ANNA T.
Performativity, Privacy and Space: the Chronicles of the Closet
Starting point of this research is the spatiotemporal apparatus of the proverbial closet (from the expression “come out of the closet”). The project explores the closet’s linguistic background, its relation to performativity, and the paradoxical time/space qualities it entails.
Generated as a physical and notional space in the beginning of the Fordism era it still acts as a place of reference for minoritarian social categories without visible markers. Drawing from binarisms such as safety/peril, private/public, personal/political, this research examines the contradicting elements, the liminal spaces they form, and the points these intersect in. It explores the materiality of this space, the objects that construct it and how/why they are deconstructed, and moves on to investigate not only how language implements this device, but how the closet produces languages, lingoes, and cants and the cultures surrounding them. Furthermore it looks into language as a form of spatial representation and cognition, examines identity in relation to space and time, and explores sexual geographies.
How does language shape the closet and how does the closet in turn inform language? Is there such a thing as “queer space” and if so, where and when does it exist? (How) can “coming out” be a collective experience? How does privacy, or the lack of it, affect communication codes in the public domain? How is that performed?
Anna T. is a multidisciplinary artist exploring social structures, physical and notional time and space, as well as privacy and popular (sub) culture(s). Her work brings to the foreground and examines norms and (non) normative performances.
