Bossing Images is a traveling salon organized by Berlin-based queer theorist Antke Engel and Canadian scholar Jess Dorrance.   They invited me to participate as a Zaungast (German for “guest observer”) for the workshop they organized for the Art Affects Festival in Freiburg as an encounter between the film Toxic, by Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, and queer theorist Mel Chen, who was a keynote speaker at the conference and a major inspiration for the film.   My job was to attend the workshop, meet afterwards with the participants to offer feedback, and write up something for the website, which also includes contributions from the panelists and other documents from the event.  Click here for my report on “coughing up glitter,” an image inspired by the still from Toxic that you see here.

I was game for the project because, in the spirit of Public Feelings, I’m up for any kind of experimental workshop format and also because I love Mel’s work on the toxic (and the fabulous book Animacies).  I have crossed paths with Pauline and Renate quite a bit in recent years and am a big fan of their work on queer temporalities and archives.  I contributed an essay to the catalogue that accompanied their film No Future, which was part of the 2011 Venice Biennale installation Chewing the Scenery organized by Andrea Thal, whom I met, along with Antke and Karin, at a workshop on Queer Public Feelings in Basel.  But I didn’t actually meet them in person until I went to Berlin to make The Alphabet of Feeling Bad with Karin Michalski, which they helped produce.  I was in Paris in 2012 when the initial installation of Toxic was exhibited, and we subsequently co-wrote a short essay on Toxic Feelings for the Manifesta Journal.  We also shared the bill at Arika’s Hidden in Plain Sight episode in Glasgow last year (see report below).  I mention all of these events in order to emphasize the queer social networks that have facilitated our various creative collaborations, which are also central to Renate and Pauline’s work with various performers, with whom we share friendships, such as Ginger Brooks Takahashi, Werner Hirsch, and Lynne T (of Lesbians on Ecstasy).

In 2012, I collaborated on a video installation with Berlin-based artist Karin Michalski for a group show called A Burnt-Out Case at NGBK Gallery in Berlin.  Karin was interested in the work of Public Feelings and Feel Tank, including the concept of “political depression,” and I had previously worked with her on an interview for a zine she made called Feeling Bad.  For this project, she proposed that I help her write an “alphabet of feeling bad,” an abecediary of key terms from “A is for anxiety” to “Z is for zest.” During a trip I made to Berlin, we had a one-day shoot in which I recited a version of the alphabet three times in one long take of 45 minutes!  I didn’t quite realize until I got to the studio (where a queer version of Tracy Emin’s bed was set up as my stage) that Karin wanted me to actually explain the words not just recite them, and the resulting live/filmed performance is a combination of script and improvisation. The video has been screened as a continuous loop composed of two of the different versions, and it has now been part of exhibitions in London (at an exhibition called Visualising Affect at Goldsmiths College), Zurich (at Les Complices), and other locations around Europe.

The project was an interesting way to perform theory and to create it.  Some of the terms, such as “vulnerability,” “loneliness,” “rage,” and, of course, “feeling bad,” are more ordinary or vernacular terms.  Others are major theoretical concepts from fellow travelers in queer affect theory – such as Heather Love’s “feeling backward,” Lauren Berlant’s “slow death,” and Sara Ahmed’s “happiness” and “killjoy” -- but the explanations are brief enough to remain accessible and to drift into the public sphere without becoming a full-on lecture.  And some terms were more personal for me:  “dread,” one of my favorite affect words from George Eliot, “melodrama,” in recognition of my work on 19th-century genres, “numbness,” always a point of reference for me in thinking about affect as force or energy.  

The Alphabet has also been a good way to combine scholarship and art, and I’ve been able to use it in some of my own presentations, starting with a mini live performance for Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue’s Axe-Grinding Workshop at the Tate Modern, and as a point of departure for writing workshops in Sydney and Sundsvall, Sweden.  And Karin and I were finally able to co-present a screening at a conference on Art and Affect in Freiburg in February, which helped me unpack its meanings more fully.

I’ve also collaborated with Karin on a second version for a video installation project called Words Needed curated by Swedish filmmaker Anna Linder in Umea, Sweden, which is a European Capital of Culture for 2014.  For that version we turned the script into a text – white words on black background -- which was projected on a wall of snow in the middle of one of the city streets -- right next to a shopping mall called Utopia! -- as part of the festival’s opening ceremonies in January.  Although I wasn’t able to be there, I did just recently visit Umea and was able to get a fuller sense of the context. And that version will be part of an exhibition that Anna Linder is organizing in Goteberg in August 2014.  (For the trailer that shows excerpts from all four pieces that were in the show, click here.)

