Embodying the postcolonial perverse: mestizXXX sadomasochist performance methodologies

Abstract

This paper is not intended as either a survey of performance and perversity nor as an argumentation for any particularly new theory of performance. Rather it is me offering my methodologies, influences and thoughts as a trans mestizXXX perverse performance artist living and working in an actively postcolonial moment. It is, in part, an act of resistance toward the move to commodify performance’s important ephemerality and ineffability into institutionally digestible historicity and study-ability within academic institutional contexts. This paper will focus on some of my performance work which plays with ideas of power, bondage, land, colony, body and institution. I will also discuss the work of a few contemporary artists whom I identify not as important to notions of “the canon” but to my canon, artists whose queer and/or “of colour” perversities have influenced my work and self-formation. A work which combines personal narrative with critical analysis, this paper hopes to contextualize my performance practice from an intersectional and interdisciplinary perspective.