UTOPIA01_SH3.wrld
(2016)
Performers: кir alshanetsky (ok_r3n), Shemaiah Clarke (SH3-ma1ah), Kai Magee (m3/mii), Jasper Messer (††† DJ HEX GIRL †††), Leneil Roderique (@comegetfxxedup)
Music: SH3 (prod. umami goddess™)
Additional Music: Millionaires, A.G. Cook, Cash Cash, Dam Funk, Lady Gaga, Hannah Diamond, Wonder Girls, Azealia Banks, Dirty Vegas, Lykke Li X AutoErotique
Lighting Design: Chelsie McPhilimy
Videography: Brendan Plake
Originally presented at the Patricelli ‘92 Theater, Wesleyan University (Middletown, CT), November 2016.
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UTOPIA01_SH3.wrld is a
multimedia exercise in queer worldbuilding. Heavily influenced by José Esteban
Muñoz’s queer theory writing, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer
Futurity, Elle collaborates music, experimental film, and live dance
performance in an antidisciplinary work that blurs divides between realness and falsity. Engineering a “fake” pop group, UTOPIA01_SH3.wrld asks viewers to consider the entanglements between the real and the fake, and how a pragmatic investment in both might serve as a site for fantastical, future envisioning.The creation of the fictional pop-group, SH3, aims to mirror the experience of carving one’s transness anew. If one treats something made-up as truth, and this phenomena begins to take on real-life consequences, might we then recognize the relative falsity/realness required in the conception and construction of newness? This work moves towards, and mines, the potentialities within the fake that lead towards greater play, indulgence, and self-/selves-determination.
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