Contemporary artists like Pauline Boudry, Trajal Harrell, Sharon Hayes, Renate Lorenz, Allison Smith, and Wu Tsang engage expanded forms of re-enactment to destabilize the ways in which narratives of the past are narrowly constructed to privilege specific aspects of the present. Within the spectrum of queer performance, re-enactment has often been employed as a strategy for deconstructing histories of heteronormative oppression but it is also becoming a means for queer artists to critically engage with their own cultural mythologies and origin stories. Holly Hughes is joined by Cynthia Carr, Malik Gaines, Emily Roysdon, and Alexandro Segade as they take a closer look at this phenomenon to consider the past, present, and possible future of re-enactment in queer performance.

Presented in conjunction with “NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star.”