Resisting Hegemony through Noise

This essay examines the cultural phenomena of noise in its perceived social constructions and demonstrates its emergence as a form of resistance against prevailing dominant hegemonic codes of culture. In particular, the paper explores the ability of noise to be enacted as a tool to escape the shackles of heteronormative constructions of sexuality and gender in the cultural landscape of the United States. Examined to support this argument are the contrasting works of two American artists: John Cage and Emilie Autumn. Through Cage and his avant-garde articulations of sound, covert acts of resistance against the dominant heteronormative constructions of masculinity are explored, and through Autumn’s classical crossover work, a more overt and explicit form of resistance to subvert gender stereotypes and structures of normality and patriarchy are illuminated. Additionally, the paper explores possibilities for artists to engage with other movements, such as disability activism to create new possibilities for change

“let Me Show You Around”: The Domestic As A Site For Personal And Political Transformation

This thesis seeks to contextualize and describe my art making practice through my personal experience and professional research. I begin by referencing a childhood memory to craft a metaphor for my current work. Through storytelling, I weave together the ideas of home, comfort, and alienation to describe the influence that domestic objects have on the construction of identities. Using disidentification as a queer method, the works described herein act as visual (and visible) evidence to imagine queered futures and complicate the traditional divisions between public discourse and personal narrative. In conclusion, the importance of this queering as a sustained and repetitive personal political act is discussed

Let Me Show You Around : The Domestic as a Site for Personal and Political Transformation

This thesis seeks to contextualize and describe my art making practice through my personal experience and professional research. I begin by referencing a childhood memory to craft a metaphor for my current work. Through storytelling, I weave together the ideas of home, comfort, and alienation to describe the influence that domestic objects have on the construction of identities. Using disidentification as a queer method, the works described herein act as visual (and visible) evidence to imagine queered futures and complicate the traditional divisions between public discourse and personal narrative. In conclusion, the importance of this queering as a sustained and repetitive personal political act is discussed

Shady Ancestors: Queering digital diaspora research

Over the last couple of decades, queer theory has stimulated researchers in different disciplines to fundamentally question central concepts around identity, body, gender, sexuality, and belonging. Scholarship on diasporic media, however, has been slow to engage with queer theory’s contributions; much research still works with definitions of diaspora based upon simple notions such as ‘ethnic belonging’ and fails to interrogate the hetero and cisnormativities that structure phenomena such as mediascapes, bo rder regimes, and migration discourses. After discussing some of the theoretical and methodological interventions that queer theory can bring to digital diaspora research, this article presents a case study to exemplify how queer theoretical discussions ca n be implemented in research. Madi Ancestors was initially planned as a festival in a theater building in Berlin to remember and celebrate Turkey’s queer idols, but was then forced by the COVID 19 pan- demic to migrate from a physical space to a digital plat form. My explorative analysis of this process demonstrates how media practices bring forth a sense of queer diasporic belonging both locally and transnationally. Drawing on rich data gathered through digital ethnography, intimate insider re- search, intervie ws, and ethno mimesis, I show how queer theoretical examination of digital diaspo- ra can detail new forms of belonging, intergenerational kinship, and the fragmentation of diasporic spaces through digital media

sometimes like butterflies

Perhaps the most radical thing to do is to embrace the tension, being between the heavens and earth. Maybe regardless of identity, sometimes the earth is not enough but there are moments I’ve experienced where the distance between heaven and earth blurs. These are instants where my troubles do melt like lemon drop: the smell of freshly cut hay in a field nearby, seeing a baby goat’s tail wiggle while he nurses his mother, or making love behind the barn. These are moments on earth when something else comes into focus

Public artivism: queering geographies of migration and social inclusivity

This article contributes an original critique at the nexus of public art, activism (i.e. public artivism) and migration alongside the promotion of inclusive change. It pushes at transdisciplinary boundaries by integrating geohumanities scholarship on socially engaged public art whilst adopting a queer theory approach to foreground and interrogate the socially marginalised. The focus is on Schellekens & Peleman’s multi-site Inflatable Refugee installation, in response to the topical migration question, and the public performances and discourses that surround the migrant figure. An in-depth critical discourse analysis drawing from an interview with the collective and key documentation critically probes into the uses of public art(ivism) to raise issues particularly around the (mis)represention of this migrant figure. The case study evinces ambiguous modus operandi of public artivist practice. Although it may promote inclusive citizenship through ‘queering’ identity politics and migrant hyper-visibility, the material and socio-spatial affordances (along with limitations) of public artivism do not necessarily develop its full potential

