The theme for this MFAIA-VT 2011 FALL residency

MFAIA-VT Fall 2011 Residency Theme:

If identity is socially constructed, how can we be intentional, thoughtful, responsive, creative, (and radical) in the making and performing of ourselves, as agents in the world?

Embodying Selves: Social Identities in Action

Sociologist Erving Goffman held that our presentations of ‘self’ in social interaction constitute a series of performances, each one contingent on context and reception (how others respond). Philosopher Judith Butler’s writing on the performativity of gender holds implications that social identities are all “in some sense constructed in and through social action." (Gregson, Rose 434) Critical race theorist Kimberle Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality proposed that we embrace multiple, socially constructed identity categories of, for instance, gender and race.

During the summer 2011 residency, we will consider how we, as artists working in all forms, “perform” our “selves” in interaction with the larger world, so that the intentions, means and results of our art practices can be seen as the embodiment of our identities and values, and as a way to be more conscious of self in relation to others and the world. We can look to artists such as Adrian Piper, Cindy Sherman, Patty Chang, Anna Halprin, and Guillermo Gomez-Peña, among others, for works that may deal more explicitly with agency and identity-as-performance. Can we expand the notion of performing identity to encompass how we choose to practice our art? In practice (for example) how does a musician embody or ‘perform’ identity and values? A writer? A painter, web artist, sculptor or filmmaker? Are all of these modes of creative agency experienced and received as performances of our selves?

Beginning with a residency keynote panel, and in community conversation throughout the residency, we ask the following questions:

• How are we seen? How do we see ourselves? How do we see others, and how do we respond?

• What “identities” do we embody or perform when we are in relation to each other, and through our arts practices?

• How do our “performances” conform to or disrupt expectations for our behaviour -- expectations often based in (for instance) constructs of class, ability, gender, sexuality, race, and/or ethnicity?

• Do our performances represent alignment with a community or communities, and/or do they function transgressively, claiming agency in order to challenge dominant normative thought?

• Going further, in what ways might it be liberating to conceive of a multiplicity of identities that we can choose to perform, or not to perform? Can conscious embodiment of identity help us to act more intentionally in relationships with others?

• Does a conception of identity-as-performance deny, affirm, or might it open up new conceptual space to consider our lived experiences, notions of voice/self, and strongly held community or group affiliations?

Building on our previous residency theme of artists in praxis: how can we embody our core values? And how can we choose to perform our fluid identities as an expression of core values, and/or a disruption of social norms?

Works Cited
Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antracist Politics.” Feminist Legal Theory: Foundations. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. 383-395.

Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1959.

Gregson N, Rose G. “Taking Butler Elsewhere: Performativities, Spatialities and Subjectivities.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2000, v. 18. 433-452.