The original version has also been screened as part of a show called The Unhappy Archive that Karin co-curated for a museum in Karlsruhe, Germany.  That show features books by me and many of my queer theory friends displayed on the walls as though they were art objects!  Along with mattresses on the floor and slogans and other objects on the walls, they help to further the work of making feelings public and political.

My European travels this summer included the performance festival organized by Arika in Glasgow.  Billed as an “episode” called Hidden in Plain Sight and devoted to queer culture, it followed on an earlier episode (prominently featuring Fred Moten) called Freedom is a Constant Struggle and spearheaded by the sound collective Ultra-red, which has staged a series of events (including a related program at last year’s Whitney Biennial) to explore embodied and creative practices of freedom.

I was intrigued by the programming, especially the presentation of scholars alongside artists, and also by the genre of the episode as a way to create new kinds of public forums that include conversation.  And the results were spectacular and moving.  I did not expect to go all the way to Glasgow to learn about voguing!  But Robert Sember of Ultra-red and Michael Roberson, who is a veteran of the Harlem ballroom scene and a student of theology, have been collaborating on Vogue-ology, an informal school of theory and practice dedicated to preserving and circulating knowledge of the ballroom scene.   I was invited to participate on a panel in which we watched archival video clips and responded to Roberson’s questions -- what did you see?;  what did you hear?; and what did you feel?”  -- ideal prompts for my public feelings sensibility.  It released a flood of memories from the emotional time capsule of the late 1980s moment of Madonna and Paris Is Burning, both of which were central to my experience of queer theory’s explosion. Voguing was about the nexus of subculture and mass culture, crossings of race, class, and gender in capitalist economies, embodied epistemologies of the dance floor, and much more.  I was delighted to see Vogue-ology keeping voguing’s place in the queer archive very much alive. 

Another of many revelatory performances was that of Trajal Harrell, who has choreographed a series of dances based on the premise of the Harlem ballroom scene coming downtown to meet the Judson Theatre postmodern dance scene in the 1960s.  He did a solo show, as well as a virtuoso ensemble performance with a group of queer European dancers of various genders.  There were also a number of dyke artists in the mix:  Pauline Boudry and Renate Lorenz, with whom I’ve been collaborating of late, screened their films; Antonia Baehr, who stars in many of their films as Werner Hirsch did a solo performance about dog-human relations; the artist Emma Hedditch came as a fellow traveler participant; and Jack Halberstam presented his latest work on anarchy and wildness.  I gave a public lecture about my book in which I emphasize the importance of curating spaces (such as Sheila Pepe’s Common Sense) for new kinds of feelings and sensations and also facilitated a workshop discussion about queer archives.  I loved putting my professor knowledge to work in a creative context and seeing new possibilities for how to perform and curate conversations about ideas and feelings.  

Kay Turner's genius concept for a book party - turning queer theory into song - was a blast!   Not only did I get to share the stage with a host of my favorite queer theorists, but I had the honor of seeing my book transformed into an "interpretive dance" by Jibz Cameron (aka Dynasty Handbag), one of my favorite downtown performers.  Jibz's movement medley included jazz improv, a sequestered nun, and a mad crafter seeking to knit an entire stage. And that was just one of many fantastic performances by an array of artists -- Kay Turner, Viva de Concini, and Mary Feaster (as the Pages), Gretchen Phillips, Dave Driver, and many many more -- in musical styles from rock to rap to show tune.  And we even got a review in the New York Times!
       I also loved sharing the floor with Carolyn Dinshaw (author of How Soon Is Now?) at Bluestockings later that weekend, where we staged a public conversation about the connections between our books -- which include the attractions of amateurism, medieval moments, a feeling for spaces that are rich in heterogenous time, and -- who knew? -- bathrobes!

Just returned from Toronto where I did a book event at Feminist Art Gallery (FAG), Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue's backyard studio/gallery.  Earlier in the day, we marched in the International Women's Day parade with the crocheted banners they made for the Axe Grinding Workshop at the Tate Modern last May.  With their bright colors and suggestive slogans ("We Can't Compete," "We Won't Compete"), they helped us form a very photogenic contingent.   And it was perfect preparation for my comments about craft and common sense delivered from the public feelings pulpit to a compelling contingent of Toronto artists and academics ... and my family.  It was a great homecoming for the book, which was workshopped in winter 2008 when I taught a course at U of Toronto and helped host De-Camp, a Feel Tank Toronto project.  And Allyson and Deirdre made me my very own "Feeling Public" quilt.