<i>Queer Psycho</i> and the <i>He Circus</i>: Applying Queering, Magic, and More-than-Human Theories to Immersive Visual Story Worlds as an Antidote to Late Capitalism

Abstract Two immersive visual story worlds (IVS), Queer Psycho and HE Circus, are at the center of this article, one made by each of us. Individually we found our works necessitated the development of new frameworks for IVS construction, namely (1) Brechtian a-effect and queering, and (2) magic and more-than-human theories. These new framings were needed to realize our desire to use IVS to create spaces of active resistance from psychological harm imposed by political and ableist structures designed with rigid ways of seeing the world through straight/neoliberal lenses. When both story worlds and their frameworks are viewed side-by-side, they lay bare the prejudices and normative framings of IVS software and industries. Thus, the outline of these new framings with this article makes an original contribution to the field by calling into question those who are designing IVS software and typical frameworks by asking who and what they are benefiting, and proposing alternatives to illustrate how neither should be considered fixed. Finally, the topic of each IVS, that of Hitchcock's Psycho and neoliberal structures of contemporary higher education, offer critiques of systems which serve to highlight our arguments.</jats:p

Affective Cultural Practice: Imagining Queer Feminism in the Riot Grrrl Movement

Turning toward affective and emotional manifestations of resistance, this project engages Riot Grrrl cultural production including zines, flyers, lyrics, and performances. Positioning these artifacts and enactments as a specifically queer feminist praxis, I hone in on grrrl relationality and collectivity as the embodied space where political imaginings are carried out. After first establishing the Riot Grrrl movement as a primarily affectively configured movement, I focus specifically on the mobilization of anger and intimacy within the movement. First, I position anger as an emotion that enables a queering of patriarchal protection culture that the grrrls mobilize to subvert cultural logics of fear and established relations to state institutions of protection. I argue that the mobilization of anger enables the grrrls to implement different practices of protection within the movement as an enactment of grrrl relationality. Second, I locate intimacy through expressions of admiration, friendship, and desire. Here, I highlight how the grrrls entangled friendship, admiration, and affiliation with an awareness of erotic possibility, opening the door for indefinite queer relations. I describe this way of being Riot Grrrl as a “grrrl crush,” using the term as a politicized designation of the particularities of Riot Grrrl relationality as they identify and publically articulate their admiration and desire for other women and girls. Taken together, I argue that focusing on these affective practices enables an understanding of what it means to enact Riot Grrrl. Ultimately, this uncovers the political imaginings that propelled the movement forward and forged a process of becoming that allowed new queer intimacies, relations, and collective ways of being to emerge

NACCS 33rd Annual Conference

Linking Local and Global Struggles for Social Justice: Transnational Chicana and Chicano StudiseJune 28-July 2006Hotel Fénix and Hotel Moraleshttps://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/naccs_programs/1023/thumbnail.jp

That\u27s Ru-volting! how reality TV reimagines perceptions of American success

In the United States, television is a pervasive influencer on how success is defined in America. Homogenized images of socalled successful Americans negate the notion that the American Dream is an opportunity afforded to all, regardless of social identity. Reality Television proves to be a genre that offers a more diverse representation of Americans experiencing success. RuPaul’s Drag Race is a prime example. The Logo TV reality show, devoted to finding “America’s Next Drag Superstar,” transforms the historically maligned drag queen from a hegemonic masculine failure into a celebrated superstar. Created, coproduced, and hosted by one of America’s few famous drag queen entertainers, RuPaul, RuPaul’s Drag Race recontextualizes drag into a reality show competition, attracting an increasingly younger and straighter fanbase with each passing season. Its cult success enables it to transcend its reality show status, acting as a springboard for its drag queen contestants to experience unprecedented career opportunities and global exposure. How is RuPaul’s Drag Race able to rip drag out of of subterranean LGBTQ nightlife and into mainstream consciousness while subverting traps of homonormativity and queer assimilation? How does this affect drag not seen on TV? This thesis reveals the strategies RuPaul’s Drag Race executes to retool hegemonic perceptions of the drag queen as a deviant who exists on the fringes of society into a beloved cultural influencer