Presenters: Ross Gay, Brooke O'Harra
Organized by Brooke O'Harra, The Dyke Division of the Two-Headed Calf
Selected via Open Call
Poet and essayist Ross Gay and director and performer Brooke O’Harra will perform a conversation around a 20-minute reality TV show that they starred in called A Dating Story: Episode 110. In the 2001 episode, the duo used subterfuge to undermine, reframe and resist traditional narratives of heteronormativity, seduction and desire – frustrating the producers who assumed the episode to be a total disaster. Ironically, though not surprisingly, it became one of their greatest successes.
Gay and O’Harra together will interrogate the position of the assumed or imaginary audience in their process of making. Or more specifically will question the productiveness of imagining (and nurturing) your audience. They will posit that their work that has made the most impact and has drawn the largest community or audience has been work that they made inside of intimacy, or individuality or resistance to the “common” experience.
Read the Session Notes here.