{"id":420,"date":"2010-11-26T20:17:10","date_gmt":"2010-11-26T20:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/?p=420"},"modified":"2023-04-12T04:30:04","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T04:30:04","slug":"books-becoming-beograd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/books-becoming-beograd\/","title":{"rendered":"books, becoming & beograd"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“outside of a dog, a woman’s best friend is a book. inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read!” wrote diane torr<\/a> on the inside cover of the copy of her book, “sex, drag and male roles<\/a>” that she gave to me when i had lunch with her recently in glasgow. i don’t know about the inside of a dog, but i can tell you right now that the inside of her book is a great place to be. it’s a fascinating account of the development of the new york drag king scene, told alongside the story of diane’s career as a performance artist and “man for a day” workshop leader. it’s told very inclusively, covering how things developed on both coasts of the usa and the ways that various movements, from punk music to erotic dancing, generated the wider context that facilitated the emergence of gender-bending performance art. it’s highly readable, sometimes laugh-out-loud, & the voice moves easily between diane and co-author stephen bottoms. great book – buy it now!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Becoming<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

another book that has recently been launched is adriana\nzaharijevi\u0107’s “postajanje \u017eenom” (becoming woman);\nunfortunately my srpski is not quite good enough to read this one\nyet, but i’m told it’s a history of feminism and gender identity; the\nofficial english blurb says: “One is neither born nor becomes a\nwoman at some specific point in time. Becoming Woman seeks to explore\ntwo substantial points: modes, strategies and resistances to the\nsedimentation we name “woman”\/”man”; and the fact\nthat the injunction to speak and think in the name of a singular\nidentity – be it even the historically marginalized identity of woman\n– necessarily entails exclusions and hierarchies.” last week, as\ni started reading diane’s book about women becoming men, i flew to\nbelgrade to participate in a collaborative presentation for adriana’s\nbook about women becoming women; this was not to be a “proper”\nbook launch (that had already happened) but a performance event that\nwould expand from adriana’s ideas into the future, via the open door\nof cyberformance. we had a few short days for 5 of us (one who was\nnot physically present) to meet, discuss and create the event. we had\nplenty of technology at the venue – a strong wireless connection, 3\nbeamers, fancy remote-control web cam, full sound system – but only\njust over 2 hours to set it all up, & no time for anything like a\nrun-through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Becoming<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

the premise of the event was that adriana had invited us into her living room for coffee and a chat, starting with the book but moving on from there. there was an audience of at least 100 who, unusually for serbia, started arriving well before the official start time of 8pm. we had UpStage<\/a> projected onto one wall, on another wall was the skype projection of ana vilenica who was in stuttgart, and i kept the third beamer to use with my flexible mirror in the finale – an UpStage jam with me projecting & flexing the word “woman” in many different languages across the other projections, the audience, the ceiling, etc. (the photo above is by jelena lali\u0107). despite a few problems – mostly due to not having enough time to think about everything – on the whole the event went well & afterwards many people said how interesting it was & that they had never seen anything like it before. it was a fun project; i particularly enjoyed seeing my friend milica get inspired by UpStage, & collaborating face to face with my UpStage colleage mijana peri\u0107, with whom i usually work remotely. hvala mnogo zoe & the rekonstrukcija \u017eenski fond<\/a> for organising!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Beograd<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

& i love beograd, give me any excuse & i’ll be there to soak up its grimy raw energy, see friends, drink rakia & observe the inevitable changes (to je neizbe\u017eno!). even a whirlwind few days with not enough time to see everyone is great, especially with the warm weather – people sitting and chatting in the parks at midnight still. now i’m back in munich & have one more working trip next week – to magfest torino<\/a> in italy, where i’ll lead a cyberformance workshop & give the premiere performance of “make-shift<\/a>” on 5 december. after that, i’m looking forward to hunkering down for some quiet, wintry weeks at home – bring on the snow, the gluwein, & long dark evenings inside good books!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“outside of a dog, a woman’s best friend is a book. inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read!” wrote diane torr on theRead More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,14,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feminism","category-gender","category-language","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1322,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions\/1322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}