaines (Professor at Hunter College, visual and performance artist, member of My Barbarian), Emily Roysdon (visual and performance artist), and Alexandro Segade (visual and performance artist, member of My Barbarian) as they consider the past, present, and possible future of re-enactment in queer performance. Contemporary artists like Pauline Boudry, Trajal Harrell, Sharon Hayes, Renate Lorenz, Allison Smith, and Wu Tsang engage expanded forms of re-enactment to destabilize the ways in which narratives of the past are narrowly constructed to privilege specific aspects of the present. Within the spectrum of queer performance, re-enactment has often been employed as a strategy for deconstructing histories of heteronormative oppression but it is also becoming a means for queer artists to critically engage with their own cultural mythologies and origin stories. Cover Image: Emily Roysdon, Untitled, “David Wojnarowicz project,” 2001–07. Twelve black-and-white photographs, two embroidered, 11 × 14 in (27.9 × 35.5 cm). Courtesy the artist