White Roses, Pink Glitter. Learning about Embodied Knowledge from Queer Performance Artists

Abstract

Queerness is a body practice. Through the practice of Yoggaton, the dancer Maque Pereyra reflects on embodied knowledge that is interconnected with other forms of knowledge. Rena Onat uses this as a vantage point to reflect on how embodied knowledge is accessed and produced through queer performance practice. Referring to Sara Ahmed, she believes that traces of colonial and other traumas are physically imprinted into and onto our bodies. She argues that accessing embodied knowledge is difficult as it can be overwhelming or too painful. The main focus of this article is an analysis of Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu’s performance “White Roses, Pink Glitter” exploring their performance work as an artistic approach to researching trauma, queer death and queer connection. The work addresses mourning for Zak Kostopoulus (aka Zackie Oh), a drag queen and HIV activist from Athens who fell victim to an anti-queer hatecrime, as well as the German resistance group White Rose. Thereby, Darıcıoğlu connects themselves with (queer) histories of resistance and queer affect. Thus, there performance practice is considered a medium for the study of embodied knowledge with a queer approach.