‘Rites’: a night of embodied performance and sound

‘Rites’ is a performance art cabaret which is centred on the notion of rites of passage, transition, ceremony, ritual, memorialisation and community through polyphony. This project is rooted in the celebration and platforming of queer, trans+ and BIPOC voices. The curatorial approach is founded in facilitation and creating spaces for artists to experiment through improvisation. ‘Rites’ took place in Stereo and was a showcase of queer and trans+ artists, with a focus on embodied and ‘felt’ performance and sound; a realisation of ongoing research into embodiment and sound within queer praxis to create intimacy trans-culturally and trans-historically. The theme of the event fit loosely beneath the idea of ‘ritual’; drawing upon traditions of ritual within queer club spaces, traditions of drag, and the daily rituals performed by gender non-conforming and trans+ individuals. The project was born from the question: What memories, knowledge(s) and ways of knowing, histories and logics can we unearth through our body from within, through voice or movement?

The curatorial line of enquiry for this project followed the ability of sound to collapse binaries, but also its ability to collapse notions of the physical, time and space. The parallels of transgressive queer praxis and the transgressive ability of sound has been intrinsic to this project, challenging notions of “inner and outer, privacy and exposure—calling into question our perceived control of the physical world around us” according to Victoria Karlsson. The sonic world is an uncertain one, as Karlsson describes, sound moves “between the “outside” and our “inside” body and mind with ease, and beyond our control”. This idea of bleed links to the notion of the transcultural and transhistorical potentiality of sound, it is full of slippages and unknowability which provides it with an amorphic form that can be manipulated and scored to create intimacy and highlight connections across time and space. ‘Rites’ is concerned with providing space for a ‘queered listening’; a state of attunement, listening as a form of opening – moving upward and outward, reorienting the self. The porous nature of the event was crucial, enabling an enquiry into the sonic as a queer poiesis, exploring a communal processing and ultimately capturing embodiment in its raw form through the heavily improvised nature of the performances.

The project utilised a collaborative, dialogical model to form the event, incorporating various voices from the queer and trans+ community in Glasgow to create an event made by and for queer and trans+ people in the city. The structure of the event drew upon the traditions of cabaret, drag shows, and club nights, in that it was led by a ‘comparer’ who introduced the various acts and acted as a crucial link between the varied performances. It also drew upon these traditions through the showcase consisting of artists with distinctly different practices from one another, platforming of a specific cross-section of Scotland’s queer and trans+ performers. The structure drew upon the club night, as it ended in a DJ set by an artist, providing the audience with space and time to move, dance, and play – as the artists had. The audience was encouraged to be loud, vocal and praising of all performers and acts, a norm involved in drag shows. ‘Rites’ is a project centred on notions of embodiment, voice, voicing, turning inward and outwards, making and unmaking the self, enfleshing and enmeshing the personal and the historical. ‘Rites’ will continue in varying iterations echoing one another, evolving and shifting, from space to space, between walls, sounds and club spaces, in basements and in bodies.