unbecoming hiding place (2019)
The concept for unbecoming hiding place grew out of the isolation I internalized in continuously revisiting a desolate, forgotten location ridden with trauma and hindered opportunities for insurgence. I am haunted by the era of institutionalization and even today, I willfully practice “passing” as non-disabled to hide myself from sanist violence and potential ostracization. The participants I was able to connect with for this project (before I knew it was going to be centered around passing) all shared this same “need” to conceal for similar reasons. I was also fond of the aesthetic of unbecoming; the idea of unraveling or dismantling to become - and its queering of time and space. What discourses emerge when a collective group of Mad people temporarily un-become from their state of passing to become radically visible? Is this a choreographed transformation with the capability to alter perceptions outside the realm of theater? Eager to experiment with aesthetics of (in)visibility, unbecoming/unbelonging, abjection, vulnerability, and difficulty in performance ethnography, I weaved together the oral histories of nine participants from the Chicago area to create a performance about the political action of resisting sanism.
Below is the script audience members received for the live performance. You can view this script in a Google Doc here.
Documentation by Kevin Veselka, Ji Yang, and Grace Duval.
