Towards a Queer Laboratory

In this essay, I offer practical suggestions and considerations for the implementation of a “queer laboratory”: an artistic research space that emphasizes and actively explores the circulation of powers, roles, and identities. These proposals are based on my own practice, which incorporates audiovisual embodied research as well as the critical theorization of embodiment and identity (see Spatz 2015, 2019, 2020). I first describe my own journey in performance-based embodied research and share how my genderqueer and other identities have led me to push against the edges of what currently counts as “performance.” I then share a set of proposals that represent my current practical ideas for designing a queer laboratory—or “laboratory of powers”—in which gender and other identities can circulate across subject/object boundaries. I close with a consideration of the audiovisual body in the era of digital audiovisual networks, hoping to synthesize my personal account and practical suggestions with provocations to further